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Novel Projects
"After
I have finished a book I only wish to see it published exactly as I
wrote it and have as many people read it as possible. You write for
yourself and others."
~ Ernest Hemingway
~ Ernest Hemingway
I enjoy writing novels
more than anything else because the story I create always takes on a
life of its own. The characters become real people in my mind and the
sense of accomplishment I feel after completing a novel is unlike
anything else I've ever experienced.
Below are a couple of novel excerpts for you to read.
Both The Crabapple Tree and The Trouble With Emily Dickinson
are finished and I am in the process of getting them published.
I am happy to say that they have both been well-received and I am hoping to secure a literary agent relatively soon!
Below are a couple of novel excerpts for you to read.
Both The Crabapple Tree and The Trouble With Emily Dickinson
are finished and I am in the process of getting them published.
I am happy to say that they have both been well-received and I am hoping to secure a literary agent relatively soon!
The Crabapple Tree
Writer's note: Busy Wheeler is a spirited tomboy who’s adopted and best friends with a mentally handicapped boy named Billy. She is suddenly having strange feelings for the new girl at school and fighting an overwhelming sensation that she’s growing up too fast. After getting into trouble too many times at school, she is sent away to live with an aunt she’s never met for the entire summer. As the summer unfolds, so does a deep-seated family secret and Busy comes face to face with her birth mother. With the help of a new friend, Busy must learn to swallow her pride and make amends with a mother she’s never known while laughter, unexpected kisses and a continuous trail of mischief lead her on an endless journey of adolescent discoveries.
School days move along at the pace of race car with flat tires. Some days I feel as though I’m just spinning my wheels, counting the minutes until the day is over. Like today for instance.
I shuffle through the halls alone and watch as the other kids move in separate packs, like animals in a zoo marking their territory.
I call Randy and his group of friends the “gorillas.” They walk through the halls like they own the joint, slamming unsuspecting kids into lockers for the fun of it. They laugh and push each other wildly, howling and hooting, hanging about the halls even after the bell rings. For some reason, one I can’t quite figure out, this kind of immature behavior is actually considered cool. Give me a break.
As for the popular girls at my school, most of them move around the halls in pairs of two or packs of three or four. And they are always deep in conversation over this boy or that one, cheerleading practice or whether or not the outfit they are wearing is “hot.”
Donna and Jaime, the two most popular girls in the eighth grade, are never more than four inches apart when they walk through the halls. I study them sometimes, wondering oddly at the way they flip their hair, apply a shiny gloss to their lips or cover their mouths when they laugh. It seems like an awful lot of work to be popular. Sometimes they’ll whisper and giggle to each other when they walk by my locker. And today their laughter is louder than ever.
“What’s so funny?” I ask.
“Nothing,” says Donna from between her teeth.
“Yeah, nothing at all,” adds Jaime with a sly grin.
“It sure looks like something,” I say. “What were you laughing about?”
“We weren’t laughing at you,” says Donna. “If that’s what you are thinking.”
“We were laughing at something else,” Jaime insists.
“Oh, really?” I say. “What?”
“Just a silly joke,” says Donna.
“Yeah,” says Jaime. “Just a silly joke.”
“Even if we were laughing at you,” Donna tells me, “it’s just because you’re, you know, kind of different.”
“What do you mean, different? Different how?”
“Just...different,” she says again as she slightly elbows Jaime in the arm.
“I like being different,” I say proudly.
But they have already started walking away.
Writer's note: Busy Wheeler is a spirited tomboy who’s adopted and best friends with a mentally handicapped boy named Billy. She is suddenly having strange feelings for the new girl at school and fighting an overwhelming sensation that she’s growing up too fast. After getting into trouble too many times at school, she is sent away to live with an aunt she’s never met for the entire summer. As the summer unfolds, so does a deep-seated family secret and Busy comes face to face with her birth mother. With the help of a new friend, Busy must learn to swallow her pride and make amends with a mother she’s never known while laughter, unexpected kisses and a continuous trail of mischief lead her on an endless journey of adolescent discoveries.
Excerpt :
School days move along at the pace of race car with flat tires. Some days I feel as though I’m just spinning my wheels, counting the minutes until the day is over. Like today for instance.
I shuffle through the halls alone and watch as the other kids move in separate packs, like animals in a zoo marking their territory.
I call Randy and his group of friends the “gorillas.” They walk through the halls like they own the joint, slamming unsuspecting kids into lockers for the fun of it. They laugh and push each other wildly, howling and hooting, hanging about the halls even after the bell rings. For some reason, one I can’t quite figure out, this kind of immature behavior is actually considered cool. Give me a break.
