Writers find inspiration everywhere: at the movies, through their headphones, or unfolding before them in real life. Lauren Beukes, whose forthcoming novel The Shining Girls has been recommended by the Evening Standard to those with “a Gone Girl shaped hole in your life,” has assembled here a playlist of songs that brought her book to [...]
Category Archive for ‘Music’ 
Songs from The Shining Girls
Apr 01, 2013 in Guest Posts, Music
Reading The Shining Girls sends us careening through the twentieth century as we chase Harper, a time-traveling killer, from one era of Chicago to the next. Whenever we land, Lauren Beukes crafts a richly atmospheric scene, accurate right down to the music. Below, Beukes walks us through some of the songs mentioned in The Shining [...]
Standing in Another Man’s Grave with a Gun Machine: Warren Ellis and Ian Rankin In Conversation
Jan 28, 2013 in Graphic Novels, Guest Posts, Mulholland Authors, Music, Writing
Ian Rankin has called Warren Ellis’s GUN MACHINE “hellish fun.” Warren Ellis has called Ian Rankin’s STANDING IN ANOTHER MAN’S GRAVE “a magnificent read.” Figuring the Rankin and Ellis might have a thing or two to say to one another, we put the two in touch and watched the fireworks ensue. Their conversation follows… Warren [...]
A Sincere Endeavor: Dedicating BLACK LIGHT to Warrant’s Jani Lane
Oct 06, 2011 in Books, Mulholland Authors, Music
There’s bad magic and good magic. Good magic is when you finally manage to quit smoking and something cool happens to you the same week—like winning twenty bucks on a lottery ticket. Bad magic is when someone quotes your latest poem in a movie about clumsy people, then you fall into an open sewer and [...]
My Father’s Coat
Aug 24, 2011 in Guest Posts, Music
A short time ago I got a call out of the blue asking me if I’d like to appear in a short film alongside William McIlvanney – aka The Godfather of Tartan Noir. There was no way I was turning down the chance to meet the author of Laidlaw. The final cut of Edinburgh film-maker [...]
Fearful Joys
May 17, 2011 in Guest Posts, Music, Writing
Looking at the Recently Played smartlist in iTunes, I can tell there’s a song that’s had massively more airplay in my world than any other over the last couple of months. That doesn’t surprise me. I’ve put it on at random points during the day. I’ve had it on repeat in the background while I’ve [...]
What’s the score . . .
Feb 14, 2011 in Books, Guest Posts, Music
The theme from The Persuaders. My favourite John Barry pick. Without a doubt. I mean, obviously his arrangement for the Monty Norman 007 theme in Dr No, and then all the subsequent Bonds – the Conneriad – From Russia With Love, Goldfinger, Thunderball, You Only Live Twice, and Diamonds Are Forever. But there was something [...]
Music to Die For
Oct 18, 2010 in Guest Posts, Music, Writing
Remember that Monty Python sketch? Michael Palin exclaiming that although he was an accountant he really always wanted to be a lumberjack? Well, when I was young I wanted to be an accountant. Or, rather, an accountant is what I thought I would be. But in my dreams I was front man in a great [...]
