Hi, I’m Arden Powell. I’m here to share writing tips, anecdotes, and behind-the-scenes notes about my new release, A Summer Soundtrack for Falling in Love. Comment on my blog tour for a chance to win a $20 Amazon.com gift card!

Pop Culture Influences in Summer Soundtrack

Writers draw influence from things in strange ways. If someone asked me where I got the inspiration to write A Summer Soundtrack for Falling in Love, the short answer would be my favourite bands, but the long answer would also include Pretty Woman, Douglas Adams, Mad Max, and emo bandom circa 2005. It’s an odd collection when put altogether like that, but then, I’m told it’s an odd book.

Music: There’s a (magical? divine?) peacock named Freddie Mercury, for starters. I namedrop more bands than I can even remember. It’s a book ABOUT bands—obviously music is going to play a huge part in shaping it, whether it’s Queen or Bowie or The White Stripes. I love music and band culture, and Summer Soundtrack is basically my love letter to that.

Pretty Woman: I grew up watching this movie, not because I particularly loved it, but because we only had two channels when I was a kid, and one of them was French and prone to static. We used to have more channels, but one year a winter storm knocked them down to those two. (Our TV had extremely unreliable bunny ears. Ah, the good old days.) So, we generally watched whatever came on, and Pretty Woman was a not-infrequent contender.

I didn’t consciously add Pretty Woman to Summer Soundtrack: Kris isn’t a sex worker, and Rayne isn’t Richard Gere. But there is a shopping and makeover montage when Kris joins The Chokecherries, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t thinking about the movie at least a little bit as I wrote it.

Douglas Adams: There’s a chapter halfway through Summer Soundtrack called “Life, the Universe, and Everything,” so my Adams references aren’t even pretending to be subtle. That chapter involves a lot of drugs, a few life-altering revelations, and a possibly-magical peacock. Adams’s irreverent humour and tendency to the absurd are a huge influence on my writing in general, not just with this book, and he deserves a shout out for that reason alone.

Also, I was watching the 2017 Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency at the time of writing, and its odd, vaguely spiritual tattooed cult may have played a part in shaping mine, though I didn’t realize it until someone pointed it out to me.

Mad Max: Speaking of cults! Mine is a desert-dwelling, leather-wearing, motorcycle-riding bunch of drugged-up, violently spiritual anarchists, so yes, Mad Max had a hand in their creation as well, though they hang more around the fringes of the story than take a central role. And the Mojave Desert is not actually a post-apocalyptic wasteland, as far as I’m aware, nor is it equivalent to Australia.

Bandom: This probably goes without saying, but anyone who has read their share of mid-2000’s bandom fics will recognize their hand in Summer Soundtrack. From the classic fic tropes to the stage gay, I have it all. Even my title, A Summer Soundtrack to Falling in Love, is a nod to Fall Out Boy’s ridiculously long song names. One of my supporting characters had a self-confessed emo phase that he has yet to relinquish entirely, and before anyone asks, yes, I too have done the black-hair-red-eyeshadow thing. I’m not proud of it, but I’m not actually embarrassed, either.

I’m sure there were other, subtler influences that went into Summer Soundtrack, even entirely subconscious ones that I still haven’t recognized. Writing is weird, and trying to figure out where your ideas come from is weirder. Sometimes they pop up fully formed; sometimes they’re painstakingly cobbled together from bits and pieces of things you already know and love. Usually it’s a combination of the two. Either way: roll with it, and see what you get in the end.

About A Summer Soundtrack for Falling in Love

What he wanted was a music career. What he needed was love.

When Kris Golding leaves his dusty Kansas hometown for a fresh start in New York, he thinks an apartment and a job are waiting for him. But when he finds neither, rather than admit defeat, he takes his chances busking—and meets Rayne Bakshi of international rock band The Chokecherries. Rayne needs a new guitarist, and gives Kris his first break since leaving home.

Rayne wears makeup and glitter and thinks nothing of kissing Kris in front of twenty thousand screaming fans for the attention. Instantly infatuated, Kris begins to question whether he might have a crush on Rayne—could he be bisexual? But since Kris originally claimed to be straight, Rayne’s wary of getting involved offstage.

As their tour gains momentum, Kris’s sexuality becomes the least of his troubles. Between his conservative brother hell-bent on “rescuing” him from his life of debauchery, a peacock that may or may not be the avatar of a cult god, and a publicity stunt that threatens to upend the band, Kris is definitely not in Kansas anymore.
Riptide Publishing

Amazon

About Arden Powell

Arden graduated from St. Francis Xavier University with an Honours degree in English literature and the realization that essay writing is just another form of making up stories. They also came away with an overriding and all-abiding love of semicolons, to the general dismay of their editors.

Arden lives in Ontario with a dog, a fellow human, and an unnecessary number of houseplants.

Connect with Arden:

• Website: ardenpowell.wordpress.com
• Twitter: @ArdenPowell
• Goodreads: goodreads.com/author/show/8053059.Arden_Powell

To celebrate the release of A Summer Soundtrack for Falling in Love, one lucky person will win a $20 Amazon gift card! Leave a comment with your contact info to enter the contest. Entries close at midnight, Eastern time, on November 2, 2018. Contest is NOT restricted to U.S. entries. Thanks for following along, and don’t forget to leave your contact info!