Well, we can't have a Mevember without Vanni, can we?
Y'all
probably already know the story of my first bestseller. As a
lifelong groupie myself, I wanted to indulge a bit in the fantasy of
romance sparking with a sexy rock star. I meant it to end on one book
after a relationship grew after hooking up with said rock star over a
cross-country tour, but the characters had their own ideas of how things
should be done. And Vanni was a fixer-upper for sure. Maybe that was
why I couldn't resist him and had to keep going back for more.
I'm still going back for more. Vanni pops up in my newest book THE DUKE TAKES A BRIDE for a special performance in a royal wedding. If I can find a reason to write him in somewhere, I'm going to take it.... which is why he's already outlined in THE DUKE BECOMES KING.
I kinda love him. And having him in the periphery enables me to help built the foundation for how his story continues next year, ten years after the publication of GROUPIE. For those waiting to see what happened after FFF, the answers are coming thanks to a missing piece of the puzzle that introduced itself to me two days ago. Pin the name Aidan Knight, s'all I'm sayin.
The Groupieverse is vast and keeps on growing, much to my joy.
GROUPIE is where it started. It also remains a painfully honest book, because I was working out a lot of personal angst as I wrote it. I guess I still am. I'm still a Groupie Gal at heart, maybe even more so. Is it perfect? No. Is it full of over-the-top, Kindle-breaking angst? Oh, yeah. But I tend to think that's why it's been a reader favorite for over a decade.
Today, enjoy GROUPIE for free. If you've already read it, maybe entice your new book friends to join along for a re-read.
Because next year, the RENOWN series is coming....
Pushing 30, which is kinda old for an emerging rock star but he had quite a few reasons to put off his dream. You can learn about those reasons in his prequel, "Vanni."
What stands out most about him?
He's walking sex and he knows it. Voice. Presence. He was born to be a star.
Nice guy or douche?
"Or"?
Favorite moment with him?
How can I pick just one? I guess we'll just have to start at the beginning...
I was still smiling when the bartender slid a beer my way. Before I could dig any money out of my wallet, a strong hand cut across my chest to lay a few bills on the bar. “It’s on me.”
I turned right into the glistening, naked chest of Giovanni. My eyes shot up to his, and he hovered over my 5’5 frame with lanky grace.
“Thanks,” I offered as I hid behind the long neck bottle.
“Thank you,” he said.
“For what?”
He leaned down toward me and whispered in my ear, “Great scenery during the show.”
I caught his lopsided grin as he glanced down at my expanse of cleavage. From the heat in my face, I knew I must have blushed at least two shades of red. “I didn’t think you noticed,” I replied as I looked away.
“I notice everything,” he assured me. “Especially when it’s put there for me to notice.”
I wanted to deny it but I couldn’t. “You know what they say,” I quipped. “Play the hand you’re dealt.”
He just laughed. “That wasn’t a complaint. I quite enjoyed the view. I wanted to see more but it was a bit like looking into the sun during an eclipse.” He leaned on the bar. “Be careful how you wield that weapon.”
I tipped my beer toward his chest, which was now dangerously close to my own. “Ditto.”
This made him laugh even more. “I guess we’re even then.”
“Not really,” I answered.
His eyebrow rose. “No?”
I took another sip of liquid courage. “To be even I’d have to take my shirt off.”
It was a brazen thing for someone like me to say. Not that I didn’t know how to flirt, or even be sexy, it was just never something I’d say to a half-naked man I didn’t even know.
But if he could play havoc with my senses by being on sex overload, I could return at least some of the favor.
His eyes deepened as he leaned toward me. “You have a point. Maybe we should go somewhere and rectify this grievous injustice.”
This was where I should have handed him my hotel key, but I wasn’t that far out of Tennessee. I cocked my own eyebrow. “Or you could just put your shirt on.”
He tipped me a mock salute. “Well played.” He made no move to put a shirt on, mind you. If I wasn’t imagining things, he actually scooted a little closer to me. I could barely see past those incredible eyes that were doing wonderfully sexy things to me without having to leave the room at all.
I cleared my throat. “Shouldn’t you hang around to see what Jasper Carrington has to say?”
He bestowed a sexy smirk. “Iris tells me I should always leave them wanting more. What’s more attractive than a star you can’t quite catch?”
Indeed.
He motioned to the gyrating crowd in the center of the bar. “Care to dance?”
“I don’t really…,” I started, my standard protest cocked and ready to fire. But he wasn’t listening. He grabbed my hand in his and was already leading me through the crowd onto the tiny dance floor. It was so crowded and so tiny that we ended up plastered together, as if the glistening sweat from his earlier performance bound us together like some sort of sensual adhesive.
I didn’t even really know how to dance, so I let him lead the motions from the moment his arms locked around my waist. My breath caught when his fingertips pressed into the soft, generous curves of my backside. He ground against me in time to the music, a primal thundering beat that pulsated between the sexually charged lyrics. When he started to sing directly into my ear, I nearly melted right to the floor. His breath was warm against my neck and I felt his open mouth against my skin. In that moment the world disappeared. I was faced with one inescapable truth.
I had just been hit by lightning—and his name was Giovanni Carnevale.