As for the popular girls at my school, most of them move around the halls in pairs of two or packs of three or four. And they are always deep in conversation over this boy or that one, cheerleading practice or whether or not the outfit they are wearing is “hot.”
Donna and Jaime, the two most popular girls in the eighth grade, are never more than four inches apart when they walk through the halls. I study them sometimes, wondering oddly at the way they flip their hair, apply a shiny gloss to their lips or cover their mouths when they laugh. It seems like an awful lot of work to be popular. Sometimes they’ll whisper and giggle to each other when they walk by my locker. And today their laughter is louder than ever.
“What’s so funny?” I ask.
“Nothing,” says Donna from between her teeth.
“Yeah, nothing at all,” adds Jaime with a sly grin.
“It sure looks like something,” I say. “What were you laughing about?”
“We weren’t laughing at you,” says Donna. “If that’s what you are thinking.”
“We were laughing at something else,” Jaime insists.
“Oh, really?” I say. “What?”
“Just a silly joke,” says Donna.
“Yeah,” says Jaime. “Just a silly joke.”
“Even if we were laughing at you,” Donna tells me, “it’s just because you’re, you know, kind of different.”
“What do you mean, different? Different how?”
“Just...different,” she says again as she slightly elbows Jaime in the arm.
“I like being different,” I say proudly.
But they have already started walking away.
The Trouble With Emily Dickinson
Writer's note: Josephine Jenkins, better known as JJ, is in her senior year at Sampson Academy. She's a closet poet, a talented writer suffering from stage fright, and she's committed the ultimately lesbian faux pas — she's fallen in love with a straight girl. Kendal McCarthy is uber popular. She’s the campus beauty and a cheerleader. Though she may seem to have her life figured out, she’s still searching for that elusive high school experience that will help her make sense of herself before she leaves for college. When she and JJ inadvertently cross paths, their lives suddenly become a bit more interesting in ways that neither of them ever imagined. Filled with unique and witty banter courtesy of Queenie McBride, JJ’s over-privileged confidant, this tale of innocent love exposes the reality of what can happen when two polar opposites collide in the most unexpected way through the poetry of Emily Dickinson.
Excerpt:
With the rain falling outside her open window, Kendal McCarthy was finding it hard to concentrate on Emily Dickinson’s poetry. She lay on her stomach, staring at the words on the page as if they were written in Greek.
For some reason, school was something that had never been easy for her. She had to study hard just to keep a B average. Back at her public school, she coasted easily. She wasn’t prepared for the serious kind of studying that private school courses required after she transferred to Sampson for her freshman year. During the better part of her junior year, her grade point average slipped so low her parents had threatened to pull her out of Sampson altogether. If she wanted to finish school and graduate with the rest of her class, Kendal was forced to pull it together.
With a little tutoring on the side and an obligatory willingness to do her homework instead of partying, she managed to pull her grades back up. Her hardest class this semester was Women’s Literature and she had decided to get some help after she received a low grade on an essay assignment.
Kendal pulled her small frame off of the bed and stood in front of the full-length mirror, which hung between the two single beds in her room. Her hair was cut just below her neckline and was the color of auburn leaves preparing to fall from the tree and layered at an angle. The greenish-blue tint of her eyes seemed to change color depending on the way the light hit them and her face was heart shaped with a slight cave angling along her cheekbones.
She was pretty and she had always known she was pretty. Good genes her mother had told her, you were blessed with the good-looks gene.
Kendal sighed.
The fact that she was beautiful used to satisfy her. At one point in time it had been enough. But she had grown tired of it somewhere along the way. This was her senior year at Sampson and she felt as if something was missing, some overwhelming experience that would help her figure out who she was and who she wanted to be. There existed a vacant space inside of her and nothing had been able to fill it, not cheerleading, not her friends, not her looks, not even her popularity. Nothing.
She could hear her the rest of the girls of Deacon Hall running around the dorm getting ready to venture out for the night. Their vivacious laughter only reminded her that she wouldn’t be joining them. Instead of partaking in common adolescent delinquencies with the rest of the students at Sampson, she was going to be nose deep in Emily Dickinson with some random tutor.
The door to her room flung open. Christine, her roommate and fellow cheerleader, stumbled in while holding a beer casually in her left hand. “We’re pre-gaming, come join!”
Kendal hissed at the request. “I probably shouldn’t show up to a tutoring session drunk,” she said smartly.
