Any fans of "The Partridge Family" on television or the classic groupie road movie "Almost Famous" will find Nick Hupton's latest Young Adult novel pretty groovy.
Growing up in Des Moines with a family of musicians that included his parents, sister and brothers, gave Nick Hupton a lot of real-life experiences to include in a novel about a traveling family band.
Hupton, who played drums in those early years, stocked away memories of concerts, bus trips and band dynamics that he would later call upon to give his fourth YA novel a relatable and realistic narrative.
His coming of age novel, "What I Am To You" puts 17-year old Stevie in the center of the drama with his parents, dad Randy and mom Teri as his wings. Randy is a music perfectionist, while Teri has a voice that is a cross between Janis Joplin and Alicia Keyes, bluesy with a bit of a soulful edge. They are the leads of the rock band named Radial that tours every summer from Milwaukee to Chicago and New Orleans to New York.
"That this has never been a "normal family, that our idea of a family vacation consists of bussing to 20 cities in 30 days and sharing every moment of our time with band members, roadies, and of course, groupies like them," writes Hupton.
Hupton, a Northfield author and high school English teacher, has had four YA books published since 2012. But his latest, "What I Am To You" that was published by Golden Storyline Books last year, may be his most autobiographically inspired.
Hupton said there was an intentional 10-year gap between his last two YA novels and this one, mainly because the revisions took a long time to complete, and perhaps because of the emotional similarity underlying the fictional work. In the novel, Hupton introduces a chink in the armour of his rock star father: a cancer diagnosis.
In real life, his father, a pianist who often played at Carnegie Hall, suffered from Alzheimer's while his musical mother had dementia. In the book's epigraph he writes: "For Mom and Dad, who continue to show me the music, even from the moon."
A long and winding road
Hupton's own pathway as an author has had a few speed bumps along the way.
The Gustavus Adolphus graduate who was a champion tennis team player, later earned a masters at Hamline University. For the last 24 years, he has been teaching English at Jefferson High School in Bloomington. "Yes, we still teach 'The Crucible' and 'The Great Gatsby," he said. "But I've added more recent works too, like 2005's 'The Glass Castle.'"
When his wife Tara got a job at St. Olaf College six years ago in the academic support department, the family moved to Northfield.
Besides his family, teaching, music and writing, Hupton is also the St. Olaf College tennis team coach, as well as the coach for junior teen tennis and serves on the Northfield tennis association board. His favorite author is Tim O'Brien.
During the nine-month school year, Hupton said his focus has to be on his teaching, which leaves weekends and the summer months open for writing. He's taken frequent breaks from writing, often leaving characters and scenes behind for years.
Those writing breaks have allowed him to continue to enjoy the craft of writing without a lot of pressure to publish.
Hupton said two or three years ago he decided to join a Northfield-based writing group, for the camaraderie, as well as the opportunity to offer and receive constructive criticism from each other. Having been a member of other writing groups, Hupton said he was a bit wary of "putting his stuff out there" because sometimes in the creative process others tend to judge the author and not the writing.
But, in his Northfield writing group, Kari Clark and Mary Closner, proved pivital in helping him "get over the finishing line." Not only did they help him shape the narrative with authentic voices and natural story development, but their insights during revisions were invaluable.
Hupton's gratitude for Closner's feedback in particularly extended to reprinting a blurb from her for the book's back cover.
Closner, who is a monthly humor columnist for the Northfield News, said in an email that she thought Hupton's long career as a teacher offered him a unique perspective in the creation of his young characters for his novels.
"He’s also a Dad which made him more familiar with teen angst and growing pains than I was," she said.
Closner added that she spent a lot of time in the writing group trying to convince him to use more slang and texting lingo instead of his usual articulate communication.
"I enjoyed the theme of his most recent book," she admitted. "Who wouldn’t want to imagine the fantasy of going on tour with a famous band? All that adventure when you’re just trying to figure out how to be an adult. And the fun of thinking how much you could get away with in that setting."
As a fellow writer who crafts particularly humorous columns, Closner noted that Hupton doesn't seem overly phased by the editing process.
"Nick is also terrific at going through the endless rewriting process without too much damage to his ego. He’s knowledgeable and open-minded which is really hard for a newcomer to the writing world like me. To me, every edit feels like a personal assault when you’ve struggled to choose the perfect word. I’m sure that changes with maturity as a writer. That’s why our writing group was a nice mix of experience and writing styles."
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