I've been waiting for this giveaway, as it is as Mevember as you can possibly get: THE LEFTOVER CLUB.
This timey wimey tale of romance and the long, arduous journey to self-acceptance allowed me to play in many sandboxes, reliving several eras of my own personal timeline going all the way back to 1976, when our heroine Roni Lawless loses her beloved dad. I lost my dad a little later, in 1980, but there were other deliberate Easter Eggs hidden all the way through the book, from the music I listened to, the shows I watched, the movies I loved. Gay best friend, check. Bullies at the school bus stops, check. Mother and Roni rooming with another single woman to make ends meet, making pseudo siblings of their kids, check. Painful crush on the popular, good looking boy who kept the chubby girl locked up safe in the Friend Zone, checkity check check.
That scenario has played out MANY times in my life, all the way till adulthood. I literally wrote a book on the subject.
Truth be told, I did get my first crush in 1976, with a smart, popular, cute boy who would remain my friend for the next several years to come, who would kiss me on a dare on a playground. In TLC, I was able to put his face on several of the encounters I faced throughout the 1980s, when I ping-ponged through every Mr. Wrong in the book to fill the bottomless hole left by my dad's passing.
I was much, much kinder to Roni, because she actually got to have those encounters with the boy she wanted most.
Needless to say, 15-year-old Ginger had a ball with this story, especially indulging all that delicious angst with the hottest boy in school - Dylan Fenn. Dylan was all crushes rolled into one - and Roni got to LIVE with him throughout her formative years, having a domino effect on everything that followed - including some of the girls who befriended her JUST to get close to her hot guy friend.
I've actually written several books on THAT subject, but today's offering tops the list. The whole social construct was based on those who could capture Dylan's attention, and those who couldn't... i.e., The Leftovers.
Things get complicated as everyone graduates and moves on. Roni matures into womanhood and marries a Mr. Wrong because it isn't Dylan Fenn. She has her beloved daughter Meghan and six years later the marriage (thankfully) implodes, leaving Roni a lonely single mom with a bitter child all the way up in to the 21st Century. That's when all the Leftovers get a chance to both reunite at a high school reunion AND get a chance at the hottest boy in school... something Roni has been virtually running away from her entire life.
There's only one thing more frightening than having an unrequited
crush. That's taking the chance to ever find out if they are crushing
back.
If you ever had that one unrequited love you can't forget, this is the book for you. If you are a Gen Xer who wants to go on a trip down memory lane, this is a book for you. If you're older and want to read about second chance romance, this is a book for you. In fact, whether you're new adult or a divorcee, we cover it all.
If you are a Groupiephile, this is DEFINITELY a book for you, as Meghan will be playing a huge part in the next three Groupie Books. If you read BEAUTY AND THE BITCH, you already know she is going to slide into Vanni's inner circle. If you read PEACHES AND THE DUKE, you know what complications it's going to bring that Meghan has a massive crush on him.
Is she going to get to the hottest guy in the Groupieverse? Or will she repeat her mom's legacy as a Leftover? Only time will tell. This book will introduce you to her and the backstory making her a prime target for hope and heartache in the Renown series coming in 2021.
He is Jake Ryan. If you understand that reference, this book is the PERFECT book for you.
Nice guy or douche?
He's a douche who thinks he's a nice guy. Or a nice guy who doesn't realize he's being a douche. It goes either way.
Favorite moment with him?
Here's what you have to understand about The Leftover Club. It is my ode to unrequited love. That era of unblemished hope of things that might come is quite a remarkable thing. Every moment carries delicious weight. Time loses all meaning. Every comment is reexamined and reanalyzed into perpetuity. Every near-touch, every breathless moment wondering might end in a kiss, makes the heart stop and the mind race. That shit is intoxicating to me, almost more so than the conquest in many ways. So I decided to devote a book to it. Dylan is a mix of every crush I've ever had, every guy that "got away." He's based on my first kiss on a schoolyard, that first "real" kiss by a pool, that boy who was extra nice to me because he wanted to "let me down easy" when I chased him around like a puppy, that guy who "saw" me and didn't run away, virtually making one of the darkest times in my life more bearable, and his echo I find in several guys that followed. He's that guy I loved/wanted without telling, but he always knew, and he still made me feel special, less weird and okay even if he didn't feel the same way.
In a way, they were all that guy. So it's fitting that they all found their way into Dylan Fenn.
There's no way I could pick a favorite if I tried.
Dylan grabbed my arm and propelled me out toward his car. He said nothing as he unlocked the door and thrust me in the passenger seat. He revved the engine once he got in, and then screeched around in an illegal U-turn as he pointed the car towards home.
“That was stupid, Roni,” he finally muttered once we hit the Pacific Coast Highway. “You can’t go alone with guys like that. They’re only after one thing.”
“Not from me,” I said softly.
“From anyone,” he corrected. “All those guys want is an easy lay.”
“I’m not an easy lay,” I snapped. “I’m a virgin.”
He stole a brief glance. “For now.”
I was starting to get angry. “What is that supposed to mean?”
He sighed. “Insecure virgins are a number one target.”
“You’d know,” I snapped.
He pulled off the main road and headed down toward the beach, pulling into the parking lot and killing the engine. He swiveled to face me from his bucket seat. “Is that the kind of guy you think I am?”
I held his gaze for as long as I dared. Finally I looked away. “I don’t know what kind of guy you are.”
“I’m a guy who cares about you,” he said softly, which forced me to look at him again. “I don’t want to see you get hurt.”