What do you love about him?
Those eyes. That hair. That *voice.* He oozes sex and you can't help indulging just a little taste. He's charming. Romantic. Talented. Wounded. Lost. Fearless. You could easily lose yourself in him forever just trying to figure him out, yet he'll always surprise you.
What do you hate about him?
That ego, man. He needs more attention and more love than you could ever give him, though you will want to try until you can't try anymore. He'll pull you in with surprising vulnerability, which will make you want to save him almost as much as you want to strangle him when he self-destructs and breaks your heart all over again.
Or so I'm told, anyway. ;)
If you went on a date, where would you go?
Knowing Vanni, he'd want to make it memorable. New York City is his town, so he'd probably encourage I enjoy every bite of the Big Apple, but I'm not sure we'd get too far away from his Brooklyn apartment...
Who inspired him?
That is the question, isn't it?
Who might play him in a movie?
I actually cast this character when I sat down to write, selecting a guy who sits securely and uncontested atop of my own personal laminated list. If you're going to indulge a life-long fantasy, you might as well, right? However, Vanni morphed into his own guy so I have NO idea who might play him. Still waiting on lightning to strike. Open to suggestions...
Do you have a special song that reminds you of him?
What song DON'T I have for Vanni?
But as far as a love theme... there was really only one.
Any "Easter Eggs" planted with this book boyfriend?
So many. So, so many. The places they traveled. The things they did. The people they met. The whole story itself was deeply rooted in my own personal fantasies, while working through my own personal experiences. I'll just say this, Andy's circle of friends was based on real people - Iris in particular.
Where can we find him?
You first meet Vanni in GROUPIE, which is free today only. The story continues in ROCK STAR, which we will talk more about tomorrow, and concludes with MOGUL. There's the prequel, VANNI, but if you would rather move forward than backward, pick up the following books:
Do yourself a favor and indulge yourself in a little Vanni today. Unless, of course, you need your bad boys to be mostly good... in which case you might want to skip this Valentine and wait instead for who's coming tomorrow.
Nothing made me happier than finding Barbie dolls under my tree. Let's just get that out in the open right now. I gave up baby dolls by the time I was eight. I wanted adult dolls so I could play in the adult world. And I wanted a lot of them, so that I could build that world accordingly. And we can blame these Barbies ENTIRELY for the kinds of stories I write now. I take pride in turning the notch up on reality, sending it into hyperdrive.
Mattel wired my brain that way from the start.
Superstar Barbie was my first, which I got on my birthday in 1977. This glamorous doll came complete with her own microphone.
That year I also got the Debby Boone's LP, "You Light Up My Life," and it didn't take me long at all to hold my own private concerts in the living room where our console stereo sat in its casket-like case. Honestly I don't even think it took me long enough to learn the songs. (And I learned - and we sang - EVERY. SINGLE. ONE.)
Eventually Ballerina Barbie joined the party, which gave me both a singer AND a dancer through which to live my fantasies.
I wasn't able to add a Ken to my collection until 1979, when sun lovin' Ken and Skipper joined my crew...
They domesticated my Superstar Barbie, who had gotten into acting just so she could, you know, slow down the pace a little to raise her family.
When Golden Dream Barbie ended up under my tree... I knew just what to do.
I made her a model, because of course.
As you can see, I was bit with the celebrity/fame bug from the get-go. I love to explore that world. A lot. I wanted to be a part of that world. A lot. At first I wanted to be a singer, then I thought I could be an actress. I wanted to rocket off into the stratosphere and just belong to that sparkly, glittery world.
(We can probably blame Robin Leach for that.)
I wanted to be a part of this world so much so that when Dream Date PJ arrived under my tree in 1985, I named her Ginger and made her an actress.
I also got a dark-haired Ken doll and named him Steve. He, uh, was a famous rock star. Ahem. (Their wedding was lovely, by the way. It may or may not have been heavily influenced by Bo and Hope's wedding that same year. *Ahem.*)
So I have been playing in this particular sandbox for a long, long time. That it was this type of saga that actually put me on the map, so to speak, is fitting, really. It is why I go back again and again to expand that world, curious to see where it will all lead next. Honestly I'm pretty excited about a couple of books I have planned now, which will take part in that world for better or worse.
If you're familiar at ALL with the things I write, you know it'll be mostly worse.
Thanks to their... unique complications... the drama that comes with celebrity is fertile soil. And I'm never going to stop digging. I don't use Barbies to do that anymore, but trust me when I say if I ever get a granddaughter, she'll have more Barbies than she'll know what to do with, including all of those listed.
And we'll keep them safe at Grandma's house.
AHEM.
So thank you, Mattel, for giving this girl the courage to reach for the stars. I don't know that I would have created the world of my dreams without you. Imagine the possibilities, indeed.
FAVORITE CHRISTMAS SONG
The best thing about celebrity is influence, and in the 1980s that took shape of a lil' Christmas diddy called "Do They Know It's Christmas". I loved it then. I love it now. It hasn't aged too badly considering. And it helped teach kids of my generation exactly how privileged we were, and what kind of responsibility goes along with that.
A fitting message for the season, methinks.
