Jane Blond International Spy
By- Brianna Schatt & Stan Schatt
Genre- Middle Grade
Publication Date- October 19th
Fourteen year old Jane thought getting through high school was difficult enough with her dad in prison and her mother dating. Throw in being bullied by the popular girl who has everything- it’s completely unbearable. But when terrorists kidnap a boy she cares about, she knows she is the only one who can save him. International Spy, Jane Blond, must prevent terrorists from blowing up her school during the President’s visit. She’ll need all of her courage along with the help of a teen with CIA secrets, a friend with Asperger’s and a parrot with an attitude.
How does music affect your writing?
by
Stan Schatt
I co-authored Jane Blond International Spy with my granddaughter, Brianna Schatt. Boy do we have different musical tastes! I rarely see Brianna when she is not humming a tune or listening to something. She listens to music while doing homework or writing. Music occupies a different role in my writing.
Over the years I’ve seen lots of movies. Sometimes while I write I can see the book as a movie. Jane Blond International Spy, as an example, would be one kind of movie with appropriate music. I can imagine some scenes as voice over with music in the background, something like what the director did with the movie Juno.
Sometimes I will hear a song and think to myself, “that would be perfect for a scene from Jane Blond. The writing process for me requires different types of music for different types of books. I know the mystery writer Michael Connelly listens to jazz and has his major character listen to a lot of jazz. When I write my mysteries, I tend to listen to darker music that has a clearly visible note of danger. When Detective Francis “Frankie” Ryan pursues a killer, as an example, the music would be similar to what you hear in the classic movie Chinatown.
I’ve probably seen every Star Trek episode several times, so it isn’t a surprise that I tend to listen to the kind of background music found in that TV series while writing my own science fiction. Surprisingly classical music provides nice background music for me while writing that kind of fiction.
So, writing fiction with music in the background helps a writer create a certain feeling or mood. It also helps create pictures in the writer’s mind of where the story is currently and even where it is likely to go. The danger of listening to music while writing is that it might cause the writer to unconsciously write something a little too close to a previously seen movie that used similar music. The mind can make that kind of association effortlessly. The writer probably won’t be aware of the similarity until an editor (hopefully) or a reader (oops) points out the comparison.
About the Authors-
Dr. Stan Schatt spent many years as a futurist responsible for forecasting future technology products and markets for Fortune 500 companies. He served as a Fulbright Professor and taught at Tokyo University, USC, and the University of Houston. He is the author of over thirty books ranging from science fiction and paranormal mysteries to young adult novels. Schatt is a technology expert who has been quoted in the New York Times, Fortune, and BusinessWeek as well as CNBC.
Links-
Amazon Author Page: http://www.amazon.com/Stan-Schatt
Twitter: https://twitter.com/StanSchatt
Author Website: www.StanSchatt.com
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