I spent so long working on what ultimately became How to Disappear Completely (probably around 12 years from the first moment I wrote the name Kilbey Salmon to the launch of the podcast) that there are far too many influences for me to remember, let alone document, half of them. I feel incredibly sponge-like and a little vulnerable when mid-project, finding my writing easily stained or led off course. For quite a while the book was very much 'magic realism', focussed far more on the magical and its effect on the characters than concerned with a driving plot. It took me some years to decide it wasn't a genre or direction that excited me terribly. Instead I became increasingly excited by genre-fusion, becoming something of a bricoleur, stealing elements from texts that had very little in common with the hope of creating something different and yet strangely familiar.

That was the plan, anyway. Who knows how successful I was. In this second of three posts in which I cough up to a bit of thievery, I going to ramble on a bit in the direction of some other, largely unrelated influences.


Music.
I've always used music when writing. Not necessarily during the eye-gouging work of sentence construction but very much in the plotting and planning stage - the generation of ideas and tone. Songs have long provided me with something of a shorthand for the feel of a piece, both in terms of an overall work and the vibe or emotion of a particular scene.

I'm probably less of a music obsessive now than I've ever been, but I still spend at least an hour most days tracking down new artists and releases. In my time I've (in variously limited senses) worked as a music journalist, hosted a new music programme for a Perth radio station and spent the best part of ten years behind the counter of record stores. Most of How to Disappear Completely was planned on one such counter, while listening to a carefully chosen soundtrack.

When first developing a piece, I tend to list albums or artists who wouldn't be out of place on the soundtrack. Sometimes I put together a CD (or, more recently, a playlist). This sonicscape more or less provides the shades in which I try to cast the story, lending emotional colour to the characters and the world and around them. I suppose what this is really telling me is that I've spent most of my life using music to colour my own world and lend a vicarious glamour. Which might be a little sad, I don't know.

I particularly enjoyed working on the podcast of Electricity as the music that was so crucial to its formation was finally able to be part of the finished product. The soundtrack to the podcast is very similar to the one occupying my head when I began work in 1999 and then resumed work in 2004. For the podcast of How to Disappear Completely, I confined myself to royalty-free music, but the influence of the albums that spawned much of it can be felt in various, non-too-subtle references.

The list, which is long since lost, was very much focussed on British bands - and a particular type of Britishness, one which (like the country itself, perhaps) had one foot in the past and one in the present. A very urban sound, but not without romance. Other bands would have included the likes of Doves, Elbow, Suede. For a long time I think I was visualising Kilbey as played by Jarvis Cocker. Which would be a bit strange, really.

(Ultimately, Kilbey became a Tom Waits fan. This was partly as a contrast to the Britishness but mainly because his early records have a late night feel that I very much wanted to borrow for HtDC. Like Kilbey, I adore his album 'Nighthawks at the Diner', not least as it borrows its title from one of my favourite paintings - which I also used as a tone reference. I may borrow that title myself one day. Music is clearly important to both Kilbey and Nero, the latter obsessed, of course, with his rockabilly.)

Radiohead are an obvious influence, although I can't say I've genuinely loved much of their recent output. Their track 'How to Disappear Completely' certainly shaped the feel of the book - I listened to Kid A a lot while planning one version of the storyline - but the book's title had actually been kicking around since the end of 1998. No, really. I think I dreamt it in a particularly fertile couple of weeks in which I also dreamt the idea for Electricity. If only I could remember what I'd been drinking...


Cowboy Bebop.
This was a late addition to the influence pool. I'm not particularly into anime, but this early 2000s series was something quite different. For the uninitiated, it concerns the misadventures of a group of space-age bounty hunters in a world that is strongly influenced by film noir, westerns and a particularly smoky variety of jazz. The lead character, Spike, gave me the idea of allowing Kilbey to keep his Footmen's suit, mainly as I thought it looked very cool. Up to that point he'd been kicking around in a three-quarter length leather coat.

The main influence on HtDC, aside from reminding me to be inventive and dangerous with regards to the 'cases' Salmon and Dusk would be sent on, was Cowboy Bebop's attempt - as it states in the opening titles - to create a new genre, stylishly fusing elements of the past with those of the far future. In doing so, Cowboy Bebop was able to be both very familiar and very strange. Halfway between the past and the future, Cowboy Bebop's world feels quite like our own, but is able to regularly surprise us.


Alcohol.
Much of HtDC was conceived under the influence of booze. Both literally and thematically. In some ways, I used drunkenness (the character's, not mine) to gloss over the necessary bewilderment involved in discovering the world has deeper depths than could be imagined. Booze allows one to slide down the surface of things a little. It's certainly always been my drug of choice, although I rarely write anything worthwhile after a few. Nonetheless, it's good for the gestation, if not the concentration.

Next: Doctor Who.