JEFF N' GINGER'S HOLIDAY WHOOVIE
In keeping with that theme of wealth and responsibility, how about a more atypical Christmas movie?
TODAY'S #BAKEITFORWARD CHRISTMAS RECIPE
Today's recipe was a team effort. My elf Brittany was hard at work till after midnight shaping the dough that I had made into perfect canes and wreaths. She'll be making more today, a little smaller, and I can't wait to eat, I mean... see... how they turn out.
Seriously, this is a pretty perfect cookie if you have the patience to delicately handle the dough. It's got a light crunch, with a not-too-sweet buttery almond flavor. I've been making this one for a couple of years now, though my photos always turn up in mega fail shots if I try to do the cane/wreath thing.
Thank God she has youth and stamina on her side. Not to mention she loves to bake pretty treats to eat.
This is a freebie EVERYONE can get in on because it's free on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and iTunes. This is the book that effectively started my career. I jumped into the duplicitous world of celebrity and fought my way back out again, tearing through a lot of the bullshit assumptions about how "glamorous" it is and how "lucky" they are because I had lived through some experiences that had taught me what you see polished and pretty on the TV ain't necessarily what you get. I needed to work out how I felt about it, so naturally I wrote a book.
I made it about a rock star, and the "girl next door" who had the misfortune of falling in love with him.
Thanks to a mention in a Maryse's popular book blog, it set off a frenzy (her word) that vaulted me into the spotlight for a brief moment. I ended up an Amazon bestseller in November 2012, thanks to her enthusiastic support. Many people loved it. Many people... didn't. My hero is not perfect. He is not a good guy. He is not faithful. He is an entitled jerk and stayed unrepentant whenever he broke my heroine's heart because he had never *technically* promised her anything. You'll hate him (and me) if you dare to read it, and many people have opted not to. Since I get that, I've been very honest about this book, telling anyone who gets mad about things like cheaters and triangles and cliffhangers,et al, that if they need that kind of warning to read a book, they're better off not buying it at all.
If you're up for it, however, there are now four books in this series, three in this main storyline and one prequel (written from Vanni's POV, to explain a little bit out he ended up such a naughty boy.)
And by the way, December 21st is Vanni's birthday. You'll need to know that tomorrow.
Ahem.
Here's a Christmasy excerpt from Book One:
*****
The next morning I woke up to find the bed empty. I slipped out from under the covers. There on the foot of the bed was a beautiful blue satin robe. With a smile I put it on and padded softly into the living room.
There were boxes of gifts underneath the tree, and a breakfast set up on the coffee table in front. The best gift was Vanni, in his pajama bottoms, sitting cross-legged on the floor with his hair spilling all over his shoulders, as he cuddled Simon in his lap.
“Merry Christmas, baby,” he said as I approached, and he pulled me down to get a Christmas kiss.
I knelt next to him on the floor. “What did you do?” I said as I referred to the gifts.
“What can I say? Santa thought you were a good girl this year.”
I laughed as I reached for one. I felt like a little kid as I tore into the paper. It was a locket, similar to the one I bought for my grandmother. My eyes shot to his. “When did you do this?”
“I’m a Ninja shopper,” he confessed. “Open another one.”
A scarf, a cat toy for Simon, some opal earrings–my birthstone–and finally a music box.
“Open it,” he said with a smile.
As I did I expected to hear “Wanting Her,” but the tune was new and unfamiliar. Inside the box was a folded piece of paper, written in his handwriting. As the music box played he began to sing:
“I never thought I’d find someone whose heart was my ideal, whose eyes could see into my soul, and teach me what was real. She touched my hand, and kissed my lips and now I know it’s true. No one before quite holds my heart the way that you now do. I can’t promise more than this moment, girl, but please don’t give up on me. You touched my hand and kissed my lips and set my spirit free. No one can promise forever, it’s never ours to give. If only for this moment, I know this much is true. If only for this moment girl, I’m so in love with you.”
I was in tears as he finished, so touched by his song, his voice, his words… his love.
Vanni was right. We couldn’t promise more than the moment. But in that moment, all that I had, and all that I felt, and all that I was belonged only to him.
It’s day nine and if you’re on schedule or thereabouts, you should have written just a smidge over 15,000 words so far. For a 50,000-word book, this would land you around the beginnings of Act II, where you will be writing the bulk of your story. You’ve got your beginning, you likely know your ending, now you just need to bridge the two together with all the tension and suspense your reader needs to keep turning the page to find out what’s going to happen next.
Hopefully you know, but it’s possible you won’t.
Two things might be happening here. Best case scenario, you’ve done the prep work, you’ve written the setup and now you’re being pushed along by the momentum of your story. It’s still work to develop it slowly, word by word, but opportunities are growing right from the page, allowing you to craft scenes that build naturally and organically through the development of your characters.
Worst case scenario? You’re staring at the vast wasteland of Act II wonder what the hell you need to write next to meet your word requirement.
These next few chapters will deal with that, with suggestions that you can use to cross this chasm. The next 25,000 or so words that make up Act II can be quite intimidating. It stretches out in front of you, all these pages to fill with all these words you’ve yet to find. This is a daunting task, even if you’re prepared for it.
