E. Lockhart is the author of The Boyfriend List (the corresponding blog, where writers contribute their own boyfriend lists, is a hoot!) and its forthcoming sequel, The Boy Book. At the moment, she’s touring the Girlfriends’ Cyber Circuit with her new novel for teens, Fly on the Wall. I asked E. about the soundtrack to Fly on the Wall–i.e., what she was listening to when she wrote it.

I write in silence. Any external stimulation, especially anything with words, prevents me from writing. Fly on the Wall was written to the sound of New York City sirens, cats meowing, an occasional lunatic on the street, the hum of the ceiling fan. As close to silence as you can get in my neighborhood. A year from now, I have a book coming out that actually DID have a soundtrack, though I only listened during breaks from actual writing. The book is called Dramarama, and I am psyched to be making an itunes playlist for it. It’s about two drama-mad Ohio teenagers who spend a summer of jealousy, love, and bad behavior at musical theater camp. So it’s Broadway geekitude all the way: songs from Guys & Dolls, Rent, Wicked, Bye Bye Birdie, Sweet Charity, Chicago, and the like.

I also asked for a song title that would make a good book title.

This is a hard question. For Fly on the Wall” — maybe “Blister in the Sun” by the Violent Femmes. I love that song because it’s about a teenager feeling trapped in his small, crappy little life and dying — just dying to get out in the world and BE. He wants to be sexy, he wants to be “high as a kite”, but it’s clear he doesn’t even know exactly what those things really mean, doesn’t understand his girlfriend, doesn’t know jack — but WANTS to experience life. Even if it’s so hot out there in the world that he burns himself. That’s what Fly is about, too. And if it’s anywhere near an eighth as good as that song, I’ll have done what I was trying to do.

Oh. my. gawd. Did she just say Blister in the Sun? Heaven, take me back to 1983. I had that song on continuous loop!

About the Book:
Fly on the Wall: How One Girl Saw Everything is about a girl called Gretchen Kaufman Yee who goes to a wacked-out art school in New York City. She’s a collector of plastic Chinese food and odd figurines, a passionate comic-book artist, and a crazy Spider-man fanatic. She’s also completely freaked out by the opposite sex — in particular, the Art Rats, a group of guys in her drawing concentration. One day, she wishes she could be “a fly on the wall of the boys’ locker room,” just to find out what the heck guys really talk about. And the next thing she knows… she is. A fly. On the wall of the locker room.

(Sounds to me like magical realism put to good use. Now if only I could be a fly on the wall of the kitchen at The Richmond restaurant and figure out the secret ingredient in the cheeseburger!)

“A super-smart, super-sweet, and super-fantastic read.” — Sarah Mlynowski, author of Bras & Broomsticks and Milkrun

“The stylish text (rendered nearly multivocal by the periodic font changes) combined with Gretchen’s frank fascination with the oddity and then the humanity of the male body and psyche are a rare treat.” –from The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books

Read the first chapter here. Or if you have a teenager you need to entertain for a night, view E. Lockhart’s tour dates here.