Why the School Bus Hijacking in Beautiful?
People have asked me questions about my first two novels, Beautiful and its sequel Beautifully Made. One that comes up often is: What the heck was I thinking when I added a violent school bus hijacking to a Young Adult story?
We have to blame Frank Zappa for the school bus incident.
Why? How is it Zappa’s fault? First off, he’s dead. And second, he was a non-violent musician.
Ah, that’s the thing, you see. Zappa was a masterful guitarist and songwriter, and a gifted entertainer. So, back in the mid-1980’s, my college roommate Greg and I went to a Zappa concert at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles. The opening band was The Bobs. I had never heard an entirely a cappella singing group mimic instruments using only their voice (and occasionally, other body parts). Truly a life-changing moment for me. 
One song in their set was called Bus Plunge. It describes a bus driver on speed who is driving his bus too fast, in the rain, on a winding road. He loses control, and the bus falls off the cliff. Great song! Anyway, in their patter introducing Bus Plunge, they explained that people have written songs describing pretty much every aspect of human experience, but never about a bus going over a cliff. They felt this oversight needed to be corrected.
If you know me, you know Adam is pretty much me, except he’s taller. Unfortunately, I share part of Cara’s backstory as well, but this isn’t the time to discuss that topic. Even though the main characters are based, in part, on me, the plots of my first two novels are entirely fictional. Writing Beautiful, I needed to raise the stakes beyond the home invasion. I needed a reason for Cara and Adam to go to the local airport because I’d already written the plane crash. And The Bobs inspired me: I’m unaware of another YA novel that involves hijacking a school bus. It was clearly up to me to fill this void in Western literature.
Now you understand why, through this circuitous reasoning, it was Frank Zappa’s fault that Beautiful includes a school bus hijacking.
You’re welcome.
