Rock

by J. A. Huss

  “RK,” she whispers. “Is that your mom’s ring?”

  “Yeah,” I nod, taking it out of the box and picking up her hand. “Maybe Jack was a total fuck up most of the time, but he took me aside one day when I was about sixteen and he showed me this ring. And he said, ‘This is for Melissa when you’re ready. I know you’re gonna marry her, so this is for Melissa.’”

  She just stares at the ring in my hand for a few seconds before looking up at me. “You know what my song is called?”

  “The Yes song?” I laugh. “The Absolutely song? The—”

  Her fingertips touch my lips to quiet me. “The You’re the Only One for Me song.”

  “I knew it,” I say, grinning wildly. “I always knew it.” I slip the ring on her finger and then place my palms on each side of her face, leaning in to kiss her mouth, whispering, “Be my wife.”

  “I will,” she says back, just before her tongue twists with mine. “Now teach me this new song so I can play it with you.” She snuggles into me, her head resting on my shoulder. Her hands around my bicep as I play the notes of our new song.

  Because it really is better together.

  Life is so much better when we do it together.

  END OF BOOK SHIT

  Welcome to the End of Book Shit where JA Huss gets to have her way with you. ;) Fans call this chapter the EOBS and they have somewhat of a cult status these days. Kind of like a Bruce Campbell B-movie. So… let me try and explain Rock...

  It all started with a song.

  I was writing Manic in the summer of 2013 and looking to make a new Spotify playlist. I had been playing Something Corporate pretty much on repeat for a while, mostly the song Konstantine because I just love it.

  Konstantine a ten-minute piano-rock masterpiece that obtained cult-status for the band when lead singer Andrew McMahon decided he wasn’t going to play it at concerts anymore. Maybe just once a year. You see, he had this problem. That’s the one song fans were demanding to hear in concert and it’s ten minutes long. So it kind of interferes with the set, you know? Ten minutes is a big commitment when you’re doing a show. You could probably play four songs instead of one.

  And then I stumbled on this article… (“Something Corporate’s “Konstantine” Has Been Haunting Us For A Decade” – “This nine-and-a-half-minute piano ballad has become something of a legend among emo fans in the decade since it was written. “Konstantine” is maligned by its writer, Andrew McMahon, but it’s become something like an overwrought emo version of Bob Dylan’s “Visions of Johanna,” or a “Freebird” for suburban teenage romance. It was never released on an album, but it’s become a favorite among fans of the band, and has arguably become their best-known song.”)

  Andrew McMahon in 2009 on the legacy of “Konstantine”:

  “If I ever play it, I’ll have to play it forever, every night. If it weren’t such a big deal for me to play Konstantine, then I probably would play it. But the truth is, as soon as I bring that song out one time, I will never be able to walk through a venue, no matter what band I’m playing with or no matter where I’m at, and not have people chant and cheer for it.” via Blast Magazine

  I love the song. It’s on like ten of my Spotify playlists. But wow. To have such a thing as an artist, right? Not many bands get a Konstantine and even though McMahon sorta comes off as disliking the song in that quote, there’s a new interview I saw where he explains it better. The whole timing thing. I get that. It makes very logical sense.

  But back to Rock. I was sorta in love with the piano ballads that summer (2013) and was really into Mayday Parade because they had two lead singers back when they first started, Derek Sanders and Jason Lancaster. I think it was too much talent for one band. I’m not kidding, and these two went their separate ways. Sanders and Lancaster can both sing (incredibly well) and play piano and guitar.

  So I was sorta hooked on the piano rock back when I started putting this Rock plot together. I loved that these three guys I mention above are true artists and musicians. They make incredible music and they are way too talented. But what really drew me to them, especially McMahon, were their own personal back stories.

  I stumbled across another song that summer called Swim by a band called Jack’s Mannequin and after clicking over to read their bio on Spotify, guess who their front man was? Andrew McMahon. Now this song is really where the idea of Rock the character came from. You see, Andrew McMahon was filming a biopic for the band chronicling the album they were making and he had some health problems and ended up at the doctor’s office in NYC.

  Filming that same documentary that would become “Dear Jack”.

  As he was diagnosed with leukemia.

  (“Using a handheld video camera that his record label gave to him initially to document the process of recording his album, McMahon recorded everything from inside his hospital room and onward, from spinal taps to radiation and commentary on his deteriorating physical and mental state. The film follows him from diagnoses to recovery, including the stem cell transplant that saved his life and the first show he performed after being well again.”) via Wikipedia

  Andrew survived with help from his sister Katie’s stem cells and a whole lot of support from his family and friends.

  SWIM is the song he wrote afterward. That’s what this is book is about. Rock isn’t Andrew but Andrew and his personal story definitely inspired this book and this character. If you read the lyrics for that song you get chills and it’s a beautiful, beautiful piano ballad.

