Make Good Art!

My cold is still here, but I decided to pretend that I was the type of person who can write and finish a novel, so I cleared off my desk, wrote 1119 new words, and finished off the chapter I was procrastinating on. Perhaps I should have played at pretending much sooner!

I have written and revised this book several times. It has morphed and changed over the years–always for the better. This is my favorite version, the young adult version, and the most difficult to write. There are lots of “feels” in it, and a lot of me in there, which tells me that this is the book I’m supposed to write.

Here are the first three sentences of the first chapter:

I was reading Jane Eyre the day my father died. Jane was journeying towards Thornfield Hall when a nurse dressed in blue scrubs poked her head inside the ICU waiting room of St. Joseph Mercy Hospital, called out my name, and led me into Dad’s room. My father had just been disconnected from life support.

I lost my mother many years ago. It was hard to go back to that moment, to remember what it was like when my mother came off of life support. It was difficult to remember how lost and frustrated I felt after she was gone. A part of me wanted to know that these feelings were normal and that I wasn’t alone.

And so…this is the fictional story of a young girl that has suffered the loss of her parents, faces the “monsters” in her family, and finds herself in a new home. There’s some mystery in this book as our protagonist looks into her father’s death. There are villains…and questions. What makes a family? What do you do when you begin to doubt your core beliefs? Mostly, I’m writing the book I would have liked to have read when I was younger.

xo Juli