Jessica Topper's Blog - Posts Tagged "next-gen"
Get What You Need is finally here!
This may just be the book I didn’t know I needed.
At long last, Get What You Need is out in the world. GWYN, as I affectionately call it, has been lingering on the back burner of my mind through my haphazard publishing career.
If Louder Than Love was the book of my heart, then Get What You Need may just be the book of my head. In fact, when I was looking back through my rough notes on this story that explores the characters from my debut ten years into the future, I realized I had started jotting them down before Berkley had even picked up and published Louder Than Love. So, obviously I had wanted to stay with these folks in their world for a little bit longer. And I hope you will too!
Many readers tell me they do a re-read of Louder Than Love every year, or whenever they feel the need. Fair warning, diving into GWYN right after may be a shock to the system. After all, the adorable five-year-old is now fifteen and some of her thoughts, words and actions aren’t so cute anymore. I now see there may be a little of me in her teenage rebellion.
At fifteen, my family picked up and moved to a new city, and I had had to leave all my friends behind. Kids who had known me forever, that I had never had to prove myself to. And I had never really had to keep myself company before…being “the new kid” really forces some introspection on you.
With Abbey, she experiences the opposite – being thrust back into her childhood home after years of shaping her persona in Manhattan. Coming back to kids who knew her when she was younger, and they are all pretty much strangers now. And she feels she’s an enigma. Plus, having a famous rock star for a stepfather, in her words, “rates pretty high on the freak scale.”
While Abbey was the catalyst for this story (at one point I was calling this book “Abbey’s Road” in my head) and Louder Than Love’s beloved couple Adrian and Kat are a constant, to me the real star is Natalie. We never meet her on the page in Louder Than Love, but she’s Adrian’s estranged daughter and she had certainly shaped him – Natalie appears in his stories to Kat, his triumphs and his regrets, in his views of fatherhood and trying to be a better man the second time around.
I was so happy to bring Nat across the pond and give her a bit of the old “Love, Loss & Rock and Roll” treatment that this brand of books has become known for.
I may be too close to this story at this juncture. Could it be read as a standalone? Maybe. It is, at its heart, a tale of sisterhood. Of small town solace, where the grounding presence of the lake and its community welcome you.
I’d love to hear your thoughts, whether you’ve followed the entire journey through the Love & Steel novels and have reached this point. Or whether you are about to reach for your first Jessica Topper novel to see what’s been going on in her head, and her heart.
At long last, Get What You Need is out in the world. GWYN, as I affectionately call it, has been lingering on the back burner of my mind through my haphazard publishing career.
If Louder Than Love was the book of my heart, then Get What You Need may just be the book of my head. In fact, when I was looking back through my rough notes on this story that explores the characters from my debut ten years into the future, I realized I had started jotting them down before Berkley had even picked up and published Louder Than Love. So, obviously I had wanted to stay with these folks in their world for a little bit longer. And I hope you will too!
Many readers tell me they do a re-read of Louder Than Love every year, or whenever they feel the need. Fair warning, diving into GWYN right after may be a shock to the system. After all, the adorable five-year-old is now fifteen and some of her thoughts, words and actions aren’t so cute anymore. I now see there may be a little of me in her teenage rebellion.
At fifteen, my family picked up and moved to a new city, and I had had to leave all my friends behind. Kids who had known me forever, that I had never had to prove myself to. And I had never really had to keep myself company before…being “the new kid” really forces some introspection on you.
With Abbey, she experiences the opposite – being thrust back into her childhood home after years of shaping her persona in Manhattan. Coming back to kids who knew her when she was younger, and they are all pretty much strangers now. And she feels she’s an enigma. Plus, having a famous rock star for a stepfather, in her words, “rates pretty high on the freak scale.”
While Abbey was the catalyst for this story (at one point I was calling this book “Abbey’s Road” in my head) and Louder Than Love’s beloved couple Adrian and Kat are a constant, to me the real star is Natalie. We never meet her on the page in Louder Than Love, but she’s Adrian’s estranged daughter and she had certainly shaped him – Natalie appears in his stories to Kat, his triumphs and his regrets, in his views of fatherhood and trying to be a better man the second time around.
I was so happy to bring Nat across the pond and give her a bit of the old “Love, Loss & Rock and Roll” treatment that this brand of books has become known for.
I may be too close to this story at this juncture. Could it be read as a standalone? Maybe. It is, at its heart, a tale of sisterhood. Of small town solace, where the grounding presence of the lake and its community welcome you.
I’d love to hear your thoughts, whether you’ve followed the entire journey through the Love & Steel novels and have reached this point. Or whether you are about to reach for your first Jessica Topper novel to see what’s been going on in her head, and her heart.