This chapter will show how using your individual perspective as a human will help you mine for material as a writer. In other words, when you pull your hair out in Act II wondering what the heck you’re going to do, I say that you do what another person can never do: Do you.
Let’s face it. The old adage, “There’s nothing new under the sun,” often applies to the stories we tell. I write romance, so, Boy Meets Girl hasn’t changed a whole lot throughout the millennia. It’s all about the quest for a happily ever after with the person of your dreams. This has held true for as long as I’ve been reading romance.
Even though modern characters are often hooking up (often and enthusiastically) before their happily ever after, which wasn’t that common in the 1970s and 1980s when I started reading romance, the whole reason we turn the page is to find out if that boy gets the girl for real and forever.
How a writer does this is key, especially if he or she wants to be remembered. Stories kind of blend together after a while, thanks to the glut of material that has been written over the years. Many of these have already exhausted practically every trope known to the genre.
Whether you’re writing a book about a marriage of convenience, a surprise baby, some billionaire boss who walks the line between dominant and controlling, or a vampire who has fallen in love with a mortal, best friends who find love, worst enemies that find love, cowboys, bikers or forbidden bad boys, most of these tropes have been mined well in some form or fashion by authors before you, to varying degrees of success.
Thousands of those books are published every year about all those things. Some might even eerily mirror what you’ve decided is a beyond-brilliant idea that no one else has ever done anywhere.
Parallel development is real, and it’s hell.
You can play around with the plot a bit, just to toy with convention, in your attempt to stand out from the pack.
“Hey, did I mention that in my story there’s a purple hippo dancing the merengue?”
“No kidding. I’ve never heard of that before.”
Your plot is important. No doubt about it. But what’s more important is the filter through which you see your plot. See, that’s what the other authors can’t write, even if they wanted to. You bring to the story a certain perspective. If you’re successful conveying that in your books, then anyone who reads it will be able to see the world, for a short time at least, through your eyes.
So how do you do this? How do you … do you?
You start by telling a story only you can tell. Temptation is strong to chase trends when developing a plot, because it feels like a way to either make easy money or a chance to get read by a larger audience. This is what everyone clamors to read, so clearly you have the best shot to break in by enticing them with a similar story all your own.
If you want to catch this “express,” it’s totally your prerogative. You take a risk blending in with the other authors who might be following suit, who have a larger fan base, who have more experience, who will stand shoulder to shoulder in front of you, obscuring both you and your book as the express whizzes by in a second, chasing that trend until it dissipates into a cloud of smoke when The Next Big Thing rolls around.
You’re going to have to work extra hard to be seen, no matter if you ride a trend or not. My advice? Don’t worry about the sale right now. Consume yourself instead with the passion to tell the story only you can tell, even if it echoes those books that came before it.
Why are you the author who absolutely, positively has to write this book?
This is an important question to ask yourself. When it comes to the sale, much later on, the reader will be asking the same question. “I’ve already read about a shape-shifting vampire who falls in love with a billionaire cowboy alpha, but marries her worst enemy out of convenience because she’s hiding a secret baby from her stepbrother. What makes THIS book so special?”
You do. You make it special.
You may write a book because you fell in love with that particular trope and want to take it for a test drive yourself. This way you aren’t swept along with the tide of someone else’s vision. You can do what you want, say what you want and have what you want, your terms.
Maybe you’ve read a lot of books about that subject simply because you enjoy revisiting the fantasy. You may read a book about a rock star and decide, “Hey. Yeah. That’d be fun,” and create your own little fairy tale as a result with all the things that turn you on.
When I wrote GROUPIE, there were already bookshelves full of successful, bestselling rock star romances, including a few notable indies. That wasn’t new. Hot rock stars, and the hapless, star-struck “good girls” who found themselves falling for their swagger, have provided common breeding ground for many a writer who wants to delve into the fantasy of falling for a musician/singer/rock star.
The reason the trope exists at all is because many women have this fantasy, and have since they first mooned over posters on their wall of whatever rock star that sparked their desire to go from groupie to girlfriend.
We didn’t just want to listen to the songs. We wanted to be the subject of them.
The good news here is that pursuing this kind of timelessly popular storyline means you’ll have a better chance finding readers for your material. Instead of it being a “trend” that pops up out of nowhere and takes the reading world by storm, these are tested plot devices that can hook the reader just on concept alone. You have a built-in reader base just dying to get their hands on another juicy rock star book.
The bad news is that popular tropes tend to exhaust every type of plot in existence because you are tasked with doing what other people haven’t done, lest you be skewered for copying another book or another author.
Plagiarism is every bit as real as parallel development. Unlike parallel development, however, it’s not about who does it best. It’s about who created it first. Guard yourself, and guard other writers, too.
There’s nothing to gain proving that you can do what they do. You build your career doing what they can’t do.
Eager readers will skim your blurb and decide in an instant if this has enough originality to hook them, or if it’s just like every other generic rock star book on the market. They’re not going to pay $2.99 or more on an e-book they’ve already read, by authors who have already earned their loyalty by writing good books.
I never set out to compete with authors like Jasinda Wilder or S.C. Stephens, both of whom had published massively successful rock star romances by the time I wrote mine. It was irrelevant to me what they had written, because I wasn’t chasing after them to make some quick money.