It was hollow comfort. I had been hopelessly infatuated with Dylan Fenn since I saw him ace a spelling bee in the first grade. A lot of good that had done me over the years.
Silence stretched on indeterminately between us until finally he said, “Truth or dare?”
My eyes met his. “What?”
“Truth or dare?” he repeated.
“There are no merry-go-rounds here,” I pointed out.
He conceded that point with a nod of his head. Then he reached across me to pull a joint from the glove box. He lit it up, inhaled deep, and then handed it to me. I took it begrudgingly and gingerly took a hit. “Hold it in,” he instructed, and I did. “Good. Give it a few minutes and you’ll feel like you’re right back on that merry-go-round.”
After I finished coughing and sputtering, I leaned back against my seat and closed my eyes. Just like he said, within minutes I felt like I was flying.
“Truth or dare?” he repeated softly.
I didn’t bother to open my eyes. “Truth.”
“Would you have slept with Todd if he had asked?”
I exhaled slowly. “I don’t know,” I finally said. And that was the God’s honest truth. “It’s not like anyone has ever asked.”
“I think you’re forgetting something,” he said softly.
I glared at him. “That wasn’t a real kiss.”
A long moment passed before either of us spoke. “You’re right,” he finally conceded. “It wasn’t. We were just kids and it was just a silly dare.”
Though I long suspected it, it hurt to hear him say so. I started to look away but his hand curled around the back of my neck and pulled me back. “This is a real kiss,” he said before he leaned toward me and his mouth landed on mine.
I was in shock. I gasped, which parted my lips, a clear invitation for him to deepen the kiss. I tasted the alcohol on his tongue as it slid between my lips and meshed with mine. Inside I went up just like a roman candle. A rush of emotion flooded over me and I had no clue what to do with it. I sat rigid in my seat, as if I moved, or even breathed, I’d wake up lip-to-lip once again with my pillow.
His fingers tangled in my hair as he deepened the kiss, a moan of his own locked in his throat. His breathing was ragged as he broke apart. I knew my eyes were big and wide as I stared at him, unsure what to do next. He sighed as his eyes scanned my face. Gently he brushed my hair from my face before planting a long, lingering peck on my lips.
Without another word, he scooted back to his seat, started the car and pulled out of the lot towards home.
What do you love about him?
Like I said, he's a combination of all my unrequited crushes. Like the very first boy who turned my head when I was six, he is smart. Like my first great "love" when I was twelve, he is as funny as he is sweet. He looks like an idol, and makes me swoon like one too. Yet he's accessible, just close enough to touch even though I know I shouldn't. He's everything I wanted, when all I could do was want it, silently and from afar. He is everything I fear might be too good for me.
What do you hate about him?
He is walking angst. You never know where he's coming from, even if you think you do. He's just as scared of getting close as you are, so the missed opportunities stack up, which makes him want to give up entirely. Instead he'll chase after things that feed his ego, because that's how he copes. Deep inside he's still an abandoned little boy.
If you went on a date, where would you go?
We'd picnic on a forgotten merry-go-round in an abandoned park.
Who inspired him?
The better question is who *didn't*. I will say this much: the "club" is very much a real thing.
Who might play him in a movie?
If we're going for "the ultimate boy," I guess we could go with...
Do you have a special song that reminds you of him?
Oh, the songs...
All the songs...
SO many songs...
Ultimately, though... there could be only one.
Any "Easter Eggs" planted with this book boyfriend?
You'd be hard-pressed to find something that WASN'T an Easter Egg in this story. That first kiss story was lifted right out of my "real" life. My dad died when I was young, which left me with a big hole in my life to fill. This was done best by my childhood friend, who just happened to be gay. At one point, my mom and I lived with another family, a divorcee and her two kids. (He was also the cutest boy in that grade, which meant I had a TON of new "girlfriends" as a result.) That scene with the high school coach was based on real events. Most of the things Roni loved, I loved, from the shows that she watched to the music she listened to. I embellished a LOT, so no experience is *exactly* the same, but there couldn't have been more of me poured into it if I wanted.
Where can we find him?
THE LEFTOVER CLUB. For now, anyway. A reader asked me if I would consider writing a story about Meghan, and, given how old she'd be right now, that is certainly a possibility. I think she'd fit into my Groupie Universe quite nicely, actually.
Until then, you can take a stroll back in time and read The Leftover Club, which is free today only.
Okay. Confession. The idea behind THE LEFTOVER CLUB, which gave birth to today's book boyfriend, Dylan Fenn, was created in part to "rewrite" several instances in my past where I, myself, was Queen of the Unwanted.
I preach all the time that anyone can find love and live the life of their dreams no matter what size they are, and I believe that 100%. But all the same, I am human and I do live in a culture where my appearance isn't necessarily prized. I've been stuffed into The Friend Zone more times than you could count, having been told by EVERY crush trying to let me down easy that "The man who gets you will be so lucky."
I know a fair amount about being rejected by the people you want most.
So I re-invented myself as a completely new character, Roni Lawless, who shared many things in common with me. Her dad died when she was a kid, just like mine. She was raised basically an only child by a single mom, just like me. She had to share her home with another family, just to make ends meet, just like us. She got her first kiss on a playground based on a dare, just like me. She was humiliated in high school PE by a ruthless PE coach who wanted to make an example out of her, just like me. Her best friend was gay, which opened her up to brand new experiences and perspectives she never would have had otherwise, just like me. Her first marriage ended in divorce, just like mine. (My husband wasn't as big of an asshole as Roni's was, but there was a bit of the same anti-fat tough love going on, which only made the fat thing worse... just like me.) She surrounded herself with other outcasts, just to have a place to belong, united in the shared rejection over That Guy, which lasted sadly long into adulthood. Just like me.
