New Kids On The Block is a year-long series on Pop! Goes The Reader meant to welcome and celebrate new voices and debut authors in the literary community.
Are you a debut author whose book is being published in 2019? It’s not too late to sign-up! If you want to participate in New Kids On The Block this year, please don’t hesitate to get in touch! You can send a tweet or DM on Twitter to @Pop_Reader or email me at Jen@PopGoesTheReader.com. I would love to collaborate with you!
About Jennifer Dugan
Jennifer Dugan is a writer, geek and romantic, who writes the kind of stories she wishes she had growing up. In addition to being a young-adult novelist, she is also the writer/creator of two indie comics. She lives in upstate New York, with her family, dogs, bearded dragon, and an evil cat that is no doubt planing to take over the world. Hot Dog Girl is her first novel. Jennifer Dugan is represented by Brooks Sherman at Janklow & Nesbit, with film rights being handled by Mary Pender-Coplan at United Talent Agency.
I was around six years old the first time I saw the movie Grease. My mom was obsessed with it at the time; the songs were catchy, the setting saccharine, and figuring most of the more adult plot points went over my head, she had it in constant rotation at my house. I remember sitting there, totally enthralled…equally enamored with both Sandy and Danny.
At the time, I was a little confused but mostly delighted by the idea that I could fall in love with anybody. I imagined marrying Labyrinth’s Jareth the Goblin King one day and The Princess Bride’s Buttercup the next. It was magical, and I was happy, until I mentioned it to a friend who laughed and said, “girls can’t marry girls.”
Right. That.
And the next time my mom put on one of my movies, I saw the truth. Sandy loved Danny. Buttercup loved Westley. Jareth loved…well, that one’s complicated. But what wasn’t complicated was the message in nearly every book, movie, and song I consumed growing up: boys loved girls and girls loved boys. And while very occasionally boys loved boys, and rarer still sometimes girls loved girls, nobody seemed capable of falling in love with people all across the gender spectrum the way I did…or at least they weren’t talking about it in places I could access in my small town.
So I learned not to talk about it much, too, and instead moved through my childhood feeling like an absolute alien. I was out as bi to my close friends and family in a “known but not really talked about” way, and eventually found a handful of gay and lesbian friends, but it wasn’t the same. I still didn’t quite fit. I spent a lot of time wondering what was wrong with me.
When I dated girls in high school — even taking one to the junior prom — people were surprisingly supportive. I tried to convince myself that meant I wasn’t bi after all. That all those people who told me bisexuality didn’t exist were probably right. Maybe I was a lesbian. I just happened to be a lesbian who sometimes seriously crushed on people who were not women. That must be a thing, right? And while having a same-sex date at prom definitely came with its own set of challenges, at least they were well defined. At least when I said “I’m a lesbian,” nobody said that didn’t exist.
But inside I still felt like an alien.
And then, one day I met a boy on a skateboard. He was terrible at flirting, but very cute and kind, and his hoodies were the coziest in existence. I really liked him. I was also terrified of dating him. I knew dating him meant reclaiming the truth of who I was, the truth that I had been running from for way too long both in my real life and in all my writing — I wasn’t straight, and I wasn’t a lesbian. I was definitely bi.
It still took me a few more years and a lot of work to fully make peace with that again, the way I once had as a child. But I knew deep down I couldn’t let other people define me anymore. It was time to define myself.
And when I finally sat down and wrote about a bi girl protagonist — after years of being too afraid to delve into writing about queer girls — the words rushed out like they had been waiting all along, and Hot Dog Girl was born.
My main character, Elouise, is out about being bi from the start, and even upfront about mostly liking other girls — but she opens the book with a crush on a boy. And that’s also okay, and valid, and something that took me a long time to learn: your queerness is not dependent on who you are dating.
Hot Dog Girl was written for teens who sometimes flail while figuring life out, like I did. Who can feel like an alien because of who they love or don’t love. Who don’t always feel like they quite measure up. Who don’t always feel like they fit.
It was time to pull that character out of the queer, quirky best friend role and put them front and center in their own summer rom-com — one where they can have crushes, where they can cry and laugh, where they can make epic mistakes and try to solve them, where they can love and be loved.
Where they can finally be the main character of their own story.
Title Hot Dog Girl
Author Jennifer Dugan
Pages 320 Pages
Intended Target Audience Young Adult
Genre Contemporary, Realistic Fiction, Romance
Publication Date April 30th 2019 by G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books For Young Readers
Find It On Goodreads ● Amazon.com ● Chapters ● The Book Depository
A fresh and funny contemporary YA rom-com about teens working as costumed characters in a local amusement part.
Elouise (Lou) Parker is determined to have the absolute best, most impossibly epic summer of her life. There are just a few things standing in her way:
● She’s landed a job at Magic Castle Playland…as a giant dancing hot dog.
● Her crush, the dreamy Diving Pirate Nick, already has a girlfriend, who is literally the Princess of the park. But Lou’s never liked anyone, guy or otherwise, this much before, and now she wants a chance at her own happily ever after.
● Her best friend, Seeley, the carousel operator, who’s always been up for anything, suddenly isn’t when it comes to Lou’s quest to set her up with the perfect girl or Lou’s scheme to get close to Nick.
● And it turns out that this will be their last summer at Magic Castle Playland – ever – unless she can find a way to stop it from closing.Jennifer Dugan’s sparkling debut coming-of-age queer romance stars a princess, a pirate, a hot dog, and a carousel operator who find love – and themselves – in unexpected people and unforgettable places.
