I love music: it has such power to move, to affect, to inspire. When I write at my desk, I often have music on in the background – carefully selected to reflect the mood of the particular chapter I’m writing.

In Burning Embers, as well as running a prosperous plantation, Rafe owns a nightclub, The Golden Fish: a high-class, palatial establishment with a majestic cliff-top location overlooking the tempestuous ocean. This chapter is charged with emotion – sensuality, jealousy, frustration. It’s a setting imbued with soul and sexuality, and as I wrote, the melody of Fausto Pappeti’s saxophone provided the perfect romantic ambiance.
Have you seen the film Last Tango in Paris with Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider? It’s a very sensual movie, and the theme tune by the Italian Jazz saxophonist Pappeti is everything I imagine in the nightclub in Burning Embers.

I was fascinated to note the recent article in The Bookseller on a company called Booktrack that is offering soundtracks that synchronise with ebooks – so as you read an ebook, you can hear accompanying sounds: the rustle of leaves during a character’s walk in the park; the tinkling of broken glass on a hard floor as a thief breaks into a house. An interesting concept, and at once I found myself picturing a soulful jazz solo echoing through my chapter. What marvellous developments technology brings!