  So, as you can see, lots of things from Andrew’s back story made it into the plot. From the name of the band, “Son of a Jack” to the song fans won’t stop asking for, to the personal crisis (both physically and mentally) and the ultimate triumph that was a direct result of family and friends.

  But that’s not where Rock’s story ends. Because when I finally did sit down to write ROCK on January 25th, 2016, two and a half years after I had the original idea, I stumbled onto something else.

  A movie called Meru.

  “I always wondered how I was going to die. And now… now I know.”

  ~ Jimmy Chin, Meru

  You have probably never heard of Meru. I had never heard of Meru. And I can tell you right now my only experience with rock climbing before this book was one friend I had back in like 2003 who took it up after her first child was born. She was in a bad place but rock climbing did something for her. Her eyes lit up and she got excited as she told me about how her and this guy she was semi-dating (who was much older than her) took her out to Utah and taught her to climb. And since I had decided Rock was from Grand Lake, Colorado way back in 2013, I decided maybe Rock could find solace in that sport too. It was just a whim, really. I had no idea how pivotal it would be to the plot until I saw Meru.

  I have a thing for watching movies as I write. I tend to write in big chunks, like 8,000 words a day. And then I like to take a day off and think. Watch movies, mostly. They inspire me. So I was on one of these “off” days looking through on-demand movies on cable and came across Meru. It was a new title. I look for new movies all the time, so the fact that I’d never heard of it before was what caught my eye. And the minute I realized it was a documentary about rock climbers I knew I had to see it.

  Meru is drama. Meru is personal triumph. Meru is a testament to friendship, trust, and the human spirit. And maybe no one reading this book cares that these three men climbed that mountain (the first ever to reach the top of that peak) but I do. And the reason it’s personally relevant to my identity as an author is because all three of these men are bigger than life.

  Rock is bigger than life too. All of the main characters in my books are bigger than life. They have unimaginable obstacles thrown at them and somehow they always pull through. I wrote in the Eighteen End of Book Shit about readers who were tired of the “drama” in books. Why does everything have to be so over-the-top dramatic? Why does everything have to be bigger than life?

  Well, one, bigger than life makes
for a good story. That’s enough in and of itself. For me at least. But two, it’s real. It’s fucking real.

  That movie isn’t about the climb to the top of the Shark’s Fin of Mount Meru. It’s about the struggle it took to get there.

  Three men—Conrad Anker, Renan Ozturk, and Jimmy Chin.

  Their personal struggles go from losing best friends in avalanches and climbing accidents, to falling off a cliff and surviving with shattered vertebrae and a cranial fracture, to being swept up, and surviving, an avalanche in the Tetons.

  If that’s not over-the-top drama, well, I don’t what is. And it’s all true.

  That was my thought as I was watching Meru. It’s all true. Renan Ozturk climbed Meru less than six months after falling off the side of a cliff while skiing and cracking his head open. He had a fucking stroke on the side of Meru. Conrad and Jimmy didn’t even know if he’d survive the night as they sat in their portaledge tent feeling helpless. They couldn’t take him down the mountain, they were almost 22,000 feet up in the Himalayas. And they were tired from a full day of climbing. Even if they thought they could find Renan help in time, they couldn’t do the descent until morning without risking everyone’s life.

  It was a long night but when Renan woke up the next day he said he felt better.

  He said he wasn’t going down—he was going up.

  And he did.

  All three of them went up and made it to the top. The first ever. Just watching Renan when he got there was enough to make me tear up. That mountain saved him. When he woke up in the hospital after that skiing accident and the doctors told him he’d probably never walk again, the only thing he thought of was, Meru is in September and I’m not missing it.

  Conrad and Jimmy were like, Dude, you know… I don’t know.

  And all their friends and family were like, You shouldn’t let him make that climb. He could get you all killed.

  But Conrad and Jimmy were like, Hey, if Renan says he can do it, if Renan is getting better after the accident because of this climb, we’re not going to be the ones to crush his spirit. He’s coming.

  Renan should not have been able to walk after that accident, let alone climb an unclimbable mountain.

  But he did. He focused on it and made it happen.

  The mind is a powerful thing.

  Conrad was obsessed with climbing Meru after his mentor failed to do it back in the 80’s. “Meru is the culmination of all I’ve done. And all I’ve ever wanted to do was this climb.” It was also a kind of redemption for losing his best friend in an avalanche a few years later.

  Jimmy got a second chance at life after surviving an avalanche in the Tetons just two days after Renan’s almost-fatal fall from a cliff during that same ski trip. After Jimmy’s mother died he figured it was now or never. He had promised his mom he wouldn’t die before she did so every climb he did up until her death was with that in mind. Now he was free to take this risk. He says in the movie, “If we go for it there’s a probability that we’re not going to come back.”

