My Life After Now guest
blog post #2
By Jessica Verdi
Topic:
Theater is a huge part of Lucy's world and saturates the book
in every way (the chapter titles are song titles from musicals). Jessica
discusses how she believes the musical theme ties the chapters together, and
her own love affair with musical theater!
Thank
you so much for the opportunity to write a guest post for your blog! I’m super
psyched to get to talk a little bit about my new book My Life After Now.
To say
I love musical theater is an understatement. I blast show tunes at all hours of
the day and night, singing along at the top of my lungs—my neighbors must hate
me. The bulk of my pre-writing years were spent on stage (and in NYC audition
rooms). I’d always been into music (I sang and danced and played the violin
from a pretty young age), but the moment I joined my high school drama club, I
don’t know, something just clicked for me. Musical theater isn’t just about singing and dancing. It’s
about emotion. It’s about telling a story that’s so big, so real, that words
alone can’t contain it. No matter if it’s a drama or a comedy, the songs,
belted out by a thirty-person chorus or a single actor under a spotlight, bring
it all to another level.
When I
set out to write My Life After Now, I
knew I didn’t want my main character, Lucy, to be just a walking statistic.
Like, she has HIV so that’s all we need
to know about her. No, she needed to be a real person, with a very full
life. And I also wanted to make sure I balanced out the darker moments of the
story with lightness and joy. What better way to do that than to submerge Lucy
in the world of theater? Throughout the book, Lucy is on stage, at auditions,
studying her script, listening to show tunes, quoting plays, and so much more. The
chapter titles are all titles of songs from musicals (“What I Did for Love,
“It’s a Hard-Knock Life,” and so on) because I felt like if Lucy were
describing the chapters in her life, well, that’s how she would do it.
Thanks
so much for reading, and I hope you enjoy Lucy’s story!
Jessica Verdi lives in Brooklyn, NY and received her MFA in Writing for Children from The New School. Her favorite pastimes include singing showtunes at the top of her lungs (much to her husband’s chagrin), watching cheesy TV, and scoring awesome non-leather shoes in a size 5. She’s still trying to figure out a way to put her uncanny ability to remember both song lyrics and the intricacies of vampire lore to good use.
