Novel Teaser: My Summer with Gatsby

I am SO EXCITED to announce that My Summer with Gatsby is written all the way through!! I can't say that I'm done, because I have plenty of work yet to do with it, but seriously--having a draft written all the way to the end feels pretty amazing!

This is the first of THREE novels I hope to get written this year, and since I've had a few requests for excerpts, I thought I would post a little teaser here at The Ranch Librarian.

My Summer with Gatsby has been a really special book to me, mostly because it has been so much fun to write! Not all writing is like that--in fact, I find that most of it is really just a lot of work. But not this book. This book has been a joy.

I hope you love it even just a little bit as much as I do.

Excerpt from My Summer with Gatsby

Flappers and Philosophers 

It was well past two am when we all staggered out to the taxi that the bartender had called for us. Dane and Ali had headed out an hour before to make the four block walk back to their house, and Alex and Corey had called a taxi around the same time to take them to Alex's parents' house, where they would stay the night.

Garth, Hannah, Jamie, and I decided to share a taxi. Since my house was all the way over on the other side of Sharps, about a twenty-five mile drive, I was all set to stay in the spare room at Hannah's house. Garth and Jamie both had homes in town, so they would be dropped off at their respective abodes.

The taxi was a suburban, and so there was a shuffle as to who would sit where. Jamie and I lost the toss, and climbed into the third row seat. Garth and Hannah took the middle seat.

It suited me fine to be snuggled into the back. I was a little tipsy and a lot tired and only wanted to snuggle into Jamie's strong arms for a few minutes longer.

"You feel nice," Jamie murmured against my hair as we snuggled together.

"So do you," I said, burrowing into him a little more.

"Are you cold?"

I was, since my flapper dress was really quite thin. "Not too cold."

He tightened his hold on me. I drunkenly wondered, once again, if this was really happening to me. I wasn't the kind of girl who kissed the handsome gray-eyed stranger on the first date. I wasn't the girl who snuggled into the arms of that same stranger in the back of the taxi.

Yet here I was, doing all those things.

Jameson Garner.

What a surprise he had been tonight.

"I don't want to go home tonight," I said, and I could hear that my words were slightly slurred.

"You're not going home, Wren," Jamie said gently. "You're staying with Hannah."

I scoffed and said, "That's not what I meant."

"I know. I don't want to go home either."

I rested my head on his shoulder and said, "I think you're going to have disappeared when I wake up in the morning."

"Not if you don't want me to," he answered. There was a pregnant pause.

I opened my eyes and craned my head back to look at him. He pressed his lips to mine again.

When we broke apart, I could see his gray irises in the low light, and the look there caused warmth to spread through my stomach. With a contented sigh, I closed my eyes and let my head fall back against his shoulder. 

Train Ride

My head felt fuzzy and pained as I slowly woke up. Even with my eyes still closed, I could tell that the sun was out. Was it time to get up? I lay there for a moment, thinking, remembering.

No, it was Sunday. The day after Halloween. I didn't have to get up; I could sleep in. A wave of relief swept over me. My days of staying up until the wee hours and then waking up at a normal time for class were long since passed.

As I lay there, I became vaguely aware of the mechanical noise around me. What was that? I wasn't ready to get up yet, so I didn't move, but then I noticed that it felt as though the bed was swaying. What was going on? My head pounded with dehydration and too much gin. After a moment, I made myself open my eyes and push up off the bed.

I could only stare, dumbfounded at what I saw. Disbelief pervaded my entire body, and I couldn't move. What in the hell was going on.

I blinked hard, and rapidly, trying to make sense of what I saw. But no matter how many times I blinked, the scene before me didn't change.

The swaying made sense now, as did the mechanical noise. How could this be? I swung my legs over the side of the bed, and when the bottoms of my feet touched the floor, I still couldn't make sense of my surroundings.

I was sitting on the bed of a private train car, and a green countryside was rushing past. Standing, I went to the window and looked out, trying to figure out where I was.

Where I was...as I considered where I was, I realized that not only did I not know where I was, I knew where I wasn't.

With building fright, I thought about the fact that I wasn't sitting in Hannah's guest room the way I had originally planned. I wasn't at Jamie's either--Jamie.

The handsome, gray-eyed man came to mind, and a rush of fear came over me. Had I been kidnapped? I hadn't been completely sober last night, but had I been drunk enough to be swept off...to a train somewhere?

