Yesterday was day #3 of my 8 day ‘stay-cation’. Except for going to see X-men (it was great!), I spent the rest of the day working on my novel Fall Street. It’s not done yet, but it’s getting closer.
As a writer, there’s a special feeling as you get toward the end of a book, perhaps a little like what a parent feels when their child graduates high school. You’re excited for them and their future, and yet you’ll miss this early time in which you discovered who they were and helped mold them into the thing they’d become.
Fall Street is about a 15 year old girl growing up in 1950s America. Her views and beliefs change after she unexpectedly befriends the most popular guy in school, Tommy Delano, and through him, she gets to know John Rainhorse, the only Native American boy in town. A lot of trouble ensues but Claire never loses her sense of humor or her desire to see the world become a better, more tolerant place.
Yesterday I was re-reading it and making notes on this draft. I’m a failure as a writer though (!) because I feel I should be making bigger changes but I love it just the way it is 🙂 Oh well, I did polish it a lot over the years I was writing it. Of yes — years. I wrote the first chapter in 2004, then just kept coming back to it now and then, whenever the mood hit me, ’til I finished it last year. So excited! In fact, I’m off to reread the last ten pages now . . .
Here’s a little except —
I could still feel John’s hand upon my neck, even though we’d parted a half hour ago. I ask again, “So you really don’t think it’s wrong?”
Tommy was slicking back his hair. He shook his head, seemingly a little puzzled. “He’s been my best friend for three years. I don’t know why it doesn’t bother me, his skin. I just kind of stopped seeing it.
‘You know, this one time in church, the preacher told a story about these two women who did everything alike — breakfast at the same thing, eggs, everything. And they both loved gardening. Same . . . Shovels, everything. The times they liked to work— It went on like this. But they liked different petunia colors or something. And so they were bitter enemies, and they fought all the time, and then one day God came down to them — ’cause God came do that in stories — and God came down to them and said ’If you have everything else in the world in common, why are you fighting over this one thing? And they became best friends. I’m kind of like that petunia woman. What’s color matter in the end?”
Oh my God, did Tommy Delano just make my parents look like idiots?
Stay Extraordinary 