The Story Behind Popular
by Alissa Grosso

It might seem strange that someone who was on the apathy-track in high school would grow up to write a book about the high school experience. Academically, I did well in high school and I was involved in sports, but I was never really involved in the high school social scene. I was a quiet teenager, and was even voted “most bashful” in my graduating class. So, what was I doing during those four years? Well, I guess I was taking a lot of it in.

I did some creative writing while I was in high school, but most of this was either memoirs about my own crazy and often hilarious family or really dark thrillers that usually had a high body count – I was never daring enough to try and combine the two genres, though the result might have been interesting. I read a lot, but my reading choices were limited. YA literature wasn’t anywhere near as cool as it is today, and by the time I reached high school I had already pretty much exhausted my small local library’s meager YA shelves.

I didn’t begin the book that would become Popular until after high school, though it wasn’t too long after high school. I think my biggest influence was not a book, but a movie. When I was in high school (and I’m dating myself here) one of the coolest movies was Heathers, a cult classic about a group of popular girls all named Heather and one girl named Veronica. I watched this a lot of times in my teens, and even today the movie would still make my top ten list of best movies ever. If you’ve never seen it, you must add it to your Netflix queue or download it or whatever is the latest, greatest way to see a flick. When I started writing Popular, I wanted to create a book that was as cool as Heathers.

That was a long, long time ago. I started the novel, but then I got distracted by college. During college I discovered science fiction, and became convinced that it was my destiny to become a famous science fiction author. So, I spent a lot of time writing science fiction stories, and one not so good novel. Then I graduated college and got a job, which took up even more time than my studies had.

I didn’t completely abandon Popular, but I wasn’t spending very much time working on it. Every once in awhile, though, I would pick it up, and decide that the beginning wasn’t so bad, and would work some more on it. A little here and a little there, didn’t get me very far, but I never completely abandoned the novel. Then one day, years after I had written that first sentence, I decided it was time to get serious about the book, and over the next few months I wrote the book that had only existed as a few rough chapters and a vague idea in my head for so many years.

Other than the fact that it’s about high school and a popular clique, Popular isn’t really anything like Heathers. It also bears very little resemblance to my own high school experience, but then I feel the fun of writing fiction is being able to make stuff up, and not stick to writing what you know.

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Alissa Grosso, aka The Thinker, has always gone through life with her head in the clouds. When not lost in her imagination, she can often be found lost in a good book. While these days she makes her living in the land of books at various points in her working life she has been a tavern wench, a term paper writer, a newspaper editor and a children’s librarian. She lives in New Jersey and owns very few garments that
aren’t covered with cat or dog hair. Popular is her first novel.

Check out www.alissagrosso.com for more info!