Most of all she pined for years over a boy who, by all conventional expectations anyway, shouldn't want her due to her size. While this manwhore adored her as a friend, she got delegated to the very exclusive group of people who *didn't* get to sleep with him, to commiserate together as they watched other people (and generally unworthy people) walk away with the prize of affection, getting all the glory without any of the hard work that comes from loving someone unconditionally.
Just.
Like.
Me.
When I developed Dylan Fenn, I decided that, UNLIKE me, Roni should get her chance to be chosen by the boy who should never, ever choose her. I dug way deep in my history to unearth those frighteningly awkward teenage moments, all in an effort to shade in the memories with a little more hope. A "missed opportunity" is a lot easier to swallow than outward rejection, after all.
If you want to criticize me for overly indulgent writing, in this case it actually might prove true. There's so much "me" in this book it's ridiculous. Well, the old me, anyway. The one who never believed anything good could ever happen to her. She rears her head every once and a while still, despite all my successes and how far I've come. She whispers in my ear whenever I want to try something new to temper my expectations, because the good stuff really doesn't happen to me, at least not for very long.
I'm sure this is no doubt tied to the clinical depression I've suffered with pretty much my whole life. That's why Roni's turning point is to seek therapy, to figure out why she continually self-sabotages.
It all comes back losing her father when she was a vulnerable child. Just like me, she had to wonder what the point of being happy was, when inevitably something wretched always comes along to destroy it. It seemed like the happier I was, the more traumatic the catastrophe. That's a scary place for a kid. And it helps cultivate scared adults.
In the end, her HEA wasn't necessarily about getting the hottest guy on her planet to love her as much as it took her learning to love herself.
Let's just say I'm working on it. Thankfully I was several steps ahead of Roni in righting this particular internal wrong, so there were parts of this story that were hard to tell. Seeing as how so much of it occurred in the past, including those confusing 80s as a lonely teenager, and the tumultuous 90s as a clueless adult, there was no getting away from that kind of self-examination. Making stupid mistakes in hindsight is a lot harder than you'd think.
The only way to get through it was to keep it as upbeat as possible, hence why I decided to write a story in bemused, nostalgic flashbacks. I could lean heavily on the music and movies and pop culture of the time, which immediately connected me to any reader who shared those common experiences. And since she was stronger than I ever was at that age, I made Roni a lot like what I had always wanted to be. She did all those high school things I never did. She graduated high school and went straight to college, like I always regretted not doing.
And then there's Dylan.
What can I tell you about Dylan?
Dylan Fenn is That Guy. He's the quarterback of the football team, he's the big man on campus, he's the star on the verge of breaking out. He's every guy you ever wanted that you thought was too far out of your league to seriously pursue. He's got every possible advantage, except for a father who loved him. This has dogged him his whole life, with only Roni there to understand his pain.
I wanted to tell him I was sorry that his dad flaked out again, but I learned a long time ago that he didn’t like to talk about that kind of thing. Instead it was time for Operation: Distraction. “So what movie do you want to see?”
“I don’t know. I’m not really in the mood to see a movie.”
“Oh,” I said. “What do you want to do?”
“I want to see my dad,” he said.
I turned my head to look at him. That softly worded confession was unexpected. I saw a tear at the corner of his eye.
“Why doesn’t he want me, Roni?”
I turned over on my side and propped up on my elbow. I didn’t know what to say, or do.
He turned on his side to face me, mirroring my posture by propping up on his elbow. “Sometimes I think you’re the lucky one. Your dad didn’t leave you on purpose.”
“Still hurts,” I pointed out.
“Yeah, I know,” he said.
“And your dad can change his mind someday. He can come back.”
His dark eyes were big and sad. “He won’t.”
I didn’t know what to do so I reached for his hand, just to let him know I’d always be there for him, no matter what. He smiled. So did I.
Despite this inward pain, outwardly he's everything That Guy should be. He's hot, he wears all the right clothes, he hangs out with the right people. He's charming so people forgive him when he cycles through girlfriends like tissue paper. He's smart, but not arrogant. He's good looking without being egotistical. Thanks to his absent daddy's money, it looks as if his whole life is wrapped up in a big sparkly bow. Why should anyone like this settle for the high school reject?
Dylan grabbed my arm and propelled me out toward his car. He said nothing as he unlocked the door and thrust me in the passenger seat. He revved the engine once he got in, and then screeched around in an illegal U-turn as he pointed the car towards home.
“That was stupid, Roni,” he finally muttered once we hit the Pacific Coast Highway. “You can’t go alone with guys like that. They’re only after one thing.”
“Not from me,” I said softly.
“From anyone,” he corrected. “All those guys want is an easy lay.”
“I’m not an easy lay,” I snapped. “I’m a virgin.”
He stole a brief glance. “For now.”
I was starting to get angry. “What is that supposed to mean?”
He sighed. “Insecure virgins are a number one target.”
“You’d know,” I snapped.
He pulled off the main road and headed down toward the beach, pulling into the parking lot and killing the engine. He swiveled to face me from his bucket seat. “Is that the kind of guy you think I am?”
I held his gaze for as long as I dared. Finally I looked away. “I don’t know what kind of guy you are.”
“I’m a guy who cares about you,” he said softly, which forced me to look at him again. “I don’t want to see you get hurt.”
It was hollow comfort. I had been hopelessly infatuated with Dylan Fenn since I saw him ace a spelling bee in the first grade. A lot of good that had done me over the years.
