Today I’m publishing the first two chapters of Nothing Else Occurs to Me¸a novel I wrote almost ….twenty years ago. I gasped when I realized that. I’d thought it was maybe…fifteen?
Believe it or not, I actually obtained representation for it, too. The agent (reputable, NYC-based, and not Catholic in the least, read on to see why that matters) said in her first response to me after reading: This is excellent, one of the best I've read in this genre….. This one is ready to be sold, now.
Bless her, she was unable to, though. And reading her note all those years later, I’m even more depressed. I mean, not really, but it does give me pause. About what, I’m not sure.
I had thought about repackaging it and selling it as an e-book, but…that’s a lot of work. I have e-book versions of some of my already published, but out-of-print books, but getting them formatted for e-books is a lot easier than going from a Word document to an e-book, and who has time?
So, I’m sharing it with you. In re-reading it, I have to say I can understand why it didn’t get picked up, and maybe I’m not sorry it didn’t? I don’t know. It is sort of a YA novel, but also pitched at times a little higher than that. I think because of the content – Catholic Things, even though I was trying to make a bigger point about belonging and vulnerability and how that vulnerability is exploited – it just wasn’t publishable by mainstream publishers. I also think that it would probably be better as an adult novel, but at the same time I personally don’t generally like adult novels with kid or teen protagonists, so I suppose that works against that idea. So here we are.
Given that I wrote it almost two decades ago, some aspects of the technological landscape are dated. Younger readers will need to do research on what this thing called a “transparency machine” is. (As a teacher, I adored transparencies. The height of educational tech!) I thought about updating it to closer to the present, but, again…too much work.
It will take a few months to publish the whole thing here, and remember it’s only for paid subscribers, so please respect that!
Chapter 2 is found here - I’m not going to bother you with another email, but you can access it here. Free subscribers can go to the link for a preview.
Next week: Chapter 2 of The Saint Around the Corner.
Nothing Else Occurs to Me: 1
Eight minutes.
Eight more minutes of Mr. Sloan, soft, doughy teacher of American history, pasty pale except for his pink bald head. Droning more ruthlessly than ever this afternoon, trying to smother them in his thick blanket of words.
Elizabeth sat at her desk in the second row by the window, resisting. She would not be smothered by the Constitution today, she would not. She tried to keep her eyes off her watch, but it was hopeless, partly because she did want to know when freedom would arrive, but also because Sloan could be so hard to look at without negativity filling your head - frustration, madness, revulsion. Pity?
Six minutes and thirty seconds. Sloan - oh, how deadly was this and who cares about separation of powers today, a Friday in early spring when the snow was finally gone, gone, gone – this was endless and agonizing, and probably not just because of the Friday thing when everything seemed worse before the bell, and everything so much better after it .
No, Sloan was ticked. Seriously peeved and offended. And they knew it – Elizabeth realized that up to this point, even up to the very last minutes of class, things had been quieter today. Not quite as much murmuring or rustling – none at all actually. It was a sign. Even though they – her class – hadn’t done a thing. Well, at least not that thing.