You need a network. Don’t do this alone. Find other authors, observe them, listen to them when they impart their wisdom and experience, take advantage of the resources, and remember that no matter what happens, the entire process is a joy ride! You’re on a journey, and having a learning experience. Enjoy it! 

Nell Gavin – 28 February 2013

The Back Flap

In 1973 “crazy” Holly unexpectedly falls in love with Trevor, a roadie for a famous English rock band. From the moment they meet, dreams of marriage, children, and a normal life are suddenly – finally – within Holly’s grasp.

Trevor takes her with him on tour and introduces her to the very “un-normal” backstage world of Rock and Roll. When she steps onto the band bus, she walks into a colorful, exciting adventure in a world completely different from the life that awaits her back home, where she chases cockroaches with a shoe, works at a low-paying job, and sleeps to escape the hunger.

Unfortunately, Holly has a secret. Plagued by panic attacks, periodic rages, and depression, she needs to learn why her mentally ill mother committed suicide, long ago, so she can save herself.

Thus far, she has found no answers. She must conceal her symptoms from Trevor in order to keep him, but as their relationship becomes progressively more serious, her illness becomes increasingly more difficult to hide.

Can Holly keep the crazy at bay for long enough to let her dreams come true?

Hang On won the silver medal in the Living Now Book Awards under its original title, All Torc D Up. It was also chosen by Red Adept Reviews as a Red Adept Select title, voted “outstanding in its genre.” Caution: Some strong language.

About the book

What is the book about?

People might think that Hang On is your typical story about groupies and rock stars. It IS about Rock and Roll in the 1970s, and the book has a few groupies walking in and out of the scenes, but overall it’s a character study of a girl, Holly, who is too pretty to fit in and have friends, and too mentally ill to establish any kind of relationship. She’s a perennial outsider – as pretty as she is she’s a little too geeky, a little too interested in books, and art museums, and public television documentaries – and she’s very, very lonely.

Through this isolation, though, she has become completely her own person, with her own somewhat starry-eyed sense of right and wrong. Her moral code (“The Code,” she calls it) sustains her, regardless of what the world does to her – and the world does much. Because of her adherence to this code she can make personal sacrifices that might surprise other people, or make them cynical about her motives. To her it’s simply the right thing to do, and she isn’t really close enough, or tuned in enough to other people, to realize how unique she is – or even that she’s a good person who is worthy of love. She doesn’t trust love. She believes that no man could ever love her beyond her beautiful face.

“Right and wrong” is something Holly can control. Right and wrong is a “choice,” she tells her therapist. She can control what she chooses. What she cannot control are her mood swings and her severe depression, and the irritable outbursts she’s been subject to for years.

One day she meets an English roadie, Trevor, and falls in love with him, and he with her. Holly’s challenge is to keep the relationship going, despite her mental illness. She has a mental and physical condition that wasn’t recognized in the 1970s, so her psychiatrist has nothing really helpful to offer her, except to be there to stop her, should she ever feel compelled to kill herself, as her mother did when she was four years old.

Although she and her therapist have made no progress, her new relationship with her new love makes her keenly aware of her weakness, and very anxious to be “cured,” whatever that means. In the meantime, she needs to hide her illness from Trevor, as she tours across the US with him and the band he works for.

When did you start writing the book?

I decided to write the story in 2000, but I don’t believe I began actually writing for a year or two after that.

How long did it take you to write it?

It took about ten years.

Where did you get the idea from?

I took a lot of the situations from my own life. I made Holly a little prettier than I was, and in real life I had more friends than Holly has in the book. The chapter that really should be titled, “One Day in Holly’s Life,” where men pursue her no matter where she goes, is exactly what my friends and I dealt with every day of our lives – I had to add that part. Every one of those vulgar come-ons really happened, over and over, to all of us. I also witnessed many of the counterattacks by women toward men, which I describe as well. It kind of sets the tone for Holly’s distrust, and the perpetual warlike maneuvers between the sexes. She is trying to survive – literally – in a very hostile world.

When I was in my late teens and early twenties, I was kind of the Forrest Gump of Rock and Roll, gaining access to famous people, sometimes in very unlikely places, for no good reason, for years.

For instance, I got a job as a waitress at a restaurant whose chef was Joe Walsh’s (the Eagles) brother. He flew coworkers to concerts around the country in his private plane. I never took him up on it because you simply cannot EVER get me onto a private plane. Nevertheless, he had connections and put us all on the backstage guest list for huge arena concerts in Chicago. It didn’t even seem like a very big deal at the time. It seemed like fitting compensation for the times he’d yell at us in the kitchen.

Another time my girlfriend got a job at the Holiday Inn on Lake Shore Drive. I went to meet her for lunch, and ended up eating lunch in the hotel restaurant with Jeff Beck and two of the musicians he was recording with in Chicago that week.

