About six years ago, I finally started writing down sketches of some characters who'd been trolling around in my head for at least six years before that. There was a girl, Tierney, and her best friends, Tessa and Jules. There was also a boy, Alex, who was a singer in a band. They were young—in their early twenties—and had all met up in college, at the University of Montevallo.
Two years ago, I started actively writing again. I went back to my old Word documents and a dusty, purple journal, to find notes and ideas about these characters. Tierney Cavanaugh was an Art major, dating a rich boy named Lawrence Neely. There was a non-specific break-up, and Lawrence got another girl pregnant. About the same time, Tierney met and fell in love with Alex Wheeler, a burgeoning rock star with a history of cocaine addiction. The book was titled Junkture, named after the band.
In my head, there was a backstory
that the band had chosen that name one night when the guitarist Paul, was doing
an impression of Dana Carvey as George Bush, talking about how something
"wouldn't be prudent at this juncture." Alex retorts that it's just a clusterfuck,
this junkture, and the band is finally
christened.
I was in rewrites on this book about a year ago, and there were things I just couldn't get happy about. I really didn't want another insipid young girl as my heroine. While a lot of the issues Tierney deals with were taken directly from my own past, I was having a hard time relating to her and writing her. How I saw the world in my late 30s was nowhere close to how I saw it in my early 20s. I wanted a protagonist who reflected that, and I felt confident that grown women wanted some of the same. I couldn't be the only one who wanted a woman who was complicated and made mistakes and swore and drank and told dirty jokes with her friends. I wanted to be emotionally and sexually frank, like a grown woman. My own friends confirmed that they also loved Bella Swan and Katniss Everdeen, but that they really wanted someone like them.
During that process of writing the original Junkture story, I lost 115 pounds. I came to difficult and hard-fought and sometimes painful terms with my past and my own history. I had to look my choices in their almost-middle-aged face and acknowledge them. Why? Why did you decide to lose this weight? What made you want to do this? You should write about that!
Driving from Charlotte to Atlanta in the spring of 2012, the idea of marrying these two stories came to me. I loved the heart of Tierney and Alex, but I didn't love the actual mechanics of them. It was sweet, but it wasn't right. So I changed it. I wrote what would become the last scenes of Persona Non Grata as I was driving toward the Georgia state line.
In a whirlwind, I rewrote the book. Again. And again. Every time I thought it was done, something would come along and suggest I change it. It could be a comment from the inner circle, or maybe even suggestions from my editor. But it was culled down to the 600-page kernel of story that it now. And it's done.
Persona Non Grata is fiction, though it does blur the line between realistic fiction and memoir. Tierney Cavanaugh Johnson and I share the same birthday. We share the same amazing, purple-on-blond hair. She likes to raid my shoe closet from time to time. But Tierney is not me. She's a painter, whereas I can barely handle paint-with-water books with my kids. I have a brother; she doesn't. She's prettier than I am, and I am louder and more impetuous than she.
No one in this book is exactly anyone else, but I certainly wrote what I knew. Conversations she has with her friends mirrored exact discussions between me and the inner circle. I did hours of interviews with multiple musicians to get a feel for the rock stars, to find out the difficulties of their lives as professional musicians at varying stages in their lives and their careers. Mostly, it's just made up. It's what I do.
And the music... almost everyone I know has had some band or artist that they just adored. If they'd been given the chance to not only go to show after show, but to hang out with those musicians and get to know them, they would've jumped at it. Like me, Tierney is no exception. Her love of music is integral to who she is.
But Persona Non Grata is more than a story about a groupie and a rock star. At the heart of the book is the problem so many women face: how to be comfortable in your life as a wife and mother and a woman, fulfilling all of those oligations while still retaining some sense of self. That dilemma is part of what led me to start really writing again in 2010, including Muchness and Light. Finding my own self and my own muchness helped make me brave enough to finish this book and sending it out into the world.
Now I'm launching my Kickstarter campaign, to help release Persona Non Grata: A Story of Junkture. You can go to my Kickstarter page and watch the video, check out the rewards that are available, and maybe you'll even decide to make a pledge to donate to my campaign. It's a great way to pre-order the book and maybe even get yourself some Junkture swag while you're at it.
Here's the thing, though: if I don't get the minimum amount of $1,200 worth of pledges by the time the Kickstarter ends, I don't get any of the money. I have to get at least that amount to get the funds. If I get more, great. There are a lot of things to pay for to release this book—ISBN numbers and copyright fees, printing and conversion to eBook. I believe in this project and am willing to take on the entire cost. I'm hopeful that I won't have to.
If you're interested in seeing what Persona Non Grata is all about, you can download a free six-chapter teaser from my Junkture store. Use coupon code PNGTEASER. If you like what you read, consider pledging. Also share it with your friends! Chances are, if you like it, so will they.
Comments