People always ask me where I get my ideas from, and the truth is it’s usually something quite random. In this case, the seed for A Love To Last a Lifetime was planted when I read a story about dementia patients who were being treated with music therapy. I found it fascinating – although it couldn’t bring full cognitive function back, what music could do – and was doing, regularly – was help those people who had lost all of their memories to remember things, even if only for a few moments while the music was playing. It was fascinating, and I realised I wanted to find out more.
I read quite a bit about the subject, and it seemed to be something that was being increasingly recognised as a way of helping all kinds of patients, from dementia sufferers to patients in Intensive Care. Of course, it also got me thinking about music and memory, and how I could write a story using this somehow – because to me, everything is a potential story!
I started off with grand ideas about music triggering all kinds of memories for Erin, the main character in A Love To Last a Lifetime. I thought if she could see other people’s memories when she heard certain songs, it could be a brilliant story.
Well let me tell you, it was a brilliant one-third of a story, and then it stopped working. Completely. There was nowhere to go, and the strands of the story didn’t make any sense. After much re-thinking and even more re-writing, I realised it didn’t need that magical realism element. Music as therapy for memory loss is interesting enough on its own – and that’s where the idea of Erin being a music therapist came from. This way, she can help not only her own mum, Penny, who has early-onset dementia, but when Adam, the love of her life, comes back into town suffering from memory problems of his own, she feels compelled to spend more time with him that she should trying to help him – despite having marriage problems to sort out.
I loved researching this subject, and it made me realise that the potential for music to not only help memory loss but also to trigger memories – some welcome, others perhaps not so welcome – is immense, and it’s something I’ve explored in this book from several angles. I really hope you enjoy it!
In fact, music is so important in this story that each chapter has its own significant song attached to it. If you fancy listening to the songs as you read, I’ve even made a Spotify playlist to accompany it – why don’t you check it out and see how many of the songs that feature trigger memories for you?!
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