I was still in elementary school when I asked to get a record player and the records of The Beatles and Bill Haley & The Comets—their music I heard in their movies. If I carried literature in my heart I carried music in my belly. Both always merged in my novels. I can't think of culture without music, and it is an integral part of me forming my protagonists and their world.
After starting out with writing short stories, the raw poetry of Charles Bukowski emboldened me to try poems myself. Over years I wrote poems, poems that became lyrics for the songs of the band I was in later: Auricularis & Nesch. Every new record I bought, I listened to one time not doing anything else, the 2nd time I devoured the lyrics printed on the sleeve: by then it was Lou Reed, The Pogues, Tracy Chapman, Bruce Springsteen and Tom Waits.
This novel takes place in the future. How will music sound then? Will there be retro bands? Sure there will be, and Jenny Has Traffic oozes retro—even in their name. So I kept the music simple, no extrovert futuristic soundscapes that all too often sound cheesy. I recorded the album at home. Lyrics usually go through more drafts than my novels, the last draft being the moment I record the song. You can listen here for free: JENNY HAS TRAFFIC on Bandcmap.
This is the first time one of my novels has an own soundtrack. In the past I quoted songs or invented a band, The Gutter Posse, that pops up with their lyrics in several of my young adult fiction novels. For the lyrics I took my early poems, and they jived more than well with the readership—they even hoped to find the band online. With Jenny Has Traffic I took that step.
Thank you for your time, I hope you enjoyed the glimpse into my life.
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