Behind The Screens with Alisha

Hey everyone,

It’s Alisha–Lisi’s editorial assistant.

Happy Independence Day! Well, almost everyone. Lisi’s chained to her office chair toiling away in efforts to meet her Phoenix Five deadline that’s coming up right around the bend. She wanted to hang out here with all of you on the blah-g today in the name of freedom, but seeing as she has little of that right now, it seemed this might be just the opportune time for me to pay you lovelies another visit. Believe me when I tell you she is busting her behind writing an incredible story you are all going to be blown away by.

How do I know?

I’ve been lucky enough to receive these pages hot off Lisi’s fingertips. It’s been rather exciting to watch the book develop and I just can’t keep it all in, so I’m going to share allllllllll a tiny bit of what’s in store for you with Phoenix Five. I wish I could share it all but Erin her editor hasn’t read a single thing yet and she would freak if you knew the details before she did.

First off, the main characters are three girls, two guys. Freshmen at Noble High in Noble, NJ. All of them are popular and completely in control of their high school lives.

Or are they?

The entire book is made up of their journal entries. Entries they don’t think anyone will ever read.

The next thing I can tell you is that I like ALL of the characters. What are the odds of that? Five main characters and I like all of them. I swear I’m a discerning reader. The deeper I get with each character, the more I see parts of myself in them. I feel like they are real people. (Maybe they are.) I care about their fates, the choices they’re making and the struggles they experience. So, yes, I am rooting for the main characters, and you’re going to, too. Maybe not at first, but as soon as you get into their stories, which give you access to their personal experiences and faulty perceptions, you quickly learn that outward appearances are not always as they seem. Correction: they’re not ever as they seem.

I think of Phoenix Five as a quilt of a book with several stories interwoven and overlapping one another, somehow with all of it making sense. It’s sort of linear, sort of not, and it’s all reminiscent of exactly how life seems to unfold. But, it can get ridiculously confusing remembering which small details go where, what this character ate on this day and why So-And-So’s favorite color is grape and not plum. Hence the necessity of the project currently assigned to me.

ENTER: THE BIBLE

No, not that Bible. For liability reasons, I’m probably not allowed to talk about that here. The Bible at hand is the one I’m building for Lisi to help her keep track of all the minutiae that make up Phoenix Five. Thusly, it’s been a secret, but I’m going to let you in on it, and any aspiring writers out there might want to take note. It’s an incredibly useful tool that takes quite a bit of time and attention to develop, but there’s an excellent return rate, here.

First, I’ll explain what the Bible basically is. It’s an ever-growing document built over time as the story develops. The bigger the story gets, the bigger the Bible gets. Each character has her/his own tab filled with headings like “Physical Description,” “Personal Style,” “Psychological Profile,” “Hobbies,” “Friends,” “Family Members,” “Teachers,” “Classes,” and anything that is specific to that character. It could be that a character has very unique quirks or superstitions. Or maybe that one person’s dad drives a certain type of car while another person’s mom has rented a car since her mini van’s been in the shop. Maybe a character loves a specific bread or takes three sugars in her latte, or maybe a character wears something special on a day she needs to feel confident. What was that special thing she wore again?? It would take way too long to flip through the pages and search out those tiny details line by line, so all of that gets included in the P5 Bible and is recorded in a place that makes sense so it is easily accessible for later recall. There are so many small details that make up who these characters are, how their worlds unfold, and where their lives intersect. How in the world can any one person keep track of that throughout an entire book?! Let alone a book that tells multiple stories from several perspectives.

It’s unbelievable to me each time I get a new installation of pages from Lisi how she is able to entirely switch gears and get in the heads of these characters one right after the other. When you read the book you’ll see what I’m talking about. My brain can hardly wrap itself around all of the twists and turns and seemingly minute specifics, so I’m telling Lisi that all the time, as it’s truly impressive what she turns into me every day.

I might be able to tell you about our RBNs (Random Bible Notes). Lisi emails these to me as often as they come up while she’s writing. They can be anything – literally anything. I might get a note from her telling me that one character has two sisters, their names or what sports they like to play. Or maybe she’ll email me with a description that is important to include, or the name of an auditorium, a teacher, a pet dog… I also go through and extract these bits of notable information myself. The longer I’ve been working with the Bible, the more I realize that essentially ALL of the information presented can have a home somewhere in there.

Then I’ll receive more pages from Lisi. I’ll notice that some notes I added are used in something new she’s written. (Yay! That means I’m doing it right!) At this point, there are eleven evolving tabs and countless headings and subheadings and sub-subheadings to note, and it keeps on growing. The thing is a BEAST, I tell you! And Lisi warned me of this, but I suppose I had to see it for myself.

So there’s that. The infamous P5 Bible. But before I go and get my Fourth of July on I want to leave you with a little bit more on Phoenix Five.

One of the most important concepts I think you will explore in the book is the idea of connectivity, of humanity and how we all truly want the same things: to be accepted. Not just to be accepted, but to be liked, to find our place, to belong. And there’s the idea of identity, which lends to finding that place we think best suits us. We are all searching, even in high school, or, perhaps, especially in high school. And this book reminds me of the connecting thread that runs from person to person and makes this whole big living thing work.

For example, Lisi and I are connected at the “hip” via email. If anybody saw how often I check my phone’s or laptop’s email account, they might think I’m some crazy Facebook-obsessed notification freak. They might be partly right, but mostly I’m just checking for new RBNs I could be adding to the mix to keep this Bible a’thumping. I mean growing and going.

And one last thing. Below you’ll find an actual RBN Lisi emailed to me so you can get a clear picture as to what I was rambling about above:

Sheridan gets the Five Fruit Frenzy at Jamba Juice.

(our jobs are weird) ”