I wrote GROUPIE originally solely for my own enjoyment, and my own therapy.
When I decided to write a rock star book, the popularity of it played a pretty small part in my development of the plot. I wasn’t out to write something that someone else had written. Instead, I decided to insert myself all over that book, since that was what was missing from all the others.
What do I find sexy about this particular trope?
For me, it’s all about the angst. I had no real desire to write some episodic sex fest tied up in a neat little bow at the end, domesticating the bad boy after hundreds of pages of good lovin.’
That type of story didn’t work for me. It didn’t excite me. It didn’t turn me on. I didn’t find it a realistic enough plot to sell to myself, so I knew there was absolutely no way I could sell it to anyone else.
Because of my own unique life experience, I’ve danced pretty close to the forbidden flame of celebrity thanks to my exposure to several fandoms. I’ve met musicians and singers. I know several personally. I’ve seen their world from the back of darkened dive bars, where fidelity often goes to die.
I grew up a groupie, no doubt about it. But the closer you get to your idols, the less they shine. They become human. Mere mortals. Flawed, just like everyone else. Sometimes even more epically so, considering that performers experience life ratcheted up to levels of intensity most of us can only imagine.
That’s what makes them so darned sexy.
It is the very same thing that makes them dangerous, which makes them even sexier.
This is what made me want to write about them, and this was why I believed I was the only writer who could pen this particular story.
Yeah, it’s sexy to be pursued by a rock star… but what if you actually got him? What then? What’s the conflict? The juicy, angsty, can’t-stop-turning-the-page conflict? It’s not so much about the happy ending for me. If my couples get a happily ever after, they have to work for it. Then, and only then, is the reward that much sweeter.
Conflict should entice you to write your book, since that’s the reason you tell your story in the first place. Boy meets girl? Whatever. How does boy get girl? That is the story.
That, by the way, is often the question that drives Act II. It’s the question everyone wants answered, so they keep turning the page. If you’ve done your job properly, you will have enough conflict in Act II to carry you all the way to the climax and resolution in Act III.
I had plenty of material to mine when I sat down to write GROUPIE. At the time I was ovaries deep in a fandom, where I had the rare and often regrettable opportunity to peek behind the curtain of fame. I saw the opportunities and excess available to people in that world, particularly when they were successful. I got to see where public image and reality collided, often with disappointing or devastating results. I also got to see, first hand, what people were willing to do to get closer to those who actually were successful. This can prove to be a toxic, explosive combination.
When I found it turning things upside down in my world, I did what I always did. I decided to write about it.
I had no intention whatsoever to write some fluffy little romance that just so happened to star a rocker. I wanted to tear down all the illusion around celebrity like tissue paper, to talk about what it was like to fall in love with someone who needs the love of the entire world, who will never completely belong to any one person, and you're expected to be okay with that because he’s a rock star. It’s a crazy, mixed-up world that turns fairy tales on their ears.
This is what spoke to me in 2011.
Since I couldn’t write about what I was going through, I decided instead to craft a fictional story and put my characters through even worse stuff. The more extreme, the better. I took what I knew to be true and just added liberal splashes of Ginger everywhere. The first and most important part of that, I put myself in the lead character, even though I, personally, had never pursued or landed anyone famous.
I, personally, didn’t dream of a happily ever after with a rock star, because at that time I was 100% certain that was impossible. You can get him into bed, that's no trick. Building a worthwhile relationship with someone who needs and wants the adoration of fans the world over is much, much trickier. This complication not only ended up driving the plot for the first book, it spawned two more.
Since I’d already decided to take a detour with the message of the book, I decided to make my lead a little more unconventional as well. I felt it was unrealistic to turn a bad boy rocker into a devoted, faithful boyfriend, so I did what everyone else thought was unrealistic as well.
I used a woman of size to attract him in the first place.
I came of age in the 1980s, so I was part of that inaugural MTV generation. I watched music videos all night long till my eyeballs bled, so I was pretty familiar with the kinds of girls who typically attracted rock stars. I’d seen Bret Michaels and the women he tried to romance on “Rock of Love.” I knew the deal.
I simply didn’t care about the deal. Not one tiny, teeny weeny, itsy bitsy little bit.
What I brought to that story was my own unique perspective. By 2011, when I wrote this book, I had come to the conclusion that being one of the many ports of call for these scandalous rock stars wasn’t that far removed from being “the fat girl.”
For those of you unfamiliar, there are certain men in this world that treat women differently based on their size. To the world, they set the standard of what kind of woman they deem worthy to be their companion, with beautiful women on their arm at every opportunity. Behind closed doors, however, they seduce all the weirdoes and freaks they’d never be caught dead with in public, just because they can.
I knew something about that, thanks to my own history. I was all too familiar with the kinds of guys who would sleep with you because the opportunity presented itself for an easy score, only to be publicly linked with girls more socially acceptable as a mate.
And, just like far too many “fat girls,” groupies will accept these crumbs eagerly and happily because the opportunity to get with a hot guy who acts like he wants them just doesn’t come along every day. If you’re backstage with your idol, and he decides to take you back to his hotel for a little sis-boom-bah, you’re going to freaking go, consequences be damned.
