The Undercover Soundtrack – Audrina Lane

February 18, 2015 Roz Morris @Roz_Morris7 Comments

‘Music for looking into the past’

Once a week I host a writer who uses music as part of their creative environment – perhaps to connect with a character, populate a mysterious place, or hold a moment still to explore its depths. This week’s post is by Audrina Lane @AudrinaLane

Soundtrack by Berlin, Wham!, Rick Astley, Robin Beck, George Michael, Bill Medley, Jennifer Warnes, Patrick Swayze

As I started 2013 and my 40th birthday I started to think about what I still wanted to do with my life, call it a mid-life crisis bucket list. It was a time to look back into my past from an 80s adolescence to my life today and wonder if I had made the right choices. Music has always been my life blood from watching Top of the Pops in the 70s and wanting to be a dancer in Hot Gossip, right through to the fact that I always have music on in the office, house, car and headphones. Wherever I was working on my novel the music was there.

So on my bucket list I wanted to write a book, my first attempt at this was in 1992 after suffering my first break-up. It was called Take my Breath Away and straight away you can see that the song by Berlin was my starting point. The mood and lyrics of the song a haunting epitaph to lost love. Afraid of rejection of my teenage romance novel I shelved it.

Happily in February 2013 I found the manuscript and set to work to achieve my dream. The title of my novel is a song Where did your heart go? By Wham, its poignant lyrics and soulful vibe pointed me in the direction my story was going to take. With the local radio station on I decided to bring my idea from 1992 into the present and include music that I loved from the 80s. By setting my novel in 2013 my main character Stephanie Eden, widow, single mother and local radio station DJ is 40 years old. She grew up and experienced love for the first time in 1988. The song that made me remember my first love was First Time by Robin Beck. I listened to this track constantly as the lyrics evoke that breathless yearning when you are hit by love. I needed the music of the era to awaken my memories.

Stephanie’s daughter Charlotte is 16 in 2013 and just experiencing her own break-up. Stephanie remembers her diary from 1988 from when she was 16 and about to embark on her first relationship. Handing the diary to Charlotte she lets her read about how first love was in 1988 compared to 2013. My favourite scene is Stephanie’s first kiss with Lifeguard James, unexpected and beneath the water in the local swimming pool where they met.

I felt his lips on mine, soft and firm against the liquid coolness of the water. We were suspended in a timeless moment’

Stephanie yearns to be a DJ so for every romantic event in her relationship a song comes to mind and for this kiss it was Whenever you need somebody by Rick Astley. Upbeat and hopeful like my character feelings.

You feel for Stephanie when she realises that James is moving away. I needed a song to express the yearning and desperation she feels and I listened to A different corner by George Michael, the lyrics and piano on the track highlighting her yearning and the decision she made that led her to James in the first place. Stephanie has never moved on from her first love, despite her short marriage and the birth of her daughter. James has kept appearing in her memories every time she hears a song from the past. How many of us have experienced the same thing when you hear a certain song?

Music was such a powerful memory tool and one that I could never silence no matter the pain it bought.’

Charlotte loves music, influenced by her mum’s career and also her own dreams of becoming a dancer. I hope you are all seeing the parallel’s in my own ambitions?? At a dance competition Charlotte meets Mitchell and with a shared love of the film Dirty Dancing they re-create the iconic dance to the song I’ve had the time of my life, it becomes the first song of their relationship.

She could almost hear the music in her head, just louder than the beating of her heart as they moved together in perfect synchronicity.’

The book follows both characters through their sexual awakening and each of these scenes was easier to write with a song playing for the characters. For Stephanie and James I found it in the beautiful lyrics of George Michael’s Father Figure, for Charlotte and Mitchell with She’s like the wind by Patrick Swayze. As Stephanie watches her daughter falling in love she wonders if she should give love one more try?

In a way the soundtrack of my teenage years became those of the characters I was bringing to life and recreated that magical feeling of first love.

Audrina Lane lives in Herefordshire with her partner and two dogs. She works full time for the Herefordshire Library service which means she is surrounded by books every day. Where Did Your Heart Go? was released in July 2013 and her second book, Un-Break my Heart, was released in December 2014. She is currently working on the third. Find her on Facebook, Twitter @AudrinaLane and her website.