Silence stretched on indeterminately between us until finally he said, “Truth or dare?”
My eyes met his. “What?”
“Truth or dare?” he repeated.
“There are no merry-go-rounds here,” I pointed out.
He conceded that point with a nod of his head. Then he reached across me to pull a joint from the glove box. He lit it up, inhaled deep, and then handed it to me. I took it begrudgingly and gingerly took a hit. “Hold it in,” he instructed, and I did. “Good. Give it a few minutes and you’ll feel like you’re right back on that merry-go-round.”
After I finished coughing and sputtering, I leaned back against my seat and closed my eyes. Just like he said, within minutes I felt like I was flying.
“Truth or dare?” he repeated softly.
I didn’t bother to open my eyes. “Truth.”
“Would you have slept with Todd if he had asked?”
I exhaled slowly. “I don’t know,” I finally said. And that was the God’s honest truth. “It’s not like anyone has ever asked.”
“I think you’re forgetting something,” he said softly.
I glared at him. “That wasn’t a real kiss.”
A long moment passed before either of us spoke. “You’re right,” he finally conceded. “It wasn’t. We were just kids and it was just a silly dare.”
Though I long suspected it, it hurt to hear him say so. I started to look away but his hand curled around the back of my neck and pulled me back. “This is a real kiss,” he said before he leaned toward me and his mouth landed on mine.
Despite all the starts and stops in their childhood, Dylan and Roni would have likely orbited in the same galaxy had Roni not gotten married. But... old flames die hard, especially with someone like That Guy. It doesn't take much to blur the lines.
Dylan stood to face me. “I didn’t expect to see you here,” he grinned. “You look great.”
“Thanks,” I said as I glanced him over. “Ditto on both counts.”
He laughed. “Thanks. I just came by to drop off Mom’s famous banana bread. She made a thousand loaves, as usual.”
I chuckled. I remembered well overdosing on Bonnie’s famous recipe over the years.
“Do you have a minute, or are you on your way back out?” he asked, looking over my attire which was far too fancy for a night at my mom’s.
“I was leaving, yeah,” I said. “But it was good to see you.”
Those familiar dark eyes were warm as they stared back at me. “You, too. Let’s get together sometime, okay?”
“Absolutely,” I promised, though I had no intention of doing so. I couldn’t afford yet another liability if I was going to try and save my marriage. I waved goodbye to my stepfather and hugged my mom and Meghan goodbye before I headed back out to my car.
I waited until I got back into the driver’s seat before I called Wade. My plan was simple. I was going to ask him to dinner, and we’d have a respectable date where I would promise that I would do whatever he wanted if he would just come home. Meghan needed him. And that was all that mattered.
But when the phone picked up, it was not Wade on the other end. A woman answered, which was odd, considering it was the direct line to his private hotel suite. “Hello?” she answered.
I didn’t say anything at first, but then, before I could stop myself, I said, “Julia?”
“Yes,” she confirmed. “Who is this?”
There was a slight muffling sound before Wade’s voice filled the line. “This is Wade Connor.”
“This is Veronica Connor,” I gritted. “You know. Your wife.”
He sighed. “It’s not what you think, Roni.”
“Right,” I scoffed. “You won’t let me go to a public place with my friends but you allow a woman in your hotel room?”
“There are several people in my room. We’re attending a function this evening and we decided to meet early.”
“And she just randomly answers the phone?”
“I asked her to,” he answered coolly. I didn’t reply. “What did you want, Roni?”
“I wanted to invite my husband to dinner so that we could work on our marriage.”
“Tonight is out of the question,” he dismissed. “I have prior engagements.”
The streetlight glanced off my two-carat diamond ring. “Yeah. I thought I was one of them.”
“Roni…,” he started.
“Goodbye, Wade.” I disconnected the call, threw the phone onto the passenger side of the car and burst into tears. How did it all go so fucking wrong?
I heard a tap on my window. I turned to see Dylan hunched beside my car. I wiped my tears away and rolled down my window. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I lied as I smeared more of my makeup by wiping away the tears.
He wasn’t convinced. I could feel his eyes as they scanned my face. “Want to talk about it?”
I shook my head. “I really should go back inside.”
“I thought you were leaving.”
I couldn’t even face him. Tears cut a path down both cheeks. He said nothing further as he opened my door and pulled me out by the hand. I grabbed my purse, but left my phone, and allowed Dylan to lead me toward his Mustang.
It was like old times. He was in the driver’s seat and I was along for the ride. He blasted his music, that familiar heavy rock sound that he had always loved. He merged onto Interstate 5 going north toward Los Angeles. “Where are we going?”
“I know a place,” he said with that grin that still made my knees tingle.
Unlike That Guy, who works only for a season and then you outgrow him like last year's fashion, Dylan is the only constant in Roni's life, despite their long-simmering non-affair. It's a love affair that stretches over decades, because that's how long it took both of them to grow the hell up, despite having each other to lean on for all those years.
“I could not have done this without you. You know that, right?”
I shrugged. “Call Emma and thank her. She was the one who recommended you. We just brokered the deal.”
He chuckled and shook his head. “You’re never going to take credit for anything you do, are you?”
“Credit. Blame. Talk to me in three months, when you’re digging swamp bugs out of your teeth.”
He laughed. They started filming in early January, clear across the country in a small town in Florida. This was good news for me because it meant for six weeks solid, I wouldn’t have to have Dylan Fenn thrown into my face by my family, my friends and life in general.
But it wasn’t January yet.
“We should do something to celebrate this auspicious occasion.”
I shook my head. “Can’t. I have to get home to the kid.”