If the guy is truly an asshole, then he’ll test the limits with you, just to see how much he can get away with, simply because you’re so desperate for his attention. The stories are legendary, and disheartening.
It’s almost as if these kinds of guys resent you for having to settle for you, so they make you pay even while they get their rocks off. They’re doing you a favor, so you get to do them a few favors too, including all the other stuff that girls with standards wouldn’t do.
Some rock stars are notorious for this kind of despicable behavior.
It was as natural as breathing to cast a fat girl as the “groupie” in question – the sweet, innocent good girl who just had the misfortune for falling for a rock star’s act. Their entire purpose on the planet is to attract you with their song. Many are masters of this, who make women fall in love with them on the regular.
Who they love in return, we don’t always know. We only see what they want to show us. This is part of the appeal, which is why getting them behind closed doors is so enticing. We need to figure out what part of their act is real, and which part is fake, and how – exactly – we can fit into it.
Since this was my show, I cast it with a size-16 heroine, a real downhome Tennessee girl who didn’t give a rat’s ass if someone didn’t like her because of her size. Ultimately this was what attracted the rock star in question. Confidence is sexy. She dared to show him she wouldn’t be an easy conquest, regardless of her size or the fact she saw him for the first time when he was up on stage and she was down in the audience. This attracted him even more.
Conflict is never easy. And that was the conflict that drove the story. The more she made him chase her, the more he wanted the conquest. When she finally caved, that’s when the true second act began. That’s when I explored the themes I wanted to explore, such as being careful what you wish for, because you just might get it.
My experiences crafted the plot. My unique perspective as a woman of size developed my heroine, and my own personal tastes with my own idols, fallen and otherwise, crafted my hero. Because of this, he wasn’t that much of a hero at the start. He was a douche, who just wanted–needed–the whole world to love him.
Just like that, I did what other rocker romance writers couldn’t do. I did me. I wrote what I saw from my own life experience. Not only did I craft characters based on people I knew in real life (Iris is real, y’all, and she’s every bit as awesome as she was in the book,) but I used stories I had heard from other fans to inspire all sorts of sexy, or even scary, scenes that placed one brick upon the other, setting up a story, flushing it out, bit by bit and piece by piece, until you had a book that only I could have written.
Likewise I used some rather negative experiences I had encountered in fandoms to create the villain, with a crazy stalker who didn’t recognize or respect boundaries. Unfortunately I had more experience with those types of girls than anyone who doesn’t actually get in front of an audience to sing should ever have to. To this day I can’t read the Talia parts of the first book. I did my time with all that in real life. It’s over now, and I’d rather keep it contained to chapters I can skip. The poison has been sucked out, and I plan to keep it that way.
GROUPIE wasn’t a Nano project, but it probably could have been. The words came fairly quickly because I was scraping the infection out of my own soul when I wrote them. I couldn’t control the chaos I was forced to deal with on a daily basis back then, but I could control the story. That drove me to the computer day after day, to see what Vanni and Andy were up to next. Even when they frustrated me, I knew the end game, so I had a destination locked in to help me keep going.
The same could not be said for the real life events that inspired me to write the book. I was mired tits deep in uncertainty, especially not knowing whom I could trust.
If you’ve read GROUPIE, you probably see how that influenced the work.
And that’s kind of the point. If someone knows me, they can pick up any single book I’ve read and pinpoint exactly where I’ve placed myself like my own little Easter egg.
In THE LEFTOVER CLUB, a story about the oft-explored trope of unrequited love, I crafted a plot around another curvy girl who came of age in the 1980s like I did. I told the story in a series of flashbacks, from the 1970s to the 2000s, where my character Roni led a life often very similar to my own. (Big surprise, right?)
I wasn’t out to write an autobiography. I kind of, sort of did that for Nano in 2006, when I started out crafting a story using two core memories that had guided my life (for good or bad,) and ended up writing my own memoir instead.
That book is so raw and revealing that even though it’s complete, it’ll never be released.
Not every book you write will be. Some will be just for you. The others you leave like little nuggets of immortality you can leave behind as part of your legacy. That was what THE LEFTOVER CLUB really was to me. It was the opportunity to leave pretty big chunks of me and my life behind, so it will serve as a memorial to those experiences long after I’m gone.
I took my personal experience of growing up as a “fat girl” in the 1980s, and all that meant when it came to interacting with the opposite sex, and turned the knob up to 11. From the first kiss to the run-in with the gym teacher, my own experiences were tweaked and adjusted to fit right into my story. Through my characters I relived some of my childhood by using the same house I grew up in, the same music I listened to, the same movies and TV I watched. Even relationships I had with my childhood friends were immortalized in some way in the book.
As long as these things are remembered, we will live on forever. And that’s a pretty amazing thing.
It was also a scary thing. Though I had a wealth of memories to mine as I crafted my scenes, I found things got a little too real sometimes, particularly when Roni did stupid stuff. I had grown past that awkward teenager and unhappy twenty-something wife and mother who realized, too late, that her happily ever after wasn’t going to work out exactly like she had planned. Going back to revisit it was painful. And tough.
