“Music is inextricably entangled in any journey in Sardinia–traditional, folk, dance, jazz (a lot of jazz), pop, sacred and religious, rock, rap, classical (including the greatest master of the mandolin) and opera. “
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“There are books that you have to wrack your brains to come up with a playlist for—and then there’s Gone to the Wolves. My sixth novel follows three teen-aged Florida headbangers—Kip, Kira, and Leslie—from their high school years going to underground metal shows, all the way to the ‘glam’ scene on the Sunset Strip in L.A., and finally to the dark, snowbound forests of Norway during the infamous rise of black metal…”
“The thing about The Three of Us is that a lot of the tension comes in the silent more internal moments, but the other thing is that Nigerians, the subject of my book, are very expressive and therefore have a lot of thoughts and feelings that are perfectly expressed through music.”
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“Ugo, my protagonist’s youngest sister loves playing music. In the novel, she’s always listening to music. So, she was the obvious choice to ask for a playlist. She left me an enthusiastic voice note thanking me for the opportunity, and texted this to me almost immediately.”
“If there has ever been a place that should come with its own soundtrack, it’s my hometown of Hilo, Hawaiʻi, where Hula is set. Hilo and Keaukaha are beloved, special places with many songs dedicated to them, as well as Hawaiʻi as a whole – past, present, and future. In order to capture that musicality, I relied on cadence to guide the words.”
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“I’m always amazed at how songs can bring back memories with such visceral ache, vibrational longing, and overflowing joy.”
“Some of the music within the book was the soundtrack for the characters, while other tunes helped influence feelings when rewriting the story but also helped detail the nature of the working-class characters.”