Music – the soundtrack of life

I don’t know about you, but music plays an important part in my life. Sometimes I’m not aware of it but most of the time yes.

I remember things a lot by music, too. Like anytime I hear Don Williams singing Tulsa Time or I Believe In You, I’m transported back to Wichita and 1981. An apartment complex, covered parking and hot pavement. Being sidled up underneath the car with my dad while we fixed it. I mostly just nodded. I was only 11.

When Grease 2 starts belting out Let’s Bowl or Reproduction, I’m flat on my back, enduring three months of bed rest while waiting for the kiddo to be born. But it also brings back warm and fun memories of my wonderful friends making a weekly trek to visit me and play Dime Store Bingo. I always won all the cheesy prizes. It was awesome.

Or when I hear Jason Mraz’ I’m Yours. It doesn’t matter what I’m doing, I get warm. That song came on every single time I was in the tanning bed (I have since sworn off the orange-glo skin shade, thank you very much).

Sometimes music is great for tormenting your kids. I loved it when Katy Perry’s I Kissed A Girl would come on and my kid was in the car. I sang that song at the top of my lungs and chair danced for all I was worth. If he could have crawled under the floormats, he would have. Mwahahahahaha.

Today, I discovered something else about myself and music. My muse doesn’t like it when I mess with her soundtrack. For years whenever I wrote my Regencies, I would listen to the Phantom of the Opera soundtrack. Pounded out a lot of good story to those CDs and actually destroyed two different copies. Thank goodness for the advent of digital. This weekend, though, I picked up Adele’s new album “21.” FABULOUS. Serious shiver-inducing vocals on it. I thought while I was working, I’d listen to it.

Oh. No. You. Didn’t.

My muse fled immediately, if not sooner. No matter what I tried to write, no matter how much I knew about the scene, I couldn’t seem to string the words together the right way.

Finally, I gave in, put Phantom back on and Presto! she was back with a vengeance.

Lesson learned.

Music is not just about memories, it’s about emotions, too. And obviously, while I’m creating my characters and telling their stories, they only come out to play when Phantom is cranked to the max.

And one final shout-out here: John Williams is the man. Did you know he composed the music for Jaws, ET, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Close Encounters, Superman and many, many more pieces of genius we listen to? You may have seen this already by ApprenticeA on YouTube, but it’s worth another look and listen.

Happy reading,

Jennifer August

Happy New Year!

Welcome to 2011, it’s going to be a great year!

Welcome to our brand new blog, too. Ella, Wendy, Geri and myself are tickled to be trying our hand at blogging. We don’t really have a gameplan, we just want to make it entertaining and informative. If you have questions whether as a reader or a writer, let us know and we’ll be happy to do our best to answer them.

I have been asked several times where I get my ideas from.  I love that question because my answers usually result in brow-furrowing looks of “Oh, realllly?” J You know, the kind of response that people take a step away from and surreptitiously dial the funny farm? Yep, those kinds of answers.

Okay, maybe it’s not really that bad. My ideas come from a variety of different spots. Once, I dreamed an entire book start to finish. It was a really good book. Even if it’s currently languishing in my To-Be-Revised pile! One of these days it will see the light of day.

Sometimes I will hear part of a phrase and think, hm, I wonder… My friends and family are used to seeing me suddenly have that faraway look in my eye before I start furiously digging for a pen to write down whatever it is I’ve seen. Often a factoid I hear triggers a germ of a story idea. Once, I heard that the President’s limousine carries two pints of his blood just in case. I immediately said “Oh, I could kill the President with that!” Fortunately, I have not received a visit from anyone in a suit about that statement. My immediate thought was if I could have an assassin try to get to the blood supply, switch it and then cause an accident which needed to result in an immediate transfusion – wham, instant assassination. However, I don’t write those kinds of books, so that mostly went away!

The strangest book idea I had came from an address. It was 1200 Midnight Drive. Really. I don’t remember what town, but I remembered that street address. It spawned a short ghost story involving murder, mayhem and romance. It was quite fun to write!

Other ideas are word association games, reading the dictionary (honestly! I find some good fodder just by doing that), brainstorming with my critique partners and good old fashioned brain sweating. It doesn’t always happen easily – more often than not it’s a great deal of work to create a viable idea. Then, you have to ensure the world you create is the right place for your idea and the characters the proper ones to populate it.

Sometimes a publisher sends out a call for a specific kind of story. That's where the idea for Strokes At Midnight (Amazon Kindle Store) came from. The theme was Halloween and the heat level was erotic. I came up with a twist on the classic Cinderella story with my heroine covered only in body paint and posing as a model in a living art collection. At a Halloween party. It involves some *ahem* adult themes. To give you an idea, the tagline is : An erotic short story of fantasy, fetish and forever after!

The inspiration for my book Her Dark Master (Red Sage Publishing) was actually borne from my favorite song in The Phantom of the Opera by Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber. Masquerade is full of emotion both light and dark, promise and retribution. It has genius lines and captivating music. The lyric “Paper faces on parade” was the ultimate spark. From that line, I came up with the story of Victoria Ashford, a lady of the Regency Ton who is betrothed against her will. And not to the man she loves. So, being a sort of rebellious young lady, not to mention very adventurous (after all, she writes scandalously sexy stories for an underground paper) she decides to masquerade as a courtesan and have at least one night of passion with the man she truly wants. It was great fun to write!

So, tell us, what are some of your favorite books and storylines. What do you like to read about?