Author and secret songwriter Dan Brown says fans shouldn’t expect an album anytime soon

Best selling author Dan Brown. Seth Wenig / AP photo

In this extended interview with Dan Brown, the blockbuster author shares his thoughts on sudden fame, second guessing his most ardent fans and the possibility of releasing his own music.

Each novel has a fair amount of research into art and secret societies. When writing a new book, what’s the amount of time spent on the research as opposed to the writing?

The time spent on research and writing varies from book to book. Researching Inferno, for example, began with six months of reading, including several translations of The Divine Comedy, various annotations by Dante scholars, and historical texts about Dante’s life. At the same time, I was poring over all the new scientific information that I could find on a cutting edge technology that I had decided to incorporate into the novel. Once I had enough understanding of these topics to proceed, I travelled to Florence and Venice where I was fortunate to meet with some wonderful art historians, librarians, and other scholars who helped me enormously. Once this initial phase of research was complete, I began outlining and writing the novel. Inferno, like most of my other books, took about three years from initial conception to completed manuscript.

The attention you received due to The Da Vinci Code was sudden and forceful. Was it difficult to handle all the publicity initially?

Yes, the initial flurry of publicity surrounding The Da Vinci Code definitely required an adjustment phase for me. Writing is a solitary endeavour, and I’m a private person, so facing that much media attention was a new experience for me, and one I never anticipated.

Now that you are popular author, your moves are scrutinised. Do you find that people perhaps follow your travels or latest interests to guess the topic of your next novel?

Yes, with respect to my research process, the success of these novels has been a bit of a Catch-22. On one hand, I now have wonderful access to specialists, authorities, and even secret archives from which to draw information and inspiration. On the other hand, because there is increased speculation about my works in progress, it has become increasingly difficult to keep the topic secret. I need to be very discreet about the places I go and the specialists with whom I speak. Even so, there is one aspect of my research that will never change — making personal visits to the locations about which I’m writing. When it comes to capturing the feel of a novel’s setting, I find there is no substitute for being there in the flesh ... even if sometimes I need to do it incognito.

Fellow thriller writer Jeffery Deaver released an album with his book XO. Can we expect to meld your songwriting talents with an upcoming book?

I play piano every day and still do a lot of composing. I believe that writing novels and composing music are very similar crafts. Both are attempts to build tension and then release it in a pleasing, unexpected way. The years I spent writing music during college really taught me the importance of form and theme in successful creative works. Even though I still make music today, I can’t really imagine doing so publicly; I definitely prefer to keep that to myself.

Dan Brown is appearing on Thursday at 7.30pm as part of The Sharjah International Book Fair. For details go to www.sharjahbookfair.com

To read the full interview in The National click here.