THE LEFTOVER CLUB was so not a Nano project, and in fact took me about six months to finish, with a two-month break right in the middle so I could write another project in another genre altogether. I had the material. I had the outline and the plot. I just lost my nerve. It took me months to get back into it and finagle it into something I felt was worth publishing.
It ain’t always pretty, but it’s 100% me.
Even my first “Rubenesque” romance, or romance novel starring a woman who is heavier than what was considered the norm, had me all over it. It had to, that was the reason I planted my ass to write it in the first place. There was a particular kind of book I wanted to read, and in 2007, it was pretty damned hard to come by.
This left me only one choice. I had to write it.
I was beyond done reading about all the thin, beautiful girls who found love by virtue of being so beautiful. Is it really that hard for a man to fall in love with a beautiful girl? From the books I’ve read to the movies and TV shows I’ve watched, that’s kind of happening all the time. Isn’t that the ideal in our world?
While it’s a story, it’s not the story, as proven by the fact that I myself had been romanced, wood, married and loved, even though I was *gasp* a double-digit size. What else could I do but put myself and my experiences right smack dab in the middle of LOVE PLUS ONE, which mixed “best friends,” “fish-out-of-water,” “fame/celebrity,” with a splash of “cowboy” thrown in for good measure.
I even made my heroine a writer. Sometimes I’m not even all that subtle how much Ginger I add to the plot cocktail, which in this case centered completely around an atypical beauty who had to compete for love in a public forum where everyone, including her, assumed she'd lose.
Even this book has my specific fingerprint all over it. Countless writers write writing books, but only I can write a book about my personal journey, which features Nano prominently in my growth as a writer, which established the foundation for my career as an indie. This isn't just about getting you through the month of November. This is giving you the tools you'll need to navigate the waters I've already sailed across, which will hopefully make the ride a little less choppy for you.
It it also serves to document my career as well, which further establishes my brand. That is why this book has what no other book on the subject will. Me.
They tell you to write what you know, but trick of getting that advice right is knowing which word to emphasize. Write what you know. Write what you think. Write what you feel. Write what you’ve experienced.
You… do you.
Trust me, the second you do that, the words will fly as long as you’re brave enough to let them.
This is your job as an artist. The reason that your story is different is that it comes from you. It’s shaded in with your own personal palette of experiences and perspectives that no one else can convey but you. Your stories are your opportunities to do that. If you’re looking for inspiration, you needn’t look any further than your own life. Work through the crappiest stuff and immortalize those little nuggets of truth that will shade in your manuscript with hues of authenticity only you can provide.
If you’re stuck right now, staring into the abyss of Act II, then turn your focus inward. Figure out how you can relate to your characters, and how your own life experiences might have crafted them to be the way they are. Use those experiences. Put your characters through some of these same paces. Watch what they do when you have the courage to insert a little bit of yourself into them. This will make them real and three-dimensional, which will make them more appealing for a general audience once you’re ready for one.
Now, we can’t really talk about individuality here without addressing the tendency for writers to chase trends. Like I mentioned above, every now and then a book will blow up in the marketplace and an avalanche of copycat books will flood the market as a result as everyone races to cash in on the gravy train before it zooms on past.
This is particularly true in romance, where readers are more attached to trope than to your personal experiences. “Hey, do you guys know where I can get a book where [fill in trope here].” Or, “Hey, I really love books about [fill in trope here.] Know where I can find one?”
Individuality is still highly regarded, but there’s a comfort in reading books that satisfy an itch left behind some crazy wild ride the reader never even knew they wanted. They can't get enough. They never want that feeling to end. Hence why trends exist in the first place.
Maybe you can make money from this. Maybe you can’t. It still depends on you and what you bring to the table. If you're a brand new writer or an unknown, I don't know if it's all that much, since bigger names often ride trends as well.
I once picked up a book from a bestselling writer that had all the people in my particular corner of the book world going absolutely bugshit over the release of its sequel. I decided to read the book to find out what all the fuss was about, but gave up on it fairly early in. When I was telling my best friend about it later, and told him about what had happened until the spot I stopped, he told me that it was almost identical to another popular book, a much bigger seller than the one I had abandoned. (And I knew it was a bigger seller, because I had heard of that book and that author outside of the romance world.)
It floored me to think that two such identical books could not only be released, but sell as much as they did.
This might suggest to new writers that all you need to do to become a successful, bestselling writer is to follow trends that are already on the market.
Anyone can do that. People do it all the time. Some are successful. Most are forgettable.
I challenge you not to follow trends, but to set them. It’s not the easier road, not by a long shot. But if you want a career of any importance, it is what you have to do. Otherwise your book falls into the stack with all the other wannabes that may sell some copies, it may even sell a lot of copies, but you will always be considered second to the book that started the trend in the first place. It’s up to you whether you want to win a gold medal, or if you’d be happy coming in second, third, fifth, twentieth down the list. Of the two books I mentioned, I only knew the author of one, who was light years more successful than the second simply because her book broke ground. She used her own personal fantasy and preferences to drive the story. As luck would have it, this turned out to be a latent fantasy for millions of readers worldwide. They ate it up. It changed the book world as a result.
