“Considering the role of jazz in noir, I thought to move beyond superficial aesthetic and make the genius of John Coltrane the structural engine of my protagonist’s entire world. His first name is Coltrane, last name Davis. Exactly. He bears the names of arguably the two most important jazz musicians to ever live. My protagonist doesn’t like jazz; he IS jazz.”
“One of my favourite writers is Joni Mitchell. Every line is magnificent. Lay back in the darkness of the dock, and let the words spill over you.”
“Yearn, baby, yearn.
I wanted to make a playlist that wandered alongside my book.”
“This book is about continuing a relationship after death, about staying in conversation with someone who is no longer alive.”
“What compositions might channel new kind of literary mystery where the investigator is not a detective but a sound scientist?”
“Music, like literature, is a form of translation – it takes the roiling surge of feeling in the human breast and converts it into sound.”
“In the canon of art by immigrant daughters trying their best to be worthy of love, Mitski’s ‘Best American Girl’ is a crown jewel…”
“Mud on the Moon spans nearly a century and two continents, from my father’s Philippines to his adopted Alaska to the America I grew up in and keep becoming. This playlist is the music behind that arc, some of it in the book, all of it in my bones…”
“In Precious Ugly I needed to build a music bubble around my character, Clementine—thirteen, pregnant and living in a conversion van on a campsite with her mother and father, an abusive alcoholic who fancies himself a miracle worker, a cult leader.”
“…sometimes, when I can’t find the right words to give to a character, I play a little song instead. And that reminds me that sometimes, there aren’t any words. There is just music.”