“So bring her. I don’t think I’ve seen her since she was six. Remember?”
I rolled my eyes. Remembering was not my problem these days. I was reliving every painful experience from my past as that damnable twenty-year reunion loomed. “I have a strict policy not to involve my daughter in my social life. My ex-husband does that enough for both of us,” I added bitterly.
He sighed before he leaned across my desk, linking his hands together as he cornered me in a direct gaze. “Roni, I want to see you. I want to spend time with you. I want to fit in your life somewhere. It’s not a date. It’s not marriage. It’s just friends hanging out. I’m pretty sure she’s old enough to understand that. You should give her a little credit. Me, too, for that matter. And yourself most of all.” He paused before he added, “You deserve a life of your own. It’s okay to be happy.”
But oh... what a ride. Definitely worth going through a second time around.
As for who I would cast, I wouldn't. Everyone but everyone has their own definition of That Guy. (Or that Girl. We're inclusive here around these parts.) Whatever that person was, that holy grail of attraction, the one you thought you'd never get, you can put his (or her) face in the blank spaces.
This is the book for every outcast, every reject, every scorned, friend-zoned, nice guy/girl who never turned That Guy's eye, not for real, not the way it counted.
So raise your glasses, you beautiful weirdos. The book for your HEA is here at last.
Check out THE LEFTOVER CLUB, which is available free to read through Kindle Unlimited. And, for today only, EVERYONE can download a copy FOR FREE!
As I search my brain for Christmas memories to share, it dawns on me that there are many blank spots in the canvas of holidays past that I don't really remember. My childhood is compartmentalized in my memory as Before Dad Died and After Dad Died. The memories of before my dad died have somehow edited themselves out to smooth out the scar of his absence. I remember bits and pieces, the really good stuff, while ignoring most of the bad.
Truthfully, Decembers kinda worked out to be bad for a couple of important years there around his death. My Grandma died December 11, 1978, which dawns on me now how hard it must have been for my mother to get through that Christmas I talked about yesterday. In 1979, my mother was ill, having to be hospitalized due to a hysterectomy. Needless to say, there wasn't a big celebration that year. My dad died December 19, 1980, which kind of brings me to my theme today.
Despite all the trials my family went through, many of my memories of the Christmases past were all mostly positive. My parents probably fought very hard for that to be so. There were presents under the tree. There was a tree. There was tradition, to make me feel safe and secure, which is probably why we as humans fight so very hard to hang onto it.
The last big Christmas we photographed was in 1981, which tested our traditions in an unexpected way. We had moved across town into a new house, a big four-bedroom that we shared with a coworker of my mom's, along with her two young kids, a 16-year-old daughter and a 10-year-old son. I was twelve, so right in between.
I shared a room with the daughter, which was a brand new experience for me. Her name was Beth, and I both hated her and wanted to be her. She was pretty, and popular, and so damn cool it made me crazy. I had only recently begun to learn that I wasn't perfect, like my Daddy would have me believe. Other voices had filled the void he left, mostly peers at school. You know how that goes.
Well, I suspected that Beth really was perfect, and I was eaten up inside with envy. She made young adulthood look so easy to get right, from the perfect flip of her painstakingly styled hair to catching the eye of a 16-year-old boy I happened to crush on in THE worst way. I didn't make it easy for her to like me. I was a bit of a pill back in the day. (Let's face it. Still am.) Her brother, Ronnie, was really my only friend, though HIS friends usually made me the butt of their jokes whenever possible.
Really, with him, it was like I had a brother. Given I had always wanted one, this was fine by me.
When their Grandma came to visit from the Midwest, I had high hopes for that, too. But I was about to learn some big lessons on compromise. Namely - what it means to live peacefully with people who refused to make any.
It all started with the Christmas tree. Our trees in the past were colorful, usually taking two complimentary colors and pairing them together to make the tree more striking, like the blue and yellow silk bulbs on the 1978 Christmas tree.
Their tradition, however, involved only one color. Red.
I wasn't feeling it. The whole palette bored me to tears. I wanted a little variety, a little excitement. They wanted it decorator perfect. I realize that red is perfectly Christmasy. I wasn't trying to be a pain in the ass when I no doubt tried to plead my case. I probably wouldn't have minded if there were other colors in there, but red, red, red and more red?
Meh.
But when you're forced to live with folks you might not have anything, really, in common with... certain complications arise. The best you can ever do is make the best of it.
As you can see from the perfectly color-coordinated tree, it was a battle I lost, though I can't remember why. Maybe it was their tree. Maybe I just didn't want to make a huge deal about it. Sometimes it's just easier to keep the peace, although I can't imagine I was all that peaceful back then. We may not have been related, but Beth and I had skirmishes that rivaled those of Becky and Darlene Conner from TV's Roseanne.
Needless to say we didn't live together very long. They had moved out by the end of school in 1982, and we were back in Abilene before the summer was over, back in the house we owned but had rented out for income.
The Christmases after that weren't well-documented. Limited income brings a whole new set of complications. No money for film OR cameras probably topped that list, along with my mother's retail work schedule, which no doubt played havoc with any kind of holiday traditions like, oh I dunno, being home to share it with someone.
Christmas doesn't fill in until 1987, when I had a job of my own, and could participate in the gift-giving, photograph-taking, damned-if-I'm-gonna-remember-this-holiday festivities.
As you can tell from this fuzzy photo, Dan wasn't quite feeling it.
The point is the memories are scattered, like memories get sometimes. You pull forward what you need when you need it, and store the rest for safe-keeping.