The second one? It sold books, usually to an audience that would have bought/read them anyway. The first book was such a juggernaut that people who didn’t read at all were grabbing a copy. I'll let you figure out which one was the first (and so far only) one to make it to the screen for an even wider audience.
That is the power of individuality.
“But Ginger, how am I supposed to predict a trend?”
That is the question, isn’t it? The sad truth is that no one can. No one knows what will work until it does. Every single release is a gamble. Remember the stats on show business? Out of ten movies, only one is a blockbuster. But all ten are pitched, written, produced, filmed, distributed and marketed as if they’re going to be “the one.” You don’t know which is which and won’t know until it lands in front of the audience and they decide your winner for you.
The audience alone decides for itself what will soar and what will fall flat. The only thing you control is writing the strongest book you can, that only you can.
Take control of the only thing you can. Do what other writers can’t do. Do you.
Started First Draft: November 9, 2015 10:15am PST
Completed First draft: November 9, 2015 12:41pm PST
Word Count of first draft: 3,638
Began first revisions: November 9, 2015 01:35pm PST
Completed first revisions: November 9, 2015 2:12pm PST
Began second revisions: November 9, 2015 04:46pm PST
Completed second revisions: November 9, 2015 6:01pm PST
Updated WC: 5,329/35,724
In 1979, we had moved (again) to a new neighborhood where I knew not a soul. I spent most of that summer, holed up in my room, enjoying a life-changing Christmas gift, my Bert & Ernie radio.
That was the summer I discovered my own music. It sounded nothing like the Hee-Haw 1970s Country/Western stuff my parents listened to. It was there I got introduced to Rod The Bod:
It was where I started to sing about Bad Girls...
I also learned how to rock...
I found Blondie...
And of course... it was where I first heard and loved Journey.
Every Saturday after cartoons were over...
And I had my fill of Sid and Marty Krofft...
And, of course, American Bandstand...
I would retire to my pink paradise of a bedroom, turn up America's Top 40 and lose myself with my toys. Over the course of my childhood, I had collected a few favorites. One was my Fisher-Price Little People house...
Along with the Fisher-Price Little People village...
And my McDonalds playset...
With these toys, I could create an entire world. And it was kinda the best thing ever.
Now, whether it was the fact that I was regularly watching General Hospital by 1979...
Or the sexy new rock-n-roll (devil's music) I was indulging, or the fact that I had been exposed to things well beyond my young years by the grand ol' age of nine, I had no real interest in telling fairy tales.
(Still don't.)
The stories that compelled me were the ones that colored outside the lines of my 1970s, conservative, religious, southern background. Instead... I wanted to mix things up a bit.
This girl....
...decided to tell stories that involved interracial relationships, teen runaways and *gasp* living in sin.
If you are familiar with my writing, this will come as NO surprise. If you're new to my writing, this serves as a broad warning of what you're in for.
During the summer of 1979, my pig-tailed redheaded LP ran away from her nice, Suburban home and family to live with her African-American boyfriend in the city. In telling this story, I sympathized with that teen character. She fell in love and wanted to live a life of her own, free from the shackles of her conservative family.
That, in a nutshell, is what THIS redheaded, pigtailed girl grew up to do.
This is how I look at the world. Even back then, I didn't care that the Willis' were a mixed-race couple. I didn't bat an eye when Jodie dated men on Soap.
To me, it wasn't odd or icky, it was just different.
And I find different fascinating.
In fact, the more people want to throw shade at things that are different, the more I want to play around with the "why." Why do we, as a society, decide that our expectations of how others should live supersede the happiness of an individual who is living exactly the way they want? It's the fence around anyone who dares to march to the beat of their own drum, and even at 9, I knew that was the kind of person I wanted to be.
So I've been rattling cages for a LONG, LONG time.
Nothing has thrilled me more in my life than fucking with expectations. If it is forbidden, for no other reason than a group of people has decided that it should be (i.e., it harms no one, just makes people who are different uncomfortable), then I want to splash around in those waters. And I kinda really don't care who I get wet in the process.
When talking with my BFF earlier this week, talking about these early stories that were there WAY before I even knew I had any kind of affinity to write them down, I immediately wanted to share this on the blog. The most common question I'm asked as an author is, "When did you decide to become a writer?"
The truth of the matter is I made no such decision. I was born a storyteller (and hell-raiser) and simply learned the skills that would best serve that inner calling.
Thanks to all of YOU I am privileged to do this for a living, which is mind-BOGGLING and quite humbling. That girl is a lot older now, and her entire existence is playing with mental toys to create fictional worlds that hopefully - if I'm doing my job right - will help people who are different have a voice, and people who are new to different learn that these things aren't really all that different after all.
Every story has the capacity to be beautiful. And everyone gets to define their happily ever after. These are the only rules I follow.
Thanks to all of you, I can spread this message on a much grander scale that I could have ever imagined way back in 1979.
In honor of this musical #TBT, your featured freebie for the week is GROUPIE, which Maryse, of Maryse's Book Blog, called a "FANTASTIC frenzy inducer!!!!!"
Pick up your copy of GROUPIE, the first book of my first published trilogy, on Amazon, B&N, iTunes, Kobo, or Smashwords.
See you next week, when we'll talk a bit about my scandalous Barbies. ;)
