I'm not usually big on collaboration. The closest thing I have to a writing partner is my mug of coffee (couldn't do a thing without that little son of a gun!), and that's the way I like it.
I did have a sorta-kinda collaborator on my newest book, though. The hitch: He's a dead guy. But I think he and I made a pretty good team.
Way, way back, when I first started working on The Crack in the Lens, I blogged once or twice about my (dead) buddy Bernard Herrmann. There were specific scenes in the novel I wanted to make Herrmannical or Herrmannish or Bernie Worthy or whatever you'd want to call it. "Creepy," in a nutshell. Gothic. Tinged with sadness and madness. The stuff ol' B.H. did best.
To get myself in the mood, I listened to a lot of Herrmann last year, especially when I was thinking about those key, creepy sequences in the book. And in a way, certain tracks -- bits from the scores for Vertigo and Psycho and Citizen Kane and others -- became the soundtrack for The Crack in the Lens.
And then just yesterday, because I'm both a geek and a glutton for punishment, I thought to myself, "Well, why not give everybody a listen?" Which is why I spent three hours last night messing around with HTML code. (FYI, I consider messing around with HTML for three seconds to be absolute torture.)
You'll find the result below -- a smattering of the tracks that helped inspire The Crack in the Lens. (Note: In some browsers, you'll need to right click on the music bar thingamajig to get the controls to pop up.) If you've read the book, this'll give you a little taste of what I was trying to do. (You can tell me if I succeeded.) And if you haven't yet read the book...what's the danged deal?!? It's been out for three weeks now!
Oh, and another important notice. I recognize that I don't own the copyright to any of this music. I'm presenting it here on a temporary basis in a format that can't be downloaded, with links to CDs of Bernard Herrmann's brilliant, brilliant work.
The Crack in the Lens: The Soundtrack -- Music by Bernard Herrmann
1. Overture (from Vertigo)
2. Gus and Gertie (from Vertigo)
3. Fudgin' Prisoners (from On Dangerous Ground)
4. Lottie (from Psycho)
5. Night Ride with Necktie (from On Dangerous Ground)
6. Where Gertie Died (from On Dangerous Ground)
7. Out by the Springs (from On Dangerous Ground)
8. Pursuit through the Streets (from On Dangerous Ground)
9. The Basement (from Citizen Kane)
10. Watching the Fire (from Citizen Kane)
11. Visiting Gertie/See It or Feel It?/End Credits (from The Ghost and Mrs. Muir)
Bernard Herrmann was one of the greatest film composers of the 20th century. His music can be purchased here, here, here, here, here and on many other wonderful CDs.
There. Hopefully now I won't be sued.
Steve Hockensmith
August 11, 2009
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