I have many more stories. That was kind of my life. We were all broke. If my friends and I wanted to go to a concert we went backstage because it was free, they let pretty girls in without question, and because that was where they kept the beer. Rock stars lived in an insulated bubble, and some like Eric Clapton had bodyguards, so we only met them backstage on very rare occasions. But, of course, they were always there. Then, as hopeless geeks, we went straight home, so most of the rock stars I met were through my roadie boyfriend.

My first boyfriend was a musician, who died. He idolized many of the people I eventually met (Jeff Beck was one of them), or sometimes found myself in the same room with, so I used to joke that he was manipulating things from The Great Beyond so he could meet his heroes vicariously through me. Then, the more it happened, the less like a joke it seemed…it was honestly very odd.

I wasn’t a groupie, or that would have been the book I wrote. I was on the periphery, watching. Like Holly, I was breathing the rarified air of famous people, but I lived in a separate, different world.

Were there any parts of the book where you struggled?

I’m a “method writer,” in the same way some performers are method actors. I have to immerse myself in the character – totally get myself into her head – so I can experience things with her and describe them accurately. This character was mentally ill, and in a lot of pain. I had to channel that in order to do justice to the book, and I really couldn’t sustain it for long periods of time and still remain functional. That’s why the book took me ten years to write.

Holly has a condition I suffered from, when I was young. I’m completely recovered now, but I had to relive the sensations and emotions in order to describe them. It was like escaping a fire by the skin of my teeth, and then deliberately going back in there. I don’t experience these things anymore; I can only remember them, now. But I had to actually make it real while I wrote, and sustain it for long enough to make my words match Holly’s feelings and thought patterns, and that was difficult.

What came easily?

I had to ask for help, in order to write the banter of the English roadies on the band bus. An English writer sent me a list of vulgar British words to spice things up, but I had to give the words meaning and context. I had to hear British accents and phrasing patterns again in my head, and it had been years since I’d been exposed to them to that degree. I thought I would struggle with it, but it turned out to be so much fun I couldn’t stop! I wrote pages and pages of it, nothing but bantering dialog, and as I did each of the roadies came alive to me as an individual, even though they really don’t figure much in the story after that. Then I had to go back and edit the dialog down, and write the story around it. It was my favorite part of the book.

Are your characters entirely fictitious or have you borrowed from real world people you know?

I really did have a roadie boyfriend, who worked for a famous English rock band. However, “Trevor” isn’t the exactly the same person. He’s a composite of two men: the roadie boyfriend is the placeholder, whereas his personality is someone else’s. Both men were very dear to me.

A lot of the scenes in the book actually happened just as I described them (I won’t tell you which ones, except to admit to the bus breaking down, and having lunch in a Tennessee whorehouse– that was all true). The “real” scenes are probably NOT the ones you would guess, by the way.

I can’t tell you who the band was because I didn’t get a response from anyone when I tried to contact them to alert them that I was writing a book. Some of them are still alive. Therefore, you cannot know who they were then, and are now, because I do not have anyone’s permission and don’t want to make anyone mad at me. I completely shook up the personalities and everything else having to do with the band and its music so there would be no misunderstanding. Absolutely NONE of the characters in the book is anyone in particular. They’re all composites of people I met, or stories I heard, or interviews I read.

The only person who answered me and actually gave me permission to mention her was Cynthia, one of the Plaster Casters. If you are too young to know who they were, be forewarned: They were famous and notorious in the 1970s – and achieving notoriety in the 70s required true and splendid effort. You can Google “Cynthia plaster caster” – unless you really don’t “get” the wild-and-skewed 70s. Then I would definitely take a pass. At any rate, know as you read that Cynthia gave me her blessing.

We all know how important it is for writers to read. Are there any particular authors that have influenced how you write and, if so, how have they influenced you?

The writer who influenced me the most had to have been Betty Smith with her A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. So much of the writing from that era was stylized, lengthy, and melodramatic. Betty Smith came along with this honest voice and simple language, and it just grabbed me by the throat. I didn’t really want to be a writer before I actually became one, but thought that if I were to become one, I’d want to write like her – like her and Harper Lee in To Kill a Mockingbird, with her lyrical prose. I wanted to be both of them at once.

Do you have a target reader?

I’ve been trying to identify my target reader for years, now. I wish someone would tell me. I thought it would be “women,” but it isn’t, really. I guess it would be someone who reads to escape into someone else’s head and mentally explore a different reality, rather than someone who reads for plot or action or suspense.

I write hoping to effectively convey that different reality and the things my character learns from it. I like to make people think and consider things from another angle, and I always include lots of things I hope they will think about. I’m thrilled when someone picks up on what I mean EXACTLY. Those people are my target audience.

About Writing

Do you have a writing process? If so can you please describe it?

I really can’t write unless I’m “channeling” the character. So I have no process. It’s all very freeform. When I get gripped by the story or the character, I sit down and write. I have lengthy periods of writer’s block that can extend for months or even years.

Do you outline? If so, do you do so extensively or just chapter headings and a couple of sentences?

