December 24th [COMPLETED]

Preface - Before We Begin

A/N: Mia Roberts is the main character in "I'll See You Soon" and the author of "Five Years of Fame"(according to the official Girl Power Galaxy lore, aka because I said so).

Before we begin our story, I want to set the scene for how this book came about. It was a very different experience from how my other biographical/autobiographical books have been written. This one feels much more like a labor of love.

It was easy enough for me to write my own stories, to give my own experiences a narrative voice. And even with Reeve Keller's book, the process was quite simple. She called me up, told me she wanted Mia Roberts to write the biography of her years in the spotlight and that was that. Thus "Five Years of Fame" was born.

This story, however, was a whole other matter.

To give you some context, I must first tell you about our main subject of this book.

For almost a decade, the name George Briggs was synonymous with number one hits and chart-topping albums. George Briggs was a name to be revered in the music industry.

However, if you stopped a hundred people on the street and asked them who George Briggs was, most would say 'Who?'. And those that did know the name would give you an answer somewhere along the lines of 'That music producer guy, you know, the forty-year-old from Sweden or wherever.' Because that's how the myth went.

George Briggs, an overnight success, a force to be reckoned with, bursting out onto the scene of the music industry only to disappear just as suddenly seven years later. Who is this forty-year-old from Sweden? Or is it Norway? Denmark? The myth never specified his point of origin.

I know George Briggs. Personally. I have for years. But most people just call her George. Her mother calls her Georgiana and her husband calls her Georgie but they are the only exceptions.

I met George when we were both still in our twenties. I was traveling with my husband's band at the time as their photographer and George went with us to help do some recording on the road. She was a few years into the whole myth-making facade that kept her out of the limelight, a facade that kept outsiders for criticizing her skill and reputation as a twenty-something-year-old female ruling the music producing industry.

The facade worked. George was able to go about her work relatively unscathed and created some of the greatest albums of our generation during her time as George Briggs.

But then she stopped. George Briggs went away forever and slowly but surely, the name Georgiana Burns started to make headway as a music producer. Georgiana Burns was older. In her late twenties. People cared less that her dad was a rockstar from the 90's and her mom the youngest of a very wealthy family from Long Island. Slowly but surely, under her own name, George gained a second wave notoriety and respect.

I thought I knew George's story. She would tell fun anecdotes when hanging out in a group. I had even heard some of the same ones multiple times. And so I figured I knew everything about  how George Briggs came to be and then suddenly wasn't anymore.

Two years ago, I was shown exactly how much I didn't even know the tip of the iceberg when it came to George Briggs.

Two years ago, in early spring, George called me up. That, in itself, was unusual as we weren't really those kind of friends. She had been holed up in her studio in Brooklyn for the better part of half a decade and I hadn't been out on the road with my husband since our kids were born. We hadn't seen each other in years.

George called me because she wanted to talk. She wanted to give a talk, to be more specific, and she wanted me to be the one to interview her.

I said yes, without a second's hesitation.