That's kinda what I've always had to do to manage, when it came to my past, when it came to my Dad... when it came to all those lean years afterwards.
Last year I worked some of this out in a book called THE LEFTOVER CLUB, which turned out to be one of my most personal stories yet. I leaned heavily into my past to craft the plot, with several scenes based upon actual events, even if they were enhanced for effect. This included two single moms who lived together, with their kids, to make ends meet.
Of course I took some literary license. Like I've said, my books give me a chance to work through the past and create a better future, if for my characters alone. Nowhere is this truer than with THE LEFTOVER CLUB.
This book goes in and out, jumping back and forth, between the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, which made it a lot of fun to write. It was also very healthy to remember, no matter how the pieces fell into place.
I almost didn't finish that book. Roni was me sixteen years ago, and I barely recognized her anymore. There have been a lot of new memories to fill in the blanks now. Still... I think it was a positive to finish, and to put that old me to rest once and for all.
The memories are back in the box, stored properly, at the ready if I ever need them.
Better still the future is opened to new memories, one with enough room for a multi-colored Christmas tree that isn't any more perfect than I am.
Which could be why it makes me so happy.
FAVORITE CHRISTMAS SONG
Since we're on a nostalgia kick anyway... how about some favorites that defined the decades?
JEFF N' GINGER'S HOLIDAY WHOOVIE
Okay. I'll admit it. There's a reason that I'm waxing fairly nostalgic today. One, yes, it is because it's my Dad's birthday. But two, I found a wealth of nostalgic goodness on The History Channel, which is playing a 4-part series of "Christmas Through the Decades." So far, I'm enjoying the 1960s, but I see my day being swallowed up with the 70s, 80s and 90s too.
So... yeah. I highly recommend the Christmas special. I was excited to find it and pleased it didn't let me down. But of course, history holes usually don't. Never stop learning, that's my motto.
And um... yeah. We did have an aluminum tree. Circa 1973:
TODAY'S #BAKEITFORWARD CHRISTMAS RECIPE
I did it! I managed to bake a recipe! It is a family staple, not just around Christmas but *always* at Christmas.
Well, we talked about it a little earlier. My most personal book on one of my most personal days. THE LEFTOVER CLUB is free all day today, December 19.
Here's an excerpt in honor of my dad.
*****
June 7, 1976
I don’t remember what I had been dreaming about first morning of summer break, but I remember that I woke up feeling happy. In fact, if pressed, I’d say I woke up most days feeling that way. I was privileged in the way that I all my basic needs met for a six-year-old in the 1970s. We lived in a nice suburb in a nice two-bedroom house with a big back yard complete with an orange tree. I had a beautiful purple bedroom, with frilly lace and dozens of stuffed animals, as well as a white canopy bed that made me feel just like a princess.
There were pictures of puppies on my wall in matching white lattice frames. It was the closest I could actually come to owning a dog, considering my dad was allergic. It was a grudge I held every time we went to the park just down the street from where we lived, where I watched kids play with pets that would love them unconditionally. In those days, every kid my age wanted a Benji dog, a loveable mutt that was smart enough to be a best friend, but cuddly enough to snuggle with while going to sleep each night.
I woke up as light began to pour through the wispy white curtains behind the darker purple drapes. I might have smiled at my closest ally, my pioneer-themed doll with long, yarn pigtails, a cheerful bonnet and a fabric face with a perpetual smile, who sat in her perch in a white rocking chair by the window. But before I could greet her with, “Good morning, Holly,” my door was creaking open and my mother’s head popped through.
My smile quickly faded when I saw the ravaged look on her face. Her cheeks were puffy and her eyes were red, and my mother – who I had never seen cry – sobbed instantly when she saw my face. I sat a little straighter in bed as she raced to my side, taking me in a powerful hug. “Mama?” I had asked.
“It’s Daddy, baby,” she had said, quickly as if she had to blurt it out or never say it at all. “He’s gone.”
She didn’t say that he died, or passed away, or expired. She simply said he was gone, as if he might come back one day. There was no point in sharing painful details like “fatal brain aneurysm” with a first-grader, who thought every boo-boo could be healed with a bandage and a kiss.
But that he was simply “gone” was equally confusing. I had kissed my smiling father goodnight eleven hours before, and by the time the sun broke he was just… gone? Where did he go? Most importantly, why did he go?
In the week it took to plan the funeral and to bury my father, I waited in that rocking chair with Holly in my lap, staring out the window and praying for my dad to come back. I knew it would never be normal until he did. A pall had fallen over my house, which had once been filled with laughter and hugs and unquestioning, unconditional love; a safe place for any child to grow up. My mother wept almost constantly, continually reminded of her loss no matter where she looked in our home, and of course whenever she looked at me.
Strangers that passed as family paraded through the house, dropping off an unending buffet of comfort food, from mashed potatoes and fried chicken to chocolate cake and apple pie.
And every night that my father failed to return, I would sneak into the kitchen and dig into that food so that I wouldn’t feel so hollow inside. It was an empty, endless ache and I was desperate to find any kind of salve.
I was numb by the time we entered that Gothic chapel at the cemetery where my father would be laid to rest. We rode in a limousine, my hand clasped in my mother’s hand, while she clutched a wet handkerchief with the other.
The chapel was full of flowers that made me sneeze and sad people I did not know. They all gave me a sympathetic look as I followed my mom to the pew in front. I stared at the polished coffin covered in even more flowers, trying to wrap my mind around the idea that my daddy was inside of it. The preacher droned on, but I didn’t hear anything he said. I stood when they sang, I sat for every eulogy. Several people wanted to share with my mother and me how much my dad had meant to them.
