Michael Zadoorian

Michael Zadoorian's new novel is Beautiful Music. From his Q&A with Deborah Kalb:

Q: How did you come up with the idea for Beautiful Music, and for your main character, Danny?

A: Like most of what I write about, it’s something that I’d been thinking about for a long time. I wanted to write about music.

In some ways, I wanted to write my own version of the film Almost Famous. I love that film and I definitely was a product of that same era. I certainly didn’t want to copy the film, but I was interested by the idea of a coming-of-age story through music. Of course, I wanted it to take place in Detroit, where no one is famous. (Except maybe Iggy.)

I just started writing everything I could remember about being a teenager, about starting high school, all the fears and anxieties I had, the problems, the other kids, what I was interested in then, the music I listened to, how my body was changing.

I also thought about what was taking place in Detroit after the violent summer of 1967, the things that were happening in my neighborhood, in my high school, all of it. I just wrote page after page of notes.

Slowly, a...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue