My Brain is Weird: Confessions of a Musician

I have a weird brain. A music brain. The kind of brain that has me calling my husband by my son’s name, but which remembers just about every word of every song I’ve ever heard. Including operas in Italian. Yep. I gave up singing more than a decade ago, but I bet I could still sing “Tosca” from memory. I guess it’s no surprise then, that although I’ve given up singing, I can never give up music. It’s in my DNA, or at least, it’s imprinted on my aging brain cells!  And here’s the ultimate in weird:  no matter what I hear, whether I know the music or I hear it in a commercial or just in passing on someone else’s radio, that’s the piece of music I will hear over and over again in my brain until I hear something else.  No joke.  Makes me nuts!  Okay, so maybe I was there already….

My Blue Notes Series books are about music and musicians, so it probably would also not surprise you to hear that I do have “soundtracks” for each novel.  Usually multiple classical music pieces and some jazz or rock, depending on my mood or the mood of the part of the story I’m writing at the time.  The Melody Thief is no exception.  My “theme” for The Melody Thief is the first movement of the Dvorak cello concerto.  Yo-Yo Ma for this one – love that man!  It’s angsty, sexy and beautiful all rolled up into one amazing piece of music.

So what went through my brain yesterday, while I was at my real-life job, trying a child neglect case in front of a judge?  Not the questions I was going to ask my witnesses, not the “theme” of my case.  Nope.  The Dvorak.  I heard it when I was cross-examining witnesses, when I was making an impassioned closing statement to the judge, when I drove back home after the trial.  No joke!  It’s almost as if there’s another “track” in my mind that processes all the other stuff and the music just runs in a constant feedback loop.  And it keeps going until I hear something else, or until I sing something else to myself (a very helpful approach when it’s Justin Bieber singing “Baby, Baby” over and over again courtesy of my daughter!).

Okay.  Confessional over.  So when you’re reading The Melody Thief as I hope you will, maybe for at least a few minutes while you’re reading you’ll hear some of the music that haunts me through my characters.

You can win a copy of The Melody Thief!  Just comment on my blog until midnight, 8/23/12 to enter to win an ebook copy (format of your choice) of the book, which will be released on 8/24.  You can also enter on Goodreads to win a signed, paperback copy.  More contests next week to celebrate Thief’s release.