A new feature here at Sans Serif will be Literary Soundtrack, in which writers reveal what they were listening to while writing their latest books. Sheila Curran, author of the debut novel Diana Lively is Falling Down, which received a starred review from Booklist (“Curran’s novel gently reminds readers that fantasy has a place in everyone’s life…”) gets a lift from those folks who made the audacious 80s videos featuring David Byrne’s wickedly oversized suits:

I’m somewhat of a musical imbecile so I tend to get titles wrong for much of what I listen to…as well as the lyrics…A song that figures throughout my book is by the Talking Heads from Stop Making Sense which I thought was called Letting the Days Go By before I thought it was called Into the Blue Again…it talks about the water underground, and I thought Into the Blue Again would be a wonderful title even if it’s not the name of the book..but my editor and the rest of the team came up with a much better one….I don’t listen to music while I write but am an obsessive-compulsive Bruce Springsteen fan and was listening to the Tracks and The Rising CDs …also REM and obviously Talking Heads…

You can read the first chapter of Diana Lively Is Falling Down here, or visit Curran’s blog, Falling Down.