Exclusive Interview
‘Sounds Like Love’ Author Ashley Poston Reveals Her Musical Inspiration, Fanfiction History & Adaptation News
[Warning: The following interview contains MAJOR spoilers for Sounds Like Love by Ashley Poston.]
Love can take a lot of different forms, but according to The Seven Year Slip author Ashley Poston, love sounds like “your favorite song cranked up to as loud as it will go in your car stereo, windows rolled down, going down a dirt road.”
On June 17, Poston published her newest magical romance, Sounds Like Love. The story follows Joni Lark, a well-regarded L.A. songwriter with a seemingly incurable case of writer’s block. When Joni returns home in hopes of sparking some kind of creativity, she finds that nothing is the same. Most notably, her parents are shutting down The Revelry, the family-owned music venue where she grew up. That’s when she hears it, a distant melody and “an alluring and addictive voice to go with it.” We can safely say Sounds Like Love‘s endlessly creative, vibrant love story is a must-read for all music lovers, anyone who found The Last Jedi‘s Reylo telepathy subplot incredibly sexy, and everyone in between.
Swooon recently sat down with Poston to discuss the mechanics of Sounds Like Love‘s telepathic romance, the musical inspiration behind her characters, the story’s dramatic ending, as well as some exciting adaptation news. Without further ado, here is our full conversation with Ashley Poston!
What inspired you to write a telepathic romance?
Ashley Poston: A little backstory: I come from fanfic, and I’ve been writing since I was 11, 12 years old, so I’ve been in it for a very, very long time. I’ve always loved fanfic because most of my favorites bring in this weird, magical element, like soulmates, or coffee shop AU, or a telepathic bond, or something like that. And so when I was thinking about what I wanted the magical foil to be for this book, I was like, ‘Well, it’s about music, so I think this would be a good time to do a telepathic [connection], because it’s about sound and hearing like the same song together.’
In this house, we love a romantic fanfic. Do you remember what the first fanfic you wrote was?
Poston: I absolutely do. But I still write in the fandom, so I’m not going to disclose it. But yeah, I use fanfic as my kind of personal hideaway, where I can go and write my stuff and then go back to being professional Ashley. I can share that I retired quite a bit ago from Harry Potter. Obviously, I put that to bed a while ago. I usually frequent my favorite fandom still, because there’s just something lovely about visiting a dead fandom.
When it comes to the plot of Sounds Like Love, what caused Joni and Sasha to have this telepathic connection in the first place?
Poston: They had the telepathic connection in the first place because, as it turns out, the song that they were both hearing was a song that was originally dreamt up by Sasha’s mom, who passed away a while before the book starts. I was playing with the idea that ideas don’t really die, and art doesn’t really die. It just goes to someone else. And I find that really beautiful, because if I don’t have the time or the space or the energy to write something, and I feel that it will go back into the universe and find someone else, and it usually does.
Did you always know that the song would come from Joni and Sasha’s moms?
Poston: I did. I knew that it would come from something in their past, but I didn’t know it would be from this unwavering friendship between their moms, until much later. I was kind of exploring their histories and their parents, and I was like, ‘Well, wait a second, what if? What if it was this?’ Because everyone knows the story of, you know, the nepo baby, who has a rock star dad, and everything revolves around him. But it’s like, ‘Wait, what if it doesn’t? What if it goes the other way? What if it’s about the female friendship that was behind this rock star?’
What severed Joni and Sasha’s telepathic connection?
Poston: What ends up severing that connection is finishing the song. Personally, I feel that when I finish a book, it’s no longer mine, it’s now for the people that read it and enjoy it, because I’ve told the story that I want to tell. That story will always be mine, but it is now for other people to enjoy and share. And so it’s like a gift, giving it to someone else. And so, they no longer have this telepathic connection because the song is no longer theirs.
In the acknowledgements, you mention that your editor asked you, “Do we really need the magic earring for them to communicate?” Can you tell us more about the magic earring?
Poston: At first, I did not think that a song was a good enough reason for them to connect telepathically. So I was like, ‘Wait, what if they both have one earring instead and it’s like an iPod scenario where they could hear each other!’ But my editor was like, ‘Ashley, no.’ There are a few things like that. Willa was a completely different character in the first two drafts of Sounds Like Love. She was local. She was not like a big pop star. But then I obviously changed her role, and I condensed [local] Willa and Gigi’s roles to just Gigi.