No outline. I write the beginning and the ending, and then I go back to the middle to see how the characters get themselves from Point A to Point B. I don’t work well with that kind of structure. Even in my professional life I just like to be told what to deliver, and when. Then I like to figure out what I need to do to create that end product. My favorite thing is to take nothing and create something, not knowing exactly how to do it until I begin. I just love that. That’s how I write.

Do you edit as you go or wait until you’ve finished?

I have to edit as I go. As I read it, especially after a long dry period, I try to coax the character into speaking to me so I can continue writing. And while I’m doing that, I notice typos or things I need to word differently. Sometimes those minor changes trigger ideas for bigger things. So I fuss and fuss over what I’ve already written until the character steps forward and tells me where she’s going next. Then I rinse and repeat.

Plus, writing is hard enough. If I had to face an entire manuscript in first draft form I’d click Delete, rather than deal with a mess like that in its entirety. I like to make two chapters perfect before I continue. Later, whenever I get discouraged, I go back and read those two chapters for reassurance that I can do this. Then I make another chapter perfect to bolster my courage, and then another. Eventually I finish.

Did you hire a professional editor?

Yes I did. Red Adept Editing. It’s a very good idea to do this. Always.

Do you listen to music while you write? If yes, what gets the fingers tapping?

I like complete and total silence. Which is crazy because my office is off the kitchen, where everybody always is. I also react badly to interruptions when I’m in the zone.

About Publishing

Did you submit your work to Agents?

No. At one point I had two agents, one for American sales and one for European and wasn’t really happy with the arrangement. All of the offers I’ve received came directly to me, and I can hire an entertainment lawyer as needed.

What made you decide to go Indie, whether self-publishing or with an indie publisher? Was it a particular event or a gradual process?

I first went indie with Threads: The Reincarnation of Anne Boleyn because it was not the sort of books traditional publishing houses accept. It falls under too many genres, and it has a somewhat limited, niche audience. One of my agents told me that publishers liked it – some even loved it – but the premise “scared” them. She kept using that word: scared. It didn’t make sense to waste time waiting for someone to pick it up.

The European agent translated Threads and sold it to a Harlequin Mondadori imprint in Italy, but I wasn’t happy with that arrangement either. They marketed it under the wrong genre (Romance), and I could only watch and gasp and wring my hands because I had no control. I received an advance, and saw that it was for sale, but it was taken off the market within a year – as most traditionally published books are. I swore off traditional publishers after that. I’m too much of a control freak.

When I wrote Hang On, it never occurred to me to farm it out to agents or publishers. I can’t even imagine doing that now because there’s no reason to. I’m comfortable as an indie, and prefer it that way.

I also don’t write quickly or on demand. I would not want to be saddled with a contract that required me to produce three titles within a certain timeframe. So traditional publishing is not a good fit for me.

Many of the same opportunities are available for indie authors, as for traditionally published ones. For instance, both Threads and Hang On were picked up last year for translation into Chinese, and will be marketed in Asia. Threads received three unsolicited movie option offers.

Did you get your book cover professionally done or did it you do it yourself?

I created the original cover, but I am absolutely non-visual so it was bad and I was unhappy with it. I hired a cover artist who was able to “translate my vision,” as it were, into the new cover art. I may change it again – this is what I mean by “control.” You test something and see if it works, then test something else. It’s all up to you.

Do you have a marketing plan for the book or are you just winging it?

I’m winging it. I’m “on” some years and “off” some years, as it pertains to marketing. Sometimes I have other things I need to focus on, and I back away from marketing. I’m just now emerging from an “off year.”

The beauty of being an indie is that we have all the time in the world, and the same resources as traditionally published mid-list authors, who unfortunately don’t have the limitless time in print that we do. They usually get taken out of print within a year, and in the meantime their sales peak during the first six weeks, and then plummet. So, traditionally published mid-list authors frequently don’t sell as many books as an indie will over the lifetime of a title.

Any advice that you would like to give to other newbies considering becoming Indie authors?

You need a network. Don’t do this alone. Find other authors, observe them, listen to them when they impart their wisdom and experience, take advantage of the resources, and remember that no matter what happens, the entire process is a joy ride! You’re on a journey, and having a learning experience. Enjoy it!

Also, please learn your craft. If you are a writer, readers reasonably expect you to deliver. If you are an indie, they perhaps unreasonably expect your product to be extremely and hopelessly flawed. When they review your work they are actively looking for things to critique because you’re an indie, and are therefore suspect. Make it your goal to give them nothing to complain about! And when they do, chin up! Learn from their remarks and keep going!

About You

What are you working on now?

I’m channeling my Inner Geek, now, and am currently writing non-fiction under my real name. I’m a Webhelp expert, and am writing a design and authoring software guide that may turn into a series because I discovered how easy it is to write non-fiction. I’m setting the groundwork to become a consultant when I retire in ten years or so.

End of Interview:

For more of Nell, visit her website.

You can get your copy of Hang On from Amazon US (paper or eBook) or Amazon UK (paper or eBook). Nook owners can get theirs at Barnes & Noble, or owners of any ereader can choose Smashwords.