“We can’t imagine your loss,” they’d say, over and over again. “Gone too soon.” “So tragic.”
The preacher spoke repeatedly about my daddy being “asleep in the Lord,” that he had gone home to be with Our Heavenly Father. He would never know pain or loss. He was now in paradise waiting for us to join him some day.
He wasn’t dead. It wasn’t final. We’d see each other again.
He was just… “gone.”
Finally the words were spent. Men in suits removed the spray of flowers from his coffin and opened the lid, revealing an ivory satin interior. I followed my mother as we began the procession to view the body and say our final goodbyes. Lying within the box was my Daddy, and he was as young and handsome as he had been in life. It did look as though he was merely sleeping. I stood on my tiptoes to get a better look, watching his chest to see if it moved, watching his face to see if he would give me just one more smile.
Everything was just so painfully still.
When I reached for his hand, my mother smothered her sob in her handkerchief and looked away. I touched his hand, which had been placed onto his other hand on his chest. His skin was cold. His hand was stiff.
It wasn’t my Daddy anymore. I knew it the moment I touched him. I didn’t know who this was, but my Daddy truly was gone.
The days bled together after that. I started to hate my room, my house, my neighborhood, the park. Nothing was bright anymore. Nothing was cheerful. Even my dolls had lost their smiles.
By summer’s end my mother was desperate to pull me out of my funk, especially when it was clear we were going to have to move from the house I had known my whole life. The expenses of Daddy’s healthcare and burial forced us to sell the house to pay the bills, not to mention give us something to live off of while Mom re-entered the workforce for a lot less money than Daddy was making. She introduced me to Bonnie Fenn, and I finally got to meet Dylan. I had noticed him on the very first day of school, when he happened to ace a spelling bee in the first week of first grade.
He was smart and I liked that, at a time when I liked very little because the sun went out in my world.
In a last ditch effort to cheer me up, my mother offered to take me to the pound, to get a puppy at last, hoping maybe that would fill the hole I now had in my heart. But every time I had looked at those puppy photos on my wall, I was reminded yet again of what I no longer had.
I learned at six that love didn’t last forever. Any promise otherwise is a promise doomed to be broken.
So I packed those photos and gave them away. It was easier to give up the dream than to wake up to a nightmare.
I don’t think I smiled again until the fall, when we all sat to watch the annual broadcast of The Wizard of Oz. Dylan pulled me up to act out a scene with the Scarecrow, and didn’t give up until he had me in stitches.
I forgot for a couple of hours I was supposed to be sad.
Yet when I went to bed that night, and cuddled with Holly to go to sleep, I was too terrified to close my eyes. I had laughed. I had been happy. It couldn’t last, I knew. The clock was ticking. The hourglass had been flipped and the sand was falling fast.
I stayed up all night, determined to greet the sun. I couldn’t go to sleep. Bad things happen to happy people when they’re asleep. I’d stay awake and then maybe the boogeyman would skip over our house entirely. Around three o’clock, I crawled into bed with my mom, wrapping my arms around her waist so I could feel her breathe. When I met Dylan for cereal and cartoons that next morning, I was thrilled to see that we’d both made it through the night.
But I knew that I had to guard my heart. I couldn’t risk the rug being pulled out from under me again. Some folks could have the life I saw repeated on TV and in movies, where parents didn’t die and people didn’t move and all problems were fixed in an hour.
I knew that blessed life didn’t apply to me anymore. The promise had been broken. And I’d never believe again.
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
If you need a warning label to read a book, whether for language, sex, emotional trigger topics, the presence of cliffhangers, cheaters or triangles or the absence of a HEA, then this author's books are not the books for you.
He kneeled in between my legs as he slowly took off his shirt, revealing that amazing body as his eyes locked with mine. “Touch yourself,” he commanded softly.
I obeyed by cupping my breast with one hand, tweaking the hard nipple as he unzipped his jeans and slipped a hand inside to grab his prominent erection. He stroked himself slowly as he watched me. I groaned as I watched the head of his cock emerge from the top of his jeans. Want him? I thought I might die without him. I lifted up, reaching for a kiss, tasting myself on his lips and that forceful, driving tongue that pierced my lips.
My fingers fumbled to pull away the final barrier of clothes between us, his jeans and underwear, pulling him back down onto the bed on top of me until he was fitted nicely between my legs. We kissed so hard I could barely remember to breathe. I clasped fistfuls of his hair in my hands as I wrapped my legs around his hips.
This time I reached for the bedside table and fumbled for a condom. He watched me tear that sucker off with my teeth before I slid it onto him, luxuriating in the feeling of how hard he was in my hand. I squeezed and brushed and stroked until his eyes fluttered closed and he shuddered hard.
I felt him kick away the jeans at last as he positioned himself to enter me, which he did with a purposeful thrust that buried him deep inside. We both gasped at how it felt to be one at last, after all these months, all these years… all this time. He trembled against me.
“It could never be this way with anyone else,” he murmured, his eyes dark. “Tell me you know that.”
I nodded.
“My Roni,” he stated as he thrust hard, making me gasp. “I don’t care who you married. I don’t care who you’ve fucked. You’ve always been mine since that very first kiss.”
I nodded again. It was the truth. He branded my heart from the time I was nine. Everyone that followed had been a pale substitute. There would never be anyone else for me but Dylan.
After the club, we hit an all-night hipster diner in Santa Monica. Olive was knuckle-deep in her vegan nachos when she said, “This reminds me of the day we met. Remember?”