  “But it was worth the risk. It was worth possibly dying for.”

  And Renan needed it to live. Renan needed that mountain to go on. It was his hope while he was in the hospital recovering from a cracked skull and shattered vertebrae. Meru was everything. It was the only thing that mattered. It was the answer to the “why” question after such a huge defeat. It was salvation.

  This is what Rock finds in the climbing. It’s a way forward. The only thing he has pushing him to live on.

  Dramatic? Fuck yes. And I love it.

  I spent the entire time watching Meru knowing full well all three guys were alive because the interviews were after the fact, but still wondering how it could possibly be so, because of what they all went through to get to the end. I had to stop watching and convince myself of this fact more than once, that’s how thrilling this story was. They are all alive. I know this. But still, I asked myself, How could they possibly survive these unsurvivable things? So I watched that movie thinking, If I wrote this plot in a book people would call it unrealistic. They’d call it unnecessary drama. They’d call it over-the-top.

  Well, it is, I guess. Rock is all those things too. I’d like to think the mountain saved Rock as well. If the mountain could save Renan than it could save Rock too.

  I think Rock is probably the most suspenseful story I’ve ever written and while I was putting it all together I had some doubts about that. I won’t lie. But this was the story from day one - way, way back in the summer of 2013 when I found the rock star named Andrew who learned he had cancer on what should’ve been one of the happiest days of his life. And fuck it, I was going to write my story, even if no one wanted to read it.

  That’s how I feel about each book I write. I get an idea and I see it through the eyes of the character until we get to the end. I don’t write books for money, I write them because small ideas lead to big stories. And this book started with a song and ended with a movie.

  In between I filled it with as much drama as possible. Rock is my story about this character, this town, and his friends through my eyes, as told by RK Saber. And I decided while I was watching Meru that I’d never again apologize for over-the-top drama in my books because Conrad, Jimmy, Renan, and Andrew are all real people who survived and triumphed through extraordinary circumstances.

  If they can do it for real, surely my fictional characters can do it in a story.

  So that’s Rock. No, he’s not real but his problems are. People experience trauma and handle it in different ways. I like exploring the psychology of that. I like exploring the recovery and what it means to overcome something. I like finding the happily ever after. Just like Andrew did. Just like Conrad, Renan, and Jimmy did.

  Just like Rock did.

  It’s not fake, people. It’s real life. And I love it.

  So I hope you love it too, because I’m not going to stop writing about it.

  If you enjoyed this book, please consider leaving me a review online. I’m an independent author and every bit of success I have is due to word of mouth from fans like you.

  Thank you for reading, thank you for reviewing, and see you in the next book. If you’d like to chat with me and other JA Huss fans you can ask to join my private Facebook Group (Shrike Bikes) I hang out there every single day and I read every single post so if you’ve got a question or comment, I will be sure to see and answer it if you post in there.

  ~Julie

  About the Author

  JA Huss is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of more than twenty romances. She likes stories about family, loyalty, and extraordinary characters who struggle with basic human emotions while dealing with bigger than life problems. JA loves writing heroes who make you swoon, heroines who makes you jealous, and the perfect Happily Ever After ending.

  You can chat with her on Facebook, Twitter, and her kick-ass romance blog, New Adult Addiction. If you're interested in getting your hands on an advanced release copy of her upcoming books, sneak peek teasers, or information on her upcoming personal appearances, you can join her newsletter list and get those details delivered right to your inbox.

  JA Huss lives on a dirt road in Colorado thirty minutes from the nearest post office. So if she owes you a package from a giveaway, expect it to take forever. She has a small farm with two donkeys named Paris & Nicole, a ringneck parakeet named Bird, and a pack of dogs. She also has two grown children who have never read any of her books and do not plan on ever doing so. They do, however, plan on using her credit cards forever.

  JA collects guns and likes to read science fiction and books that make her think. JA Huss used to write homeschool science textbooks under the name Simple Schooling and after publishing more than 200 of those, she ran out of shit to say. She started writing the I Am Just Junco science fiction series in 2012, but has since found the meaning of life writing erotic stories about antihero men that readers love to love.

  JA has an undergraduate degree in equine s
cience and fully planned on becoming a veterinarian until she heard what kind of hours they keep, so she decided to go to grad school and got a master’s degree in Forensic Toxicology. Before she was a full-time writer she was smelling hog farms for the state of Colorado.

  Even though JA is known to be testy and somewhat of a bitch, she loves her #fans dearly and if you want to talk to her, join her Facebook fan group where she posts daily bullshit about bullshit.

  If you think she’s kidding about this crazy autobiography, you don’t know her very well.