Title: This Much Is True
Author: Katherine Owen
Publication Date: August 11th 2013
Genres: Contemporary, New Adult, Romance
Publication Date: August 11th 2013
Genres: Contemporary, New Adult, Romance
Synopsis:
Fate brings them together
Fame & lies keep them apart
One truth remains…
She’s become the Paly High girl with the most tragic story…
At 17, Tally Landon just wants to graduate and leave for New York to pursue ballet. Her best friend Marla convinces her to attend one last party—a college party—where she can be among strangers and evade the whisperings about her heartbreaking loss of her twin that follows her everywhere she goes. She meets Lincoln Presley, Stanford’s famous baseball wonder and has a little fun at his expense—when she lies about her age and who she really is—intent on being someone else for the night and escaping her tragic story.
His only focus is baseball, but he can’t forget the girl he saved on Valentine’s Day…
At 22, Lincoln Presley’s star is on the rise—about to finish at Stanford and expected to be taken early in Major League Baseball’s upcoming draft—his cousin’s party serves as a welcome distraction. But then, he sees the girl from Valentine’s Day that he saved from that horrific car accident and can’t quite hide his disappointment when she appears to look right through him and not remember him at all. He vows to learn her name at least before he leaves. What’s the harm in getting to know this girl? What’s the worst that can happen?
They share this incredible connection, but fate soon tests these star-crossed lovers in all kinds of ways…
And yet, despite the lies being told to protect the other, and the trappings of fame that continually separate them, and in lieu of the deception by those they’ve come to trust the most; one truth remains.
This much is true.
Fame & lies keep them apart
One truth remains…
She’s become the Paly High girl with the most tragic story…
At 17, Tally Landon just wants to graduate and leave for New York to pursue ballet. Her best friend Marla convinces her to attend one last party—a college party—where she can be among strangers and evade the whisperings about her heartbreaking loss of her twin that follows her everywhere she goes. She meets Lincoln Presley, Stanford’s famous baseball wonder and has a little fun at his expense—when she lies about her age and who she really is—intent on being someone else for the night and escaping her tragic story.
His only focus is baseball, but he can’t forget the girl he saved on Valentine’s Day…
At 22, Lincoln Presley’s star is on the rise—about to finish at Stanford and expected to be taken early in Major League Baseball’s upcoming draft—his cousin’s party serves as a welcome distraction. But then, he sees the girl from Valentine’s Day that he saved from that horrific car accident and can’t quite hide his disappointment when she appears to look right through him and not remember him at all. He vows to learn her name at least before he leaves. What’s the harm in getting to know this girl? What’s the worst that can happen?
They share this incredible connection, but fate soon tests these star-crossed lovers in all kinds of ways…
And yet, despite the lies being told to protect the other, and the trappings of fame that continually separate them, and in lieu of the deception by those they’ve come to trust the most; one truth remains.
This much is true.
Q& A with Katherine Owen
Give us the short
version for This Much Is True
A challenge right away because this is a long novel (432 pages in
print).
Fate brings them together
Fame & lies keep them apart
One truth remains…
She’s become the
Paly High girl with the most tragic story…
His only focus is
baseball, but he can’t forget the girl he saved on Valentine’s Day…
They share this
incredible connection, but fate soon tests these star-crossed lovers in all
kinds of ways...
And yet, despite the lies being told to protect the other,
and the trappings of fame that continually separate them, and in lieu of the
deception by those they’ve come to trust the most; one truth remains.
This much is
true.
Where does the story
come from?
I’d been taking classes with The Writer’s Studio a few years ago and this novel developed from a
two-page assignment we did for one of my advanced fiction classes. Tally Landon
evolved over time. Lincoln Presley was set in my mind from the beginning as
this star athlete on the verge of fame and the girl he meets who mirrors his
dedication and intensity in her own right for her artistic talent. And yet,
their passion tests them both in different ways along with everything else that
transpires in the story.
How is this a story
that only you could have written?
I created this entire story in my mind. I started out with
the what-if questions. What if you
had everything? Or thought you did and then life happened and changed up
everything in a single instant? This happens to both of these characters in
different ways more than once. One of the things that I came to realize with
this novel—my fourth one—in which I think I finally got it—my process—is that I live and breathe with these characters
for so long that I really do know them by the time I’ve completed the story.
It’s true. I know how they would say things and think about them and what they
would and would not do. It’s uncanny. When I’m finished, I miss all these
characters because they’ve been such an active part of my psyche for so long.
This story took a year and a half to write. I’m pretty sure
my writing process drives my family crazy because I am in another world much of
the time while writing and thinking through the story line. So? Who else could have written it when
it comes together like that?
What was the hardest
thing about writing This Much Is True?
