When I began to write the second book in my YA series, THE RISE AND FALL OF DANI TRUEHART I felt a little bit like a fish out of water. After all, I’d spent seven years writing my first book, RISNG STAR. I’d become extremely comfortable with the characters, the plot and settings of the story. But with BURNING BRIGHT I was facing a whole new narrative, introducing new characters while evolving the original characters from the first book. I knew the plot points for my second book, but I had to somehow string them together in a believable way. Unlike RISING STAR which took place for the most part in Santa Clarita and Malibu, BURNING BRIGHT was slated to take place around the world as Dani becomes famous. So I not only had to write the story, but I also had to figure out how to tell that story as it stretched across the globe.
Everyone knows coming up with an idea and executing it are two entirely different things. How was I supposed to create a world tour? I decided to spend a few days on the internet. I began researching pop stars (both current and past) to get a fairly wide scope of how concert tours work, how bands travel, the world of concert fans and how pop singers market themselves and interact with the media. I read articles, watched videos and documentaries and scoured websites. It was eye-opening research and really helped me build Dani’s concert tour world.
I ended up focusing on the concert websites for Taylor Swift, The Jonas Brothers, Lady Gaga and Ariana Grande to cobble together a realistic tour schedule for Dani. I hauled out a big map of the US and chose my locations as if I was planning a road trip: so may days required for travel in between arenas, interesting sights to see while driving in between cities, etc. I matched up my timeline of concert locations/travel with the action in the story. I made sure to count out the days of travel between cities so if a character referred to a concert that happened last week or six weeks ago it would match the travel itinerary in the story. It was a logistical nightmare to piece together, but I think the effort paid off in the end.
Once I’d planned Dani’s North American tour, which took a few weeks to work out, I turned to the world tour and followed the same formula. Then I decided to highlight a few cities from the entire tour schedule because they had special meaning to me – my husband’s family is from Chicago, London is one of my favorite cities, my best friend lives in New York, I visited Oslo when I was a teen and my sister lives near Sacramento. Once I’d settled on the cities that would be featured in the story, I did a tourist deep dive – finding the best things to eat, see and do in each location. I read hotel menus, searched for penthouse suites with specific views so I could include them in the story and spent tons of time on Google Earth studying pictures of streets so I knew where to park the tour buses or what restaurants were near a concert venue. The more research I did, the more realistic the story became as I blended in the colorful facts I discovered about each city.
I wrote BURNING BRIGHT during the pandemic of 2020, so this research was a wonderful way to escape the claustrophobic feelings I was facing during quarantine. Looking at photos of wide open spaces, busy city streets and crowded concert arenas allowed me to dream of traveling the globe and attending concerts while staying safely at home. It was the perfect escape from reality and maybe I spent a little more time on it than was really necessary on it. But it was a harmless and inspiring diversion from the omnipresent anxiety of the pandemic and I think all that research will make BURNING BRIGHT a more exciting and interesting read.
You’ll just have to wait and see for yourself.
Happy Tuesday! 💕