Had I gone home with Jamie?

I couldn't remember anything past agreeing to go home with Jamie. What had I been thinking last night?

As I stood looking out the window, I glanced around the stateroom. It was cozy, if not small, and it was dominated by a large steamer trunk, propped open on end and teeming with light and airy fabrics.

I looked back out the window. The countryside rushing past me at the moment was lush and green, and the sun shone with the bright promise of spring.

Last night was Halloween, I thought. Panic crept over me and I closed my eyes again. This wasn't really happening; it had to be a dream. Right?

I was still in the middle of telling myself that I just needed to wake up when there was a knock on the door. I started, not having expected anyone else to enter this dream--hallucination?--of mine.

Cautiously, I stepped to the door. "Who is it?" I asked.

"Message for you, Miss," came a male voice from the other side of the door.

"What is it?"

"A wireless," he answered.

A wireless? What on earth?

"I'm terribly sorry to bother you, but I thought you'd want it immediately."

Confused though I was, I wanted to know what this wireless said. I glanced down at my body, which was closed in a very light, very sheer negligee. Good Lord, I thought. I don't own anything like this!

I looked around the room and settled my gaze on a robe hanging from a peg on the wall. It was almost as light and flimsy as the pajamas I wore, but it was better than nothing, so I picked it up, pulled it on, and opened the stateroom door.

A young fellow, maybe eighteen, stood in the hall. He offered me the slip of paper and said, "I really am sorry to bother you, Miss. I just thought you'd want the message as soon as possible.

I stared at him blankly. He was dressed in a red and gold uniform, with a flat-topped hat, like the kinds you saw bell boys wear at fancy hotels.

"Are you all right, Miss Caraway?"

Caraway? His expression was so earnest that I found myself answering, "Of course, I'm fine. I'm just--well, it's early, I suppose."

He looked down at his watch and said, "We're only an hour from your stop, Miss Caraway. We'll pull into the station at noon."

"Station?" I repeated, focusing on that detail rather than the fact that he'd quite tactfully informed of the fact that it was A. Not particularly early, and B. We were close to our destination.

"Long Island."

Dumbstruck, I felt a zing zip down my spine. What the hell had happened last night, and where was I?

"Are you sure you're all right, Miss?" the young man asked again. "You look like someone just walked over your grave."

"I'm not feeling that well," I said weakly, which was actually true. Suddenly my stomach heaved and I thought I might be sick. I reached a hand out to support myself against the wall.

The porter looked truly alarmed. "Shall I fetch a doctor?"

"The train has a doctor?" I asked, feeling the nausea passing.

"No," he said. "But there's generally one on board."

"I think I'll be fine," I said, wishing for no more than to close my eyes and wake up back in my own bed.

"Can I bring you anything?"

"Some breakfast?" I asked.

"Of course. Would you like a tray like the one you had yesterday?"

How could I have had a tray yesterday? I wondered. "Okay."

"I'll be back shortly."

He headed off down the corridor and I closed the door behind him. I walked back to the bed and sat down. The crinkle of the paper in my hand reminded me that I still needed to read the message he'd brought me.

Be at station at noon to pick you up stop looking forward to the summer stop love nick stop

Nick? Who was Nick? Pinching the bridge of my nose between my thumb and forefinger, I squeezed my eyes shut. This had to be a joke. Or a dream. Or something, because being on a train, alone, in the spring made no sense at all.

I was still sitting on the bed, trying to figure out who Nick was, when I spotted a newspaper half under a splash of fabric spilling from the trunk. Crouching down, I retrieved the paper and read the headline:

SENSATIONAL FIRST COURT APPEARANCE OF SCREEN ACTOR VALENTINO

I couldn't think of any Hollywood stars with the last name Valentino. But then again, I hadn't seen a newspaper with this kind of print outside a museum ever.

It was then that I read the date printed below the name of the paper.

It was The New York Times. From June 5, 1922.

My whole body went cold and my hands began to shake. 

NaNoWriMo 2015: My Summer with Gatsby

I realize that it's the 6th December, which means that NaNoWriMo ended a week ago and I haven't reported on it yet! Yikes! I can't believe how fast time is going by.

That being said, NaNoWriMo 2015 was awesome. Busy and crazy and little insane, but awesome.