I battled a lot of self-doubt with this one. I thought
writing When I See You was hard but This Much Is True was harder still. Part
of it is me with some noticeable perfectionist tendencies. I put pressure on
myself to ensure the story was better than my last which WISY was pretty damn
good and my readers were anxiously awaiting another book and I still wasn’t
done with This Much Is True. The
story was going long and I debated upon doing two books which would have been
the easy way out but I really felt committed to telling their whole story in
one. So it’s two books in one, literally.
Still the other day one of my newest readers on Goodreads took a star off of
her 5-star rating of TMIT because she wanted a longer ending. It’s 432 pages already; go figure that one out.
What do you LOVE
about This Much Is True?
This is a great story. It has everything in it from the
coming of age angle with Tally starting out at seventeen to the older amazingly
talented baseball player in Lincoln Presley and these two confronting and
battling the trappings of fame and lies and what love is really all about. It’s
a masochist read as one reviewer put it. The truth is I’ve had some AMAZING
reader reactions to this book that have put me in tears because they get me and
this book. It is the ultimate gratifying experience for this author, let me
tell you.
Give us your favorite
passage from the story:
I love this one because it is the epitome of Tally and what
she struggles with within herself…
Tally Landon’s POV
Marla announces she
wants babies. Three babies in five years. She looks at me. I start to feel
nauseous and must turn a little white. I look away from her and allow myself to
think all these nasty thoughts. Three babies in five years with Charlie? Are
you fucking kidding me? That doesn’t add up on any girl’s wish list.
Charlie Masterson. A father? Say it isn’t so.
Yet she lays out this
family plan the way you’d say, “After yoga, I’ll go to Lia’s for the
mani-special and then wax on about hairstyles and hemlines until dinner.”
If I were gifted at
making long-term plans, which by now we all know I’m not, and if I was at all
hopeful, which we all know that I can never be, although it crosses my mind
that it’s entirely possible these are all just huge, fucking, temporary
setbacks and nothing more, even though it’s been going on for over three years
now, since Holly died, and I met Lincoln Presley. Events that could be
construed as somehow inevitably related. Yes, perhaps there’s an expiration
date on the said pursuit of unhappiness. Perhaps, things will eventually go my
way after I actually discover what that way is supposed to be.
And this one because
it is the epitome of Lincoln Presley and my writing of him.
Lincoln Presley’s POV
Yet, in the light of
day, at half past eight, all I have left of her is this note. Her fucking
note. A note that doesn’t tell me anything and simply thanks me. Thanks
me. She didn’t even sign her name. For some reason, this bothers me on a
whole separate level. I stand still for a long time, holding the note, and let
it all sink in. Her leaving is almost palpable like a gale-force wind that’s rolled
into my life in the span of a single evening and left behind all this
incalculable destruction, both inside and out. Yes, the tempest has passed, but
the air around me feels different. I can hardly breathe. Nothing is the same
without her. As the lone survivor of her particular storm, I begin to wonder
just exactly what I’m supposed to do now.
It’s only later, after
wandering listlessly around the guest house for another hour, after I
eventually resign myself to the unenviable task of cleaning everything up and
throwing away the empty champagne bottle we shared; after I wash the wine glass
smudged with her lipstick; after I purposefully pick up and look through each
and every one of the DVDs she touched and so casually left in a forsaken heap
stacked precariously at the edge of the great room rug so clearly forgotten by
her, which seemingly represents this wry reflection of myself that even I can
admit to; it’s only after I pushed the heavy furniture pieces back into place
and, in essence, effectively erase all genuine evidence of her incredible
presence from the night before; yes, only after all of that, do I realize I
have absolutely no way to get in touch with her.
I’m practically paralyzed with equal doses of
disappointment and despair at the cruelty of this one indelible fact. Yes, this
hits me hard because I want to see her again, need to see her
again; and yet, I have no way to get in touch with her. I begin to wonder if
that was her intention with me all along.
What’s next for you
as a writer?
I have two different WIPs going on in my mind competing for
thoughts and time. Saving Valentines which I hope to finish by the end of the
year and another yet-to-be-named WIP that is about four girls graduating from
high school and reuniting years later and seeing the unexpected changes in all
of them and how tragedy unites them, changes them and threatens to tear them
apart in different ways. All complex stuff told from multiple POVs and gender.
Damn. Why do I come up with this stuff?
Purchase This Much Is True, Now!
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About the Author
Dark. Edgy. Contemporary. Romantic.Were we describing me? Or my fiction? Sorry. I drink too much...coffee, not enough water.
I swear too much for God and my mother, and I slip these into my fiction. Sorry.
I'm impatient, a perfectionist, a wordsmith, a dreamer, which ends up being good and bad. I'm a workaholic; ask my fam-dam-ily.
I've written four novels in as many years: Seeing Julia, Not To Us, When I See You, and my latest release This Much Is True.
If you love angsty, unpredictable love stories, I'm yours. ♥
Connect with Katherine
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