By Popular Demand, another Friday Feedback...



Read my sign.
Do not question the sign.

This is me. I am popular.

(If you say it, is it so?)

(If you aren't, does it matter?)

What does it mean to be popular?

Today's super guest star may or may not know. She is Alissa Grosso, author of Popular, Flux, May 8, 2011.

THIS is Alissa. The signs were her idea:

A sign doesn't lie.

See? She is also popular.

And this is her book.

Here's what her website has to say about Popular: Meet the clique that rules Fidelity High: Olivia, Zelda, Nordica, and Shelly, each one handpicked by uber-popular Hamilton Best. You know you’re “in” when you make the guest list for one of Hamilton’s parties. And in the thralls of senior year, everyone wants to get noticed by Hamilton. But Hamilton’s elite entourage is coming apart at the seams. . . . Lies and secrets are ripping away the careful ties that have kept them together for years. And Hamilton has the biggest secret of all, one that only her boyfriend Alex knows. If the truth got out, it would shock everyone and destroy Hamilton’s fragile world— she’ll do anything to protect it and keep her clique together.

But of course, that's not why Alissa is here today.

Today, she is here in the hot seat.

Er. Wait, sorry. Not that hot.

*blows out Alissa's chair.*

Alissa is giving us a sneak peek at the opening to her upper YA WIP bearing the working title Fan Club Presidents. You guys know the rules (if you don't and want more detail, go here):


1. If it's the first few paragraphs of a novel – today it IS – tell me if it "hooks" you enough to make you want to keep reading, or not. If yes, why? If no, why not?

2. What works for you, draws you into the piece, and why?

3. What doesn’t work for you (if something doesn't) and why?

If you’d like the same feedback, please post your brief excerpt at the end of your comment (and tell me what it is -- e.g. opening to a novel, short story, poem, etc...). Please post no more than 3 paragraphs, 5 if they're short. If there's more, I may not read it. If the comment gets too long, feel free to reply in two separate comments. If you are a student from a particular class, please identify yourself as such (and take a bow). If not, take a bow anyway. And be brave. I blew out the chair. :)

Fan Club Presidents

     I wanted to begin this story like a Dicaprio song. The perfect mix of guitar and drum beat would grab hold of you and pull you in. Then the first verse would take your breath away, and like that you would be hooked. I know all the words to every song that Dicaprio ever recorded. Yes, I was one of those obsessed girls that knows things like J.J.'s favorite flavor Pop Tarts (strawberry milkshake) or that The Urge lost the tip of his right ring finger in an eighth grade shop class accident. I used to play my favorite songs again and again, escaping into the music. I wanted my life to be like a Dicaprio song and knew that if it was, I would never be unhappy again. Life is way more complicated than a three and a half minute song, and that's
probably for the best.

     In the autumn that followed my high school graduation, I found myself living in that limbo world between childhood and the rest of my life smack dab in the suburban hell that was Valerie, New Jersey. A series
of events, but mostly my own apathy, had kept me from enrolling in college. So, now as a newly minted nineteen year old living in the house she had always lived in with the family she had always lived
with, I was playing at being a grown up.

***