Was it in another life?

Before you leave this Blog on the hunt for your very own copy of I Loved You In Another Life, which I promise you won't be able to put down once you have started reading, please take a few moments to read this interview with David Arnold for an insight that will encourage you to love the story even more deeply!

My sincere and incredibly grateful thanks to David for taking the time to answer these questions and to Pippa Poole from Bonnier books for introducing me to the book and for making this possible.

I Loved You In Another Life is an incredibly moving book, emotional, simply beautiful. Despite the emotional turmoil when reading it was hard to put it down. How did you experience the story as author, was it challenging to write?

Thank you so much for those kind words. This one was hard to write for several reasons, so it means the world to me when I hear about other readers who’ve connected to it. I know a lot of booklovers see crying as a positive outcome of reading—for me, it’s also a positive outcome of writing. Crying is an integral part of my writing process. I don’t know if it’s me, or the nature of writing such a personal book (probably a little of both), but I cried my way through this one. Which isn’t to insinuate that I’ve experienced or felt everything my characters experience and feel, but that pulling from those places often costs something, and for someone already prone to tears, that payment winds up being quite the emotional rollercoaster. Toss in a character based on my kid (more on this later), and scenes grounded in my own experiences with therapy and panic attacks, and I was basically a blessed mess writing this thing.

Why do you think it is important to give readers a story with relatively young protagonists going through considerable trauma?

Life is hard and life is beautiful, and I think kids know both things are equally true. If not in their heads yet, then in their bones. Any attempt on the part of adults to pretend that life is just one and not the other is completely pointless, at best, and at worst, makes us look like liars. Not all readers are on the same level, of course, but it’s not the author’s job to determine readership. I believe my job is to tell the most honest story I possibly can, and, at least in this case, that led to a book that included a good amount of loss and heartbreak. My genuine hope is that those hard moments make the love and tenderness shine all the brighter.

What role does music play in your life and has it changed with time? Any favourite musicians, pieces of music to recommend to our readers?

The two main characters in the book hear songs no one else can hear. From the moment this story came to me, I knew I would write those songs. Until around age thirty, the only writing I did was songwriting. I grew up in a musical home, played a variety of instruments, and then worked as a freelance musician in Nashville for a decade, writing and recording songs in my home studio. Music taught me that an honest voice is more compelling than a pretty one. It taught me how to have a thick skin but a soft heart. Most everything I learned from writing, I learned from writing music. And since I knew from the start that I wanted to write the songs my characters would hear, I was able to sculpt the music as I went, let it evolve as the book evolved, so that the end result is (hopefully) a single, cohesive project. My music and my novel—my past life and this one—neither existing without the other. (If you’d like to listen, just search for Neon Imposter wherever you stream music.) Reader I am going to do this, I recommend you do too, its fascinating!

Is having an ‘other’ life something you believe in, would like to imagine could happen or is it a literary creation you wanted to work with?

I’m always on the lookout for specific ideas that provide an opportunity for beauty. The idea of living over and over again, maybe only remembering shadows from past lives, and always finding your way back to the same person—this was just too specific and beautiful to pass up.

You use a third person narrative for Shosh and a first person for Evan, was it challenging to swap between them, or did you focus on one part of the story before moving to the other?

I always write chronologically, so the order in which you read the book is the order in which I wrote it. As far as alternating tenses, that was purposeful for two reasons. First, I’ve written alternating points of view before where both characters were in first person, and I was constantly losing track of whose head I was in. Alternating tenses along with points of view is like drawing a literary line in the sand and, I think, makes it clearer to the reader whose chapter is whose. The second reason is that each tense compliments their respective character: while Evan lives a very external life, full of friendship and big decisions about his future, Shosh has retreated into herself since the death of her sister, living in almost total isolation. By writing Evan in the first person, we see how he internalizes his external life, and by writing Shosh in the third, we feel the distance she’s feeling.

Can you tell us anything about where these characters came from?

Writers are often asked to name their favourite character they’ve written, and I now have a very easy response: Evan’s little brother, Will, who’s based on my own son. Probably not coincidentally, he was also the catalyst behind this whole book. When my kid was six, he was obsessed with the movie E.T. to the point it was all we watched for months. During that time, I had an idea for a story set in the world of E.T., the permission of which would be a challenge to land. But I couldn’t shake the idea, so I emailed my agent, who emailed our film team, who emailed Steven Spielberg, who said, “I don’t think so,” at which point, my family had a little celebration. I couldn’t write that book, obviously, but I’d asked a question, and Steven Spielberg had answered, and in my house, that was magic beyond belief. Eventually, I realized the heart of what I needed to write wasn’t in the world of E.T. at all, but about the bond that happens between two people who love the same movie together. At the heart of this book, there’s a big brother/little brother relationship, very much based on my relationship with my kid when he was six, and our mutual love of E.T.

You write of love and soulmates. How much of this is imagined, a tool for storytelling and how much of it is personal or something you have witnessed?

It would be hard for me to deny I believe in soulmates, given I’m certain I’ve found mine. 😊

Would you like to write more love stories or do you thrive on the diversity and challenge of telling a variety of stories?

For me, stories always begin with one of two things: concept or character. I Loved You in Another Life is my fifth novel, and while I’d been interested in writing a love story for years, I knew I needed a way in to writing my own kind of love story. Prior to this, I’ve written everything from realistic contemporary to speculative to post-apocalyptic science fantasy, which might be jarring for some, but I’ve always admired authors whose books can’t be contained by genre. I’d love to write more love stories, but wanting to write a kind of book isn’t enough for me to write that book—I need that concept or character first, and then, I’m in.

David Arnold's I loved You In Another Life is available from all good bookshops, as are his other titles, showcased below (credit to Anya Lorenzo for the picture of David). Find your book soulmate...