Both Bryan and I chuckled as we nodded. “Food’s better,” I quipped as I shoved more of my omelet into my mouth.
Our cute waitress stopped by the table to refill everyone’s water glass. “So is the view,” Olive said with a wink. “Remember when the best we could do was Dylan Fenn?” She laughed, because apparently she thought this was an embarrassing aberration of our youth. “Why were we all so hung up on him?”
“He was beautiful,” Bryan murmured wistfully.
“He was so popular any of his attention validated you by default,” I added.
“And he was completely out of reach,” Olive concluded. “Nothing safer than wanting someone who can’t possibly want you back, is there?”
“He got over that at the ten-year reunion,” Bryan confided. “When he infiltrated the crew.”
Her eyes opened wide. “If it is either one of you bitches I’m going to kick you right in the leftovers.”
Bryan shook his head. “No, we’re members of the crew tried and true.”
“Then who?” she asked before ticking each of us off on her fingers. Finally she put it together. “Charlie? Are you fucking kidding me? How is that even possible?”
I shrugged. “She lost a hundred pounds, bleached her hair and showed up looking like Baby Spice. He was a goner.”
Olive snorted. “Figures. Once a dog, always a dog.” She toyed with the straw in her glass before musing, “But no longer an unattainable one. Interesting.”
“That’s a look of pure evil if I’ve ever seen one,” Bry teased.
“What can I say? I’ve always loved a challenge.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I figured out a way we can make this twenty-year shindig a little more exciting. I think it’s time that all the Leftovers got their chance to sail away on the S.S. Fenn.”
I shook my head. “You’d have the best shot of any of us. I’m still nowhere near his type.”
“And I’m an outy, not an inny,” Bry reminded.
“Trifles,” she dismissed. “The bigger the obstacle, the greater the victory. You guys still talk to Fenn, right?”
“Roni does. She works at the agency that represents him.”
“Perfect! Lemme see your phone.”
“No way,” I protested immediately.
“Don’t be a chicken. This will be fun. Isn’t this the one thing you’ve always wanted?”
Well…
“Come on, come on, come on,” she insisted as she held out her hand. “It’ll be fun. I promise.” Then, with an arched eyebrow, “Have I led you astray so far?”
I sent a beseeching glance to Bry, but he was no help at all. He just shrugged. “It does seem kind of unfair that Charlie had all the fun. If she cracked the code, who’s to say we couldn’t?”
I shrugged. “The plan is inherently flawed. I’m fat and old, she’s a lesbian and you’re a guy. Even if we make the cut by default of our gender, you might not. I don’t think he’s bisexual.”
Another arched eyebrow from Olive. “Neither are you.”
“I don’t think he even knows I’m gay,” Bryan decided suddenly.
“Good,” Olive said. “Let him come to you.”
“How can he not know you’re gay?” I asked. It had been obvious to me even before I knew what gay was.
“One: people see what they want to see,” he told me. “Two: we only hung out together in high school, when I was pretty far back in the closet by necessity. Three: whenever he sees me now, it’s usually as your date.”
“Perfect,” Olive said again. “People are easier to manipulate when they’re jealous.”
“You’re kidding, right? You’re not really seriously suggesting that we make this some covert operation.”
“Operation: Fuck Fenn. I like it,” she grinned. “Now gimme your phone.”
I shook my head. “This is childish. We’re not in high school anymore. We’re all adults. I have a child, for chrissakes.”
“Oh, don’t be so dramatic. Revenge sex can be a lot of fun. Just ask Bry. I’m sure he’s bedded a guy or two who used to call him ‘fag’ in high school.”
“She has me there,” he grinned.
“And nobody here has to sleep with him. You just have to make him want to sleep with you. To finally win the desire of the one who got away. You can reel him into the boat and throw him back immediately, kind of like he did to everyone in high school. Call it poetic justice. And you, my friend,” she said to me, “need to finally figure it out that you’re more than worthy to sit at the cool kids’ table.”
Bry nodded. “She’s right, Roni. You’ve been measuring yourself by his ruler long enough. Isn’t about time the tables turned?”
I shook my head. This was lunacy.
“You don’t know how liberating it is to defeat the fears that have chased you from your childhood. Bryan and I had big fears, about being accepted for being different. It was a more dangerous world for us to finally embrace and ultimately celebrate what set us apart. In your head, sleeping with Dylan is that mile you never ran. That trophy you never won. Imagine how much your life would change if you could finally figure out the only obstacles you have in front of you are the ones you’ve put there all along?”
I hesitated. She was right about that. Being singled out by Dylan had shaded my whole identity as I came of age. If he didn’t want me, who would? It was probably why I settled for so much less than I deserved with Wade. And it was neither Dylan’s nor Wade’s fault that I did so.
I decided a long time ago I wasn’t good enough for the ultimate boy, so it was okay for others to shortchange me as well, including my very own daughter.
“Come on. I don’t have cable. Throw me a fucking bone,” she added with a grin.
I sighed. “Fine. You win.” I handed her my phone.
She was mighty proud of herself as she scrolled through my contact list, landing at last on the object of our new, weird, impossible mission. “And that, my friends, is how you get someone to do what they don’t want to do. Take notes. There will be a test.”
She stuck her tongue out at us before she texted something to Dylan and handed the phone back to me.
I glanced down at the screen.
“Some old friends are treating me to dollar beer at the Karaoke Klubhouse tomorrow night, eight sharp. You are cordially invited.”
It only took a minute for Dylan to reply.
“Sounds like fun, count me in.”
I half-glared at Olive, who returned once again to her heap of nachos with a wide, shit-eating grin on her face.
