Lesser Apricots: Your Novel's Soundtrack?

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Your Novel's Soundtrack?

This may sound sort of funny, but there's a soundtrack that goes with my novel.

I don't mean that I expect there to be a soundtrack for the (not even imaginary) movie or sold along with the book. No big dreams here, world. I just want to write the best durn book I can. Rather, I find myself sort of obsessed with particular songs, songs that connect in one way or another to "Family Genius Species"... or at least to my idea of it.

This happened with my last novel too, but that one was almost totally country alternative, Gillian Welch and Lucinda Williams, etc.

Some of the tracks on my Family, Genius, Species playlist are obvious-- One hit wonders abound. Most of the ones I've posted here, in fact. "Brandi" by Looking Glass, "Magnet and Steel" by Walter Egan, "96 Tears" by ? and the Mysterians. But then there's "I Wanna Be Sedated" by the Ramones (Which is actually a good song) and most perplexing and persistent of all.... "Missed the Boat" by Modest Mouse .

I love "Missed the Boat" although it has nothing at all to do with the 70's or one-hit-wonders or anything directly related to my novel, it captures a certain something, a mood and Zorro-esque outlook that is totally spot-on. I am not ashamed to admit that I have listened to this track (the whole album in fact) hundreds of times while driving to work mulling over plot twists and characters.

Does your novel have a soundtrack?

2 comments:

Kim said...: Well of course my novel has a soundtrack! Scene three: Sister by Mumford and Sons, Scene four: After the Storm again by Mumford and Sons, Scene Six: Passenger Seat by Death Cab for Cutie, Climax: Moonlight Sonata, Falling Action: Clair de Lune.

It's great for setting the mood and I love how I can go through my iPod telling friends how every song pertains to my book, though I'm not sure the friends enjoy it quite as much as I do ;); November 20, 2010 at 12:45 PM
Micah said...: really strange video!; December 19, 2010 at 12:19 PM

Current Projects

ORANGE LAKE (Literary Fiction) As children, Claudette and Leanne Taskett built houses of palmetto fronds and played at being “swamp girls” in the sulfur-smelling muck of North Florida’s Orange Lake, but as young adults they can’t hold a civil conversation. Twenty-one year old Claudette careens from one redneck boy to another. Leanne, determined to be her misfit family’s one success story is headed for college. After their father drowns and Claudette—despite all evidence to the contrary—claims responsibility and then disappears down the highway, Leanne must track down her sister, untangle the facts behind her father’s death and salvage what’s left of her tattered family. A southern sister story with a mystery at its heart.

STATUS: Complete with constant, slight tweaks

FAMILY, GENIUS, SPECIES (Quirky Literary Fiction) After a near-death experience in a motel bathtub, Rocker Roger "Zorro" Weitz, author of 1976's most forgettable One-Hit Wonder, stopped aging. Eternally 22, he’s slummed through almost three decades before a second brush with death prompts him to dedicate himself (and his prodigious, though now decades-old cool) to helping his girlfriend’s lonely, zoology-obsessed eleven year old find her own way in the world. Cool is beyond her, but the kid, a certified genius, has no trouble mastering the art of blackmail. Her quest to find and rescue a long-lost gibbon drags Zorro into theft, kidnapping, an actual car chase, and another, possibly permanent, brush with death. A rock-n-roll Peter Pan story with a touch of Pygmalion

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FEINLAND (Literary Fiction/maybe Literary YA) Teenaged Ruth and her two brothers have grown up in isolation within the bounds of “Feinland”, their father Harry Fein’s “Jewish Amish” attempt at utopia in remote Northern New Hampshire. But when a troubled boy moves into a trailer in the field next door, stirring unexpected feelings in all three Fein children, Harry’s dictum to “protect and defend the family territory” turns deadly as Adam, the favorite and virtually non-verbal autistic eldest, takes this to the most literal end. FEINLAND is loosely based on the Yiddish story of “The Golem”

STATUS: Begun first draft, but still in planning stage.

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Your Novel's Soundtrack?

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