Music is a central element of this book. Did you have a playlist for Sounds Like Love?
Poston: I love music. I make a playlist for every single book that I write. I can’t write [while playing] music, but I like to pregame with the playlist, and then get into my writing. That’s kind of how I get into the heads of characters in certain scenes. I assign songs to them, so I can listen to the song, and then I will remember, ‘Oh, this is how Joni was feeling in this moment.’ Then, when I had to put down a chapter and then pick it up the next day, I could easily pick back up to the exact same emotional beat. I have all my playlists on Spotify, so you can easily find them. And there’s a playlist at the end of the Barnes and Noble edition of Sounds Like Love.
There are so many fictional musicians in Sounds Like Love. Are there any existing bands or artists that you think most line up with your characters’ music?
Poston: Roman Fell is definitely like a Bruce Springsteen kind of character, or someone with the grit of Bruce Springsteen but the pop of Bon Jovi. Sasha is definitely a Harry Styles character, if you put Hozier into the shoes of Harry Styles. You could just look at Hozier and you’re like, ‘Yeah, you might have daddy issues.’ Willa is absolutely Chappell Roan. That’s easy. I was like, ‘I’m in my Chappell Roan era, and Willa [will be too.]’
I didn’t really assign a person to Gigi, if only because she’s just starting out as a songwriter and a singer towards the end. So I purposely did not assign any songs directly to her, simply because I wanted to go in knowing this is where she starts, because the entire book is about you living up to your own legacy, right? And Gigi’s legacy is just starting, so I don’t really have anyone for her.
What kind of research did you do to create Joni and Sasha’s story?
Poston: For all my books, I do a lot of research. For Dead Romantics, I did a lot of research on funeral homes and funeral parlors from different non-fiction sources. For Seven Year Slip, I talked with a lot of people who dealt with that specific form of grief through a loved one who died by suicide. I read a lot of memoirs about chefs. And then for Novel Love Story, I talked with a lot of booksellers and a lot of industry professionals.
For Sounds Like Love, I ended up doing some informational interviews with some musicians and songwriters. One of them happened to be Justin Courtney Pierre from Motion City Soundtrack. In my teenage years, Motion City Soundtrack saved my life. Basically, the album, Even If It Kills Me (2007) — I would not be here today without it. I just remember going down old dirt roads in my hometown, in my gold Ford Taurus, blasting Even If It Kills Me, and screaming at the top of my lungs because I just didn’t know how to feel what I was feeling.
It was so cool to get to actually meet him and to talk industry, and to actually get his point of view on what the industry is like, from being a veteran in it all these years later. And then he also connected me with Cassadee Pope, who is a newer artist, who did country for a while. She was on The Voice, and she is now doing Broadway, and going back to her rock roots. [I talked] to her about being a songwriter in a male-dominated industry. And it was really, really lovely to actually get to sit down and chat with people outside of my profession and find so many similarities to my own.
Clementine and Iwan are mentioned a couple of times throughout Sounds Like Love. Why is it important for you to continue their story beyond The Seven Year Slip?
Poston: I do it mostly for me, because, as I said, I’m from fanfic. So it feels a little bit like I’m sneaking in a bit of fanfic of my own characters into my books. I love the idea that this is a world that is large and fleshed out, and it could be ours. And so there are all these people intersecting with each other, even in small ways. I love that idea. And I like the idea of popping in to see old friends. That’s kind of why I love to reread books, you pop in to see an old friend, and you’re like, ‘Oh, I remember you. You haven’t changed, but I have.’
Lots of popular romances like Twisted Love and Off-Campus are getting picked up for TV adaptations. Can you tell us if there are any adaptation discussions for your books?
Poston: There is one book that has been sold for a TV series. I don’t know if I can talk about it at all, just the fact that I have a book that is optioned for TV. But yeah, nothing else. Hollywood’s hard out there, it’s difficult in romance, and it’s even more difficult with magical romance, because somehow the patriarchy persists.
