Jessica Anya Blau's books include The Summer of Naked Swim Parties, Drinking Closer to Home, and The Wonder Bread Summer.Her latest novel is The Trouble with Lexie.
From Blau's Q&A with Deborah Kalb:
Q: How did you come up with the idea for The Trouble with Lexie, and for your main character?Learn more about the book and author at Jessica Anya Blau's website, Facebook page, and Twitter perch.
A: The story started after I met a man who had just come out of prison. I asked him what he’d gone in for and he said he had been addicted, broke into someone’s house, and stole drugs from their medicine cabinet.
I said something dumb and simple, like, “Bummer.” And he said, “The problem wasn’t so much that I had stolen the drugs. The problem really was that I had fallen asleep on the bed of the owner of the drugs.”
Those two sentences stuck with me and I used versions of them in the opening scene of The Trouble with Lexie. From that moment on, I was asking myself, who is this person who was so desperate she took these drugs and crashed on this bed?
Essentially, I worked backwards. I found the place where she was (passed out on the bed) and wrote the whole book as a way of getting her to that bed.
The more I wrote, the more she became a version of me....[read on]
Coffee with a Canine: Jessica Anya Blau and Pippa.
The Page 69 Test: The Wonder Bread Summer.
My Book, The Movie: The Wonder Bread Summer.
The Page 69 Test: The Trouble with Lexie.
My Book, The Movie: The Trouble with Lexie.
Writers Read: Jessica Anya Blau.
--Marshal Zeringue