After 31 books and a score of romantic heroes, I think it’s safe to say that Giovanni Carnevale is my most popular and beloved Book Boyfriend. He is, after all, the guy who launched my career in 2012, after I published Rock Star, the second book in my Groupie Series.
Without him, there’d be no me. He is a very sexy cornerstone to the mansion of sex and inclusive romance I have painstakingly built one book at a time. And for many of my readers, it all circles back to Vanni. We all get excited whenever he pops up. He is, quite simply, larger than life.
I figure the reason for this is that he was brewing for a long, long time before he hit the page.
You could say that even though fictional Vanni was born December 21, 1978, the concept of Vanni was born around 1987, because that was where Ginger, The Groupie, was just hitting her stride.
Honestly, Vanni was an amalgamation of several crushes, and we’ll get to all of them eventually, but Michael Hutchence was definitely an important part of the Triad that brought this particular character to life. (Two celebrity and one personal.)
We'll start with Michael because he came first.
Technically, Vanni was first conceived when I saw Steve Perry sauntering down into the audience to sing for a swooning fan who didn’t know what to do with herself once a sexy rocker turned his attention her way. Labor and delivery, however, happened much later - during the MTV era, when I first saw the INXS video Need You Tonight,
I was older, arguably more experienced, and would have a little more idea what to do with a male admiration than I did when I was eleven, so it packed an even bigger punch. I suddenly wanted to be a part of it. When he was whispered, "Come over here," which I maintain is one of the sexiest things that can be whispered, I was a goner. And those EYES. My God. Those eyes. I was defenseless. When he sang, I *wanted* to sing back. I turned it into a call and response song all on my very own.
So slide over here
And give me a moment
Your moves are so raw
I've got to let you know
I've got to let you know KNOW WHAT?
You're one of my kind
I need you tonight WHY?
'Cause I'm not sleeping BUT WHY ME?
There's something about you girl
That makes me sweat
I was about 17 at the time, and still waiting for my MTV, watching the popular music video channel at any and every opportunity. Like any kid from my era, these came to affect how I listened to music. Gone were the days when I could interpret the song my way. Instead, I had a visual reference to enhance my listening experience.
Back in the 80s, it didn’t ALWAYS happen that way… some videos were… distracting. But for INXS and their sexy, enigmatic lead singer, Michael Hutchence, the medium was the perfect conduit to launch them into the stratosphere.
To be blunt, Michael was living, breathing, walking, talking sex. He took the smoldering intensity of Jim Morrison and turned it up to 11. He was wild. Untamable. And, like many other folks back in the day, I had a very primal reaction ride that wild stallion for all it was worth. I wanted to be the girl he sang about. He was larger than life, and all an invisible girl like me wanted was to be important enough to catch his eye.
Could I ever be that kind of girl? When you’re 17, and the whole world is in front of you, and all those questions are still unanswered… anything is possible. This fuels the Groupie dream.
And I had plenty of time to daydream about it, particularly in 1987. MTV gave me great fodder for my budding fantasies. When I found folks whose intensity seemed to match mine, I took attention... because when it comes down to it, THAT Is what attracts me, far more than any physical attribute.
I prefer someone whose soul is on fire, because THAT is the truest temptation.
Eventually that intensity took its toll on Michael, as did his wild rocker life. He exited this world amidst rumor and speculation, which only fed his larger than life persona. Once the debris settled, we know that he died a broken 37-year-old, whose excesses finally surpassed his pain.
That inspired Vanni as well.
When I set out to write Groupie, I wanted to keep it real. Real is grittier, but it's also more interesting to me. Like, way more. I get the whole fantasy part of romance, but, as a storyteller, I needed conflict to keep me going after they get together. I could write a super explicit sexcapade and that would scratch a specific itch, but it hardly motivates me to sit down at the computer and crank out 100K words. In fact, it left me wondering, where do we go from HERE? N' I'm all for scratching those itches, but stories demand buildup and payoff in equal measure.
Suddenly it occurred to me THAT is where the story really lay hidden, out of sight. Waiting.
I was raised on Moonlighting and Luke & Laura, remember. I knew that getting them together could risk the loss of dramatic tension – which is death to a storyteller. Rewriting the same sex scene over and over again would make for some kickass spank bank material, but a redundantly boring book, at least for me, Reader #1.
And I know this because I TRIED this, and the story that demanded to be told could not be denied.
Confession, and a spoiler if you haven’t yet read my Groupie trilogy, I struggled greatly over whether they should sleep together right away or not. It was something I deliberated, much like the ending to the first book.
Originally, I had planned for my heroine, Andy, to meet Vanni just as his star started to rise. They would have a crazy affair, driven from city to city, and the feelings would just organically grow and voila, end of book HEA.
My hand to God, that was my original intent.
I quickly grew bored of this concept, right around that first rendezvous in New York City. It was his birthday, she was in town, and finally they were going to act on this crazy flirtation/infatuation and do the deed. They were ready. *I* was ready. I planned for the whole night to be romantic and fulfilling.
Then, I sat down to write and... nothing. The closer they got to doing the deed, the more I wanted to delay it. I wanted to savor that moment when she was the only thing he wanted. I knew it was too good to last last. That's what makes it a fantasy. Because that’s not real. Not when you love a rock star. Especially when you’re some no-name nobody from Tennessee and he’s been thrust into a world of riches, excesses and instant fame. A booty call turning into some great love affair, especially with a noted manwhore who got to scratch his itch and satisfy his curiosity right out of the gate? Unrealistic. She had to give him something he wasn't expecting... something like kicking him out of bed.
Due to what I was going through personally at the time, I knew I couldn’t write it the way I originally wanted to, even though I really wanted to. I was in desperate need of my own fantasy fulfillment when I was writing the first book, which is how the concept ever took shape in the first place. But I knew down deep in my soul that if I had had a rendezvous with my own crush, real life would squash my gratification before I even had a chance to bask in the afterglow.
I wanted to postpone that as long as humanly possible.
It was then that the duplicity began to seep in. Loving someone you don’t know, that nobody knows, but everyone wants, is a tough gig. It’s real damned easy to fall in love with an image, like some bad boy of rock and roll.
But can you hang when the trappings of fantasy fall away and there’s nothing left but a mortal man who is flawed, selfish and imperfect, just like any other dude?
Can you withstand the rumor and speculation, the misleads required to keep his image marketable?
Can you sit on every single painful disappointment?
To me, this was where the story of Groupie was hidden. I knew what it was like to be the secret guys kept, having some experience with this as The Fat Girl, which I’ll go over in my personal Let’s Talk About.
There’s so much about loving a rocker that they don’t cover in a traditionally HEA. I set out to tell the truth, sorta, inadvertently if I had to. Because I had to. And I could do this because I had loved rock stars, broken, dirty, wild rock stars – men I had always wondered if I was woman enough to tame.
Apparently, it was a story that resonated.
And… it’s not done.
Stay tuned….
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