So, if you haven’t figured it out already, “Blue Notes” is about music and musicians, among other things. While I was writing the book, I listened to a lot of different music, mostly classical. There are three pieces that formed the basic soundtrack for the book:
1) Brahms Intermezzo Op. 118, no. 2. The American protagonist in the story, Jason, is a former classical pianist whose favorite piece of music is the Brahms. It’s a totally romantic, angsty piece which I can listen to a million times and still turns me to Jell-O! I can’t even count how many times I listened to it while writing the book (until my husband and kids finally told me to stop!).
2) Sibelius Violin Concerto This concerto is the first piece that appears in “Symphony,” one of the other books in the Blue Notes series (co-authored with my buddy, Venona Keyes). And, good lord, that first movement is SOOOO romantic!
3) Tenor/Baritone duet from Bizet’s “The Pearlfishers”: This is the “theme” for “Aria,” a WIP and another music-themed novel (about an opera singer), and is sung by the two male leads in the opera, who are best friends and rivals for the same woman’s love (talk about the closest thing to M/M sex in opera!) Bromance at its best! They should just have ditched the girl and walked off into the sunset together…
All the links are to recordings you can listen to for free. And don’t forget that you can win enter a download of my favorite Brahms recording from Amazon by leaving a message on the blog. Enjoy! -Shira