Girlfriends’ Cyber Circuit member Shanna Swendson stopped by to reveal her literary soundtrack for Once Upon Stilettos, just out from Ballantine. Read more about the book at Shanna’s website or on her blog.

I don’t usually listen to music when I’m actually writing because I find it too distracting, but I do often make a “soundtrack” of songs that remind me of elements in the book that I listen to when I’m not actually writing to help stir my brain. Some songs from this book’s soundtrack include:
“Under Your Spell” from the Once More With Feeling (the Buffy musical) soundtrack
“Why Don’t You and I” by Santana
“Stupid” by Sarah McLachlan
“Easy to Love” by Ella Fitzgerald
“Twilight Time” by The Platters
“As Lovers Go” by Dashboard Confessional

One song title (from any album) that would make a great book title:
I always wanted to write a book called “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered,” after the old Rodgers and Hart song. I tried that title out on several unsold books. Then I found the perfect book for it. That was the working title for the book now known as Once Upon Stilettos. My editor loved it, the marketing department loved it, and apparently so did a lot of other people, because we found out about another book coming out not long before mine with the exact same title, as well as a few others with variations on the title. So we had to come up with something new, and I may never get to use that title.