Thirty days flies by at a ridiculous rate when you are trying to write a novel.

This is my 5th year writing a NaNoWriMo novel, and my 5th year not making 50,000 words.

*sad face*

BUT...

On October 31st, I had no words in the Scrivener document that I entitled My Summer with Gatsby.

On November 30th, I had a little over 31,000 words in that file.

Not the 50,000 words I was hoping for, but 31,000 words is far more words than I started it, so I count it as a win.

Not to mention this fact: I find NaNoWriMo to be an incredibly FUN experience. It's so rare in my writing life that the writing is flowing freely from my fingertips, feeling so fun and easy. But NaNoWriMo seems to function beautifully for me as an experience in which I am uninhibited as a writer, and that's pretty awesome.

This year, I had a great time writing a 1920s inspired novel based off The Great Gatsby. I'm not quite finished with it yet, but I plan to have it done by New Year's Day, so I can spend some time editing in the new year.

To give you a taste of what My Summer with Gatsby is all about, check out a teaser below, and stay tuned for more!

Wren Carrington has been teaching American Literature for 5 years, and her favorite part of the school year? The spring, when she gets to hand out copies of The Great Gatsby and introduce her 11th graders to the wonders of F. Scott Fitzgerald's most famous novel. 
Gatsby, she has always said, is her "literary boyfriend," and jokes that she might have saved him from his fate, had she only the chance to rescue him from the clutches of Daisy Buchanan, who never really deserved Jay Gatsby anyway.

While she's been teased about this by students and friends alike, Wren is firm in her dedication to Gatsby. But on Halloween, when she goes to her friend's party dressed in a flapper girl costume, she is shocked to fall asleep in the car, only to wake up on a train to New York, where a man calling himself Nick Caraway keeps calling her Wren Caraway, his baby sister.   

Sure enough, it is to a small cottage on Long Island's West Egg, that Nick takes her, where Wren finds herself swept into the fabulous parties at Jay Gatsby's mansion, and comes face to face with Gatsby himself. 

Will the summer be enough to do what she's always said she could: save Gatsby from himself?

NaNoWriMo, November 2014

I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE NaNoWriMo!!!!

What is that, you ask?

NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month, and November is that month!!! The Office of Letters and Light is all about helping people unlock their creativity and get some writing done! NaNoWriMo is based on a simple premise: during the month of November, you write a 50,000 word novel. 

Sounds crazy, right? Sounds hard, right?

So why love it, you ask? 

BECAUSE IT IS AWESOME!!!

Novel writing is hard, no two shakes about it. There's no way to make it easy. Writing 50,000 words that string together into some semblance of a story that a reader can follow is tough. But it is so worth it. And that's what the Office of Letters and Light is getting at: it's tough, but it's worth it, and so let's get it done! 

In order to get 50,000 words written between November 1st and November 30th, you have to do some serious WRITING. The average to get done on time is almost 2000 words a day. And in order to write 2000 words a day, you have just put your head down and WRITE. You have to just get your stuff out on the page and not spend too much time fiddling with it. 

What a great project! I love that NaNoWriMo forces you to let go of all your neurosis and habits and weird things about writing and just write. 

I love people that say writing is 10% talent and 90% just putting your butt in the chair. I think that's totally true, but there's something to be said for having writing talent. Likewise, I love people who say "the only rule is that there are no rules." True, but not true. There are rules, but they are often meant to be broken, and those who break them well (E.E. Cummings, anyone?) often meet with success. 

The bottom line: writing is HARD. It just is. Period. End of story. But I think we tend to make it harder through overthinking it. 

NaNoWriMo tries to yank you away from that place where you overthink and allow writing to be really hard. It forces you to just get it all out, even if that means that you skip a scene or let your characters yell, "You suck" in the middle of a courtroom drama scene. The beauty of writing is that you can go back and EDIT. 

So, NaNoWriMo is here, and I am trying to get after it! 

If this sounds fun or interesting to you, check out the NaNoWriMo website and join the fun!!

PS--I will freely admit that in the four years I have done NaNoWriMo, I have never "won" by making it to the 50,000 word mark. My job and Thanksgiving always manage to really throw my schedule off. But despite never making 50,000 words, I have made other significant word counts that have gotten me on a roll, and subsequently gone on to be novels that I have finished later.