“You’re such a good student. You do know that Kyan is going to be at this party, right?”
“Yes, you only told me a billion times at dinner.”
“You sure you can’t skip this?”
“No. So quit asking.”
“Fine,” Christine tipped her can in to the air. “Happy studying then. And um...don’t wait up for me.”
Kendal fought the overwhelming urge to join to party in the next room and fill up the emptiness in her stomach up with cheap beer until she spotted the open book out of the corner of her eye. Her stomach turned with guilt.
After gathering her things, she pulled Emily Dickinson off of the bed and slid the book of poetry into her book bag. She left the dorm as fast as she could knowing that if she lingered any longer she might get swept up in the commotion.
The rain had slowed to a drizzle and the mild wind felt cool against her cheeks. She crossed the soggy lawn listening to the sounds of the campus come alive in the damp air. Sampson Academy was only a five minute walk wide as it was long, a small private campus with a small town feel.
Kendal took one last look across the quad towards her dorm and up the road at Marlon Hall, the dorm where all the boys were. She gazed longingly at the colonial building until she felt the book bag rub against her shoulder, reminding her that Emily Dickinson was waiting for her. Patiently.
With the rain falling outside her open window, Kendal McCarthy was finding it hard to concentrate on Emily Dickinson’s poetry. She lay on her stomach, staring at the words on the page as if they were written in Greek.
For some reason, school was something that had never been easy for her. She had to study hard just to keep a B average. Back at her public school, she coasted easily. She wasn’t prepared for the serious kind of studying that private school courses required after she transferred to Sampson for her freshman year. During the better part of her junior year, her grade point average slipped so low her parents had threatened to pull her out of Sampson altogether. If she wanted to finish school and graduate with the rest of her class, Kendal was forced to pull it together.
With a little tutoring on the side and an obligatory willingness to do her homework instead of partying, she managed to pull her grades back up. Her hardest class this semester was Women’s Literature and she had decided to get some help after she received a low grade on an essay assignment.
Kendal pulled her small frame off of the bed and stood in front of the full-length mirror, which hung between the two single beds in her room. Her hair was cut just below her neckline and was the color of auburn leaves preparing to fall from the tree and layered at an angle. The greenish-blue tint of her eyes seemed to change color depending on the way the light hit them and her face was heart shaped with a slight cave angling along her cheekbones.
She was pretty and she had always known she was pretty. Good genes her mother had told her, you were blessed with the good-looks gene.
Kendal sighed.
The fact that she was beautiful used to satisfy her. At one point in time it had been enough. But she had grown tired of it somewhere along the way. This was her senior year at Sampson and she felt as if something was missing, some overwhelming experience that would help her figure out who she was and who she wanted to be. There existed a vacant space inside of her and nothing had been able to fill it, not cheerleading, not her friends, not her looks, not even her popularity. Nothing.
She could hear her the rest of the girls of Deacon Hall running around the dorm getting ready to venture out for the night. Their vivacious laughter only reminded her that she wouldn’t be joining them. Instead of partaking in common adolescent delinquencies with the rest of the students at Sampson, she was going to be nose deep in Emily Dickinson with some random tutor.
The door to her room flung open. Christine, her roommate and fellow cheerleader, stumbled in while holding a beer casually in her left hand. “We’re pre-gaming, come join!”
Kendal hissed at the request. “I probably shouldn’t show up to a tutoring session drunk,” she said smartly.
“You’re such a good student. You do know that Kyan is going to be at this party, right?”
“Yes, you only told me a billion times at dinner.”
“You sure you can’t skip this?”
“No. So quit asking.”
“Fine,” Christine tipped her can in to the air. “Happy studying then. And um...don’t wait up for me.”
Kendal fought the overwhelming urge to join to party in the next room and fill up the emptiness in her stomach up with cheap beer until she spotted the open book out of the corner of her eye. Her stomach turned with guilt.
After gathering her things, she pulled Emily Dickinson off of the bed and slid the book of poetry into her book bag. She left the dorm as fast as she could knowing that if she lingered any longer she might get swept up in the commotion.
The rain had slowed to a drizzle and the mild wind felt cool against her cheeks. She crossed the soggy lawn listening to the sounds of the campus come alive in the damp air. Sampson Academy was only a five minute walk wide as it was long, a small private campus with a small town feel.
Kendal took one last look across the quad towards her dorm and up the road at Marlon Hall, the dorm where all the boys were. She gazed longingly at the colonial building until she felt the book bag rub against her shoulder, reminding her that Emily Dickinson was waiting for her. Patiently.