Undercover Soundtrack

‘Music for looking into the past’ – Audrina Lane

February 17, 2015February 17, 2015 Roz Morris @Roz_MorrisLeave a comment

My guest this week brings a real blast of the 1980s, with a bright red emphasis on romance (I guess it’s that time of year). She drew on the soundtrack of her adolescent years to create the love-torn characters in her novel, and the heart of the story beats to George Michael, Berlin and Patrick Swayze. She is Audrina Lane and she’ll be here on Wednesday with her Undercover Soundtrack.

Undercover Soundtrack

The Undercover Soundtrack – Rebecca Cantrell

March 5, 2014 Roz Morris @Roz_Morris3 Comments

‘This song says it’s time to get serious’

Soundtrack by Emily Barker & the Red Clay Halo, Dakota Staton, Lotte Lenya, Dagmar Krause, Louis Armstrong, Paul Whiteman, Macy Gray

When I start writing a new novel, one of the first things I do is put together a playlist for it. I’ll start with just a few songs and then add them as time goes on, so I might start out with 20 minutes of music and then end up with an hour and half to two hours by the end. I listen to this playlist almost every day while writing the book. At the beginning, I hear every word, but after a while the music becomes background while I’m writing in some Berlin café.

Mood and world

My latest Hannah Vogel novel is A City of Broken Glass and it’s set during Kristallnacht in 1938, so I listened to some modern stuff to establish the right mood and some historical stuff to put me straight in Hannah’s word.

The first song on my playlist is the theme from the BBC series Wallander sung by Emily Barker and the Red Clay Halo. It’s haunting and sad and reminds me that it’s time to get serious, to slow down and leave all of my thoughts outside of the writing room and get to work.

The next song was written in 1926, but I think it was more popular during World War II, and it reminds me that Hannah is always trying to help others as they try to escape the burgeoning Nazi menace, even at the cost of her own life. It’s Someone to Watch Over Me sung by Dakota Staton. It’s a love song, and if I’m working on a romantic scene, sometimes I’ll play that song a couple of times in a row. Hannah and Lars both watch out for each other, so it’s not as sexist as it might seem. Or so I tell myself.

After that, I move on to Song of a German Mother, sung by Lotte Lenya with lyrics by Bertolt Brecht and music by Kurt Weill. All of them lived in Berlin at the same time as Hannah, and all of them fled to the United States during the Nazi years. It’s a very grim song about a mother who lost her son to the Nazis because she didn’t understand what would happen. It’s a warning to Hannah and a reminder to me that the Germans, too, suffered terrible losses and had deep regrets, even before they lost the war. I try to paint a nuanced picture of all the characters, because few things were as simple then as we like to think they were when we look back on it. I couldn’t find Lotte Lenya singing this on YouTube (although she sings other songs there, all worth listening to—she has a wonderful smoky voice), but here it is sung by Dagmar Krause.

Light relief

After this, I need something a little lighter and more fun, so I have Mack the Knife, which was also has lyrics by Bertolt Brecht and music by Kurt Weill. I have a version sung by Lotte Lenya as well, where she teams up with Louis Armstrong. Mack the Knife was part of the The Threepenny Opera and was first performed on stage in Berlin in 1928 (with Lotte Lenya and Peter Lorre!). I think Hannah would have scraped together the cast to go and see it. Its message of violence under the smooth surface was prescient. And Louis Armstrong is always fantastic. I could follow that voice anywhere.

The next song is It’s Only a Paper Moon by Paul Whiteman and his orchestra. I got it off a CD called A Time to Remember 1934 that was in the birthday card section of a gift shop in Hawaii. I always buy one for the year each book is set, although I don’t know what I’ll do now that I’ve moved to Berlin and can’t get to that gift shop. I played a lot of those songs when I was writing the book set in 1934, but this one stuck with even after and moved on to this later playlist, probably because I have Hannah herself sing it while under the influence in A Night of Long Knives. I think it’s been remade many times over the years, but here’s the oldie version because I think that one is still the most fun:

There are various songs in between, some historical and some not, but all of them hopefully speaking to my subconscious and keeping me in Hannah’s world. The soundtrack ends with Beauty in the World by Macy Gray, as it brings me back to the 21^st century. And lunch.

Rebecca Cantrell is a New York Times bestselling thriller author. Her novels include the Order of Sanguines series, starting with The Blood Gospel, the award-winning Hannah Vogel mystery series, starting with A Trace of Smoke and the Joe Tesla thrillers, starting with The World Beneath. She, her husband, and son left Hawaii’s sunny shores for adventures in Berlin. Find Rebecca Cantrell on Facebook, Twitter, and at www.rebeccacantrell.com