A couple of years ago, I was recovering from an operation,
and found that I was rather bored with the genre I used to write in. So while I was convalescing, I started to
listen to music that I’d loved in my youth, in the late 70s and 1980s. I got back into country music again. So I started to write some stories based in
the world of music. I didn’t want these
to be just soft edged, happy ending stories.
Musicians aren’t usually choir boys and especially back in the days of
long tours, there was a lot of wild stuff, drinking, sex and drug taking. My first story was a gay one about a song
writer and a young guy who wants to be a singer, who falls in love. (Lovers of the Road). My next story is more of a story of a
marriage, between a young couple who live together, but who aren’t exactly
Loves Young Dream. He has a small band,
and plays in the Nashville bars. She is
a young mother and they don’t have much in common apart from their baby. But they find a way of living together.
The latest story, “Rough Music”, does not have the
traditional happy ending. It is about a
band who play country and rock and who are just breaking into the big time. The
lead singer finds that his marriage is falling apart, because of his long
months away touring and his own infidelities and drinking. He remarries, but is the second marriage
going to be more successful.
I now that many people won’t like these type of stories, but
I just feel that writing all the time about “happy endings” and “rakes tamed by
the love of a good woman” is unrealistic. I like to write about people who are real, who
do stupid things and good things, who aren’t “sorted out by the end of the
novel”.
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