Three Friends, Three Books

This post will be a departure from my “this in contrast to that” theme. The heat and humidity have had a warping effect, and so I might as well bend my own rules. What I’m setting out to do here is offer up, for your consideration, a few recently published works of fiction — first novels — by writers I am honored to know. My peeps are out there on the field, so you could say that I’m taking up the pom-poms and doing some cheerleading.

The whole arduous process of drafting and revising and submitting and eventually publishing (fingers crossed) a book means spending lots of time alone, but it also makes good sense to be engaged in writing communities and to support the work of other writers, especially if they happen to be your friends.

A few evenings ago, I ventured down to Boston to attend a celebration for the conclusion of a year-long course called “Essay Incubator.” A friend in that class invited me, and another friend was already planning to go; furthermore, the teacher was the very same person whom I hired last summer as an editor of my own work. We met only on Zoom, though. One more compelling reason to make the drive: I hadn’t yet had an opportunity to see the new Seaport District location of Grub Street — the organization providing many short and long writing classes, including the “Memoir Incubator” that enabled me to create a full first draft of a book manuscript. As I look back on that time, and the day when we all celebrated the conclusion of our course, I realize that — like aptly named “commencement” ceremonies held on school lawns — this was very much a beginning of a next phase, one which aimed for a specific and hard-to-attain goal: publication.

While the publishing market out there is fiercely competitive for all kinds of writing, it’s not surprising that carefully crafted shorter pieces sometimes can, if the submitter uses good strategies, find homes in established publications — newspapers, magazines, journals. And, the other evening, we heard that this particular group of students (my friend Linda, among them) had already been unusually successful at getting their work in print. Good on them!

Now I’ll make a shift over to my other friends, the ones who have, in recent months, succeeded in getting their whole books out in the world. This is not a complete list — just a manageable one: novels that have come out in the past year or so.

Suspense, and a Sense of Place

I got to know Susanne Davis during the 90’s when we lived in Storrs, Connecticut. Since our kids were around the same age in a small community, we kept showing up at events together. She happened to have the kind of radiant smile that stays memorable, too. She had already started writing short stories (a published collection is called The Appointed Hour) and I followed her as best I could, after we moved — twice. Her debut novel came out in 2022, and it’s a page-turner, as well as a prize winner: First Place Award from the Connecticut Press Club.

I’ll share with you almost all of the summary on the back cover:

Gravity Hill is a story about Jordan Hawkins, her family, and a small rural town in Connecticut wrecked by the tragic death of a three boys on Gravity Hill. But what first appears to be a tragedy of drunk driving leads back to a mysterious accident that has plagued a small town for years, sending Jordan on a journey to clear her brother’s name.

What really happened on that one particular night? That’s what we keep reading to find out. Having grown up on a farm in a small town very much like the one she describes in the book, Susanne draws upon her own knowledge about a very particular region (often called “The Quiet Corner”) to portray a group of characters living here, most struggling to come to terms with a troubling past. As I was reading, I was struck by the skill it took for the author to keep the story line moving, providing us with so many satisfying details about what characters were doing and thinking and saying, how they interacted with one another, what they were after at a given moment. The fact that Jordan has just finished high school and is making choices about her future adds richness, too.

Read it if you like tales of small town life, if you like mystery, if you like main characters who keep probing for truths. You can learn more about Susanne by checking out her website at susannedavis.com

Abuse is About Power and Control

Here comes another novel with a just-graduated-high-school female protagonist, this one also searching for truth about something intensely personal. Let’s start with the beautiful cover:

That’s a photo of Wendy herself, taken by her daughter I think. Not sure how she’s actually running over those rocks, but knowing Wendy’s wide range of capabilities as I do, I’m also not too surprised to see her do this. We first met in a “Concord Writers Night Out” group, launched through the New Hampshire Writers Project, that used to gather regularly before Covid hit. Having been trained as a veterinarian and then discovering homeopathy, Wendy previously wrote and published The Practical Handbook of Veterinary Homeopathy: Healing Our Companion Animals from the Inside Out. (Black Rose Writing, 2015). In addition to doing this kind of healing work, Wendy is a violinist and a rower and has somehow found time to volunteer at the Crisis Center of Central New Hampshire, helping individuals dealing with domestic violence.

I don’t have any idea how she does it all, but I’m a fan.

Her novel, which just came out in May, is not an easy read. That’s because it deals with an inherently painful topic: abuse. While the main character is working for an organization dedicated to fighting cruelty against animals, she also begins to face up to another kind of cruelty that she herself has been enduring for far too long — and then act to save herself. Her main companion, along the way, is a one-eyed cat named Tom, whom she rescues from a bad situation. What a vividly drawn character he is, too. In trying to get him out from under a couch, she is suddenly taken back to her younger self:

But I kept working, sweat dripping down my fact and stinging my eyes, until finally I got the noose in place, locking it down carefully. I admired the sturdy tom’s defiance. He didn’t find it necessary to be nice, soft, or pleasing. As I began to pull on the pole, his mouth opened wide and his whiskers trembled with another grating hiss. Then my vision flickered, darkening around the edges, and for a moment I was the one trapped. (p.8)

Taking on this book is not for the faint of heart, not for people who want to keep the really tough aspects of life under wraps. Read it if you are interested in how people can advocate for animals, if you want to understand more about how abuse happens and how it can be absorbed by someone as part of their identity, and how, with help, it can also be brought into the light of day and, eventually, vanquished.

Writing Can Be Funny Business

And now, for some satire. I somehow missed the launch of this next novel (completing the triumvirate for today’s presentation), but I’m doing my best to catch up now. I got to visit with this author friend, Ian Rogers, a couple of Saturdays ago, when we met at a reading that Wendy, our mutual friend, gave. During that delightful visit on a bench outside the bookstore, I learned that his own novel had come out just last year. Another great cover! Bet you don’t see many cigarettes in real life anymore.

In that I was just finishing up another novel (very fun read, featuring an octopus), I’ve only gotten started with Ian’s book in the past couple of days, but it takes hold easily. Set in a university somewhere out on the Great Plains, it offers an entertaining cast of characters and plenty of humor. Here’s what our main character, Flip, is trying to produce:

A Brand-New Draft of an Awe-Inspiring, Workshop-Friendly, Career-Sparking, Agent-Attracting, Marketable-to-a-Wide Audience But Still Fun, Daring, and Meaningful MFA Thesis Novel About the Frustrations of Office Life That’s More Approachable and Speaks to More People Than the First Draft Did (p. 79)

Having been through an MFA program himself, and you can guess in which part of the country, Ian clearly had a full pantry of details to draw from when he embarked upon this project. Ah, the striving, the jostling for position, and the angst of graduate students whose places out in the marketplace are not at all assured. You’ve got to feel for them, just about as much as you can be amused by them.

Read this book if you get a kick out of academia and the study of literature in particular, if you’ve ever been in a workshop where you’ve had to give and receive feedback or enjoy living the experience vicariously, if you like a backdrop of Big-Ten Football. You can also learn more about Ian by going to his website here: ianmrogersauthor.com

Oh, To Write Fiction!

In conclusion, I’ll say that I admire all of my friends — as well as the authors I’ve never met — who can write a novel. The challenges, starting with just how robust an imagination this takes, are so daunting. Non-fiction is more familiar territory to me, but then again, excelling in this realm is no walk in the park, either.

Do you have a preference, or do you try to balance one kind of reading with another? I’d love to hear.