I was out one night with a friend when I had my “ah-ha” moment that inspired The Lonely Hearts Club. The friend in question is one of those girls who always has to have a boyfriend, can’t survive unless she is with a guy, changes herself to please him (you know the type, and not surprisingly, we are no longer friends). This was one of the rare moments in her life when she was single and she was surrounded by guys. Before I started a pity party for myself (I was single at the time too, but no boys were paying attention to me), I thought: You know what? This is ridiculous. Why am I getting upset that she is getting all of the attention? I have so many wonderful friends who are single! We should all get together and go out every Saturday night…

AH-HA!

It hit me: I should write a book about a group of happily single girls who form a club. My brain started immediately searching for a good club name and, being a huge Beatles fan, Lonely Hearts Club jumped out at me. Just like that.

For awhile I was thinking that the Club should consist of four girls named Paula, Jonatha, Georgina and… I couldn’t think of a good female name for Ringo. Ringa? Rita? RITA! As in “Lovely Rita”… I soon realized that I should name one of the girls after a Beatles song and Penny Lane Bloom was born.

I started writing The Lonely Hearts Club in the fall of 2004. But I switched jobs late that year and due to the various demands of being a publicist, I would have to put LHC aside for months at a time. Between 2005 and 2007, I wrote about seven different drafts of LHC before it was sent to any publishers. Even though many things changed, the heart of the story remained the same: single girls, do indeed, rule and never, ever change yourself for a guy. Oh yeah, and boys are stupid.