Defending My Novel

While I haven't actually been asked to do this, I'm constantly trying to defend my novel, at least to myself.  Why is it worth writing?  Why is it worth reading?  Is this worth doing?

In a college, you have all these different communities; there are the students, the faculty, the administration, the staff, the alumni, and the larger community of the city and the state that aren't in the college.  In a small school, something that happens to just a few people ends up felt by all of these different communities in different ways.

When I was a freshman, there was a woman who said she was raped by several boys, then she recanted, then she recanted again.  It was a pretty devastating thing, and I don't think anybody on any side was ever satisfied with the outcome.  My idea was to take that incident, but just that incident, change all the people involved in it, change the victim, change the accused, change the motivations, change the Greek organizations, change how and when it happened, but keep this idea of how having this really big thing hanging in the background is reflected differently in all of the communities, and maybe keep the time of year when it happened.  

In a story like this, there are a lot of social issues involved.  Issues of gender and class and justice, I'm even going to bring issues of race into it that weren't part of the actual events, but I don't want it to be a book about issues; I want it to be a book about people, about characters, not even the people involved in the main action, but all the people who try to live their lives while this goes on around them.  My two main characters have very different opinions about what happened and how to deal with it, and in the end, they arrive at very different places.  

I want to include ideas about mental health and what motivates people, and what impact actions have on their state of mind and sense of self.  

Although this will be a fictional story about a fictional place and fictional people, if you were ever at Millsaps, you'll recognize a lot of ghosts and memories.  If you were at Millsaps in the '80s, it will feel like a memory, even though it's not.  I tend to think of it that they filmed a movie of my novel and used Millsaps as the location.  

I think it's important that this takes place in the early Eighties because that's when traditional college students in the South were the first in their region, and often in their family, who never knew a segregated education system.  While I don't intend to deal with that directly, I do want to keep the notion that this is a new generation and a new chance at something different in our larger culture.  We were the children of the civil rights movement.  That much is very clear to me.  

Behind all that, there are the troubles in Ireland in a school where most of the students have Irish roots.  There's Reagan and Reaganomics and all the social changes that came with the Republican revolution.  We were also the first MTV to go to college.  There ended up not being many after us, so being MTV consumers at its inception ended up making us pretty unique.  

Because more of my training is in Theatre than in literature, I'm using the classical dramatic elements to build my story around. Point of inciting interest,  exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution, and denouement.  I don't think I'm ready to do stream-of-consciousness or non-linear formats yet.  

I hope that I'll end up with something worth reading.  I hope I'll be able to create characters you are interested in and care about what happens to them, even if you don't agree with their actions.  I'm not out to expose anyone or beat a drum about any of the issues in the story, but to maybe show how these issues play out in a character's life and motivation.  People going off to college think they know everything, but reality soon hits them, and sometimes they find themselves in the middle of a storm.  My story is about people who find themselves in a storm, then find their way back out again.

Factor 75 Roasted Red Pepper Filet Mignon

Roasted Red Pepper Filet Mignon with Tortellini Primavera & Lemon Garlic Butter

This is a really good one.  They charge an extra $9, but it'd be twice that at a restaurant.  

You get a six-ounce filet, seared on the grill, then finished in the oven and served over a bed of roasted red peppers (bell peppers) with garlic.  Green and Red Bell Peppers are the same plants, but the red ones were allowed to ripen on the vine, giving them a more complex flavor.

The tortellini I really wish they'd serve just by themselves.  It was so good.  Served with a generous portion of herb butter spinach on top, this pasta could be a meal all by itself.  The pasta is made with brown rice flour to cut back on carbs.  I've yet to see them serve pasta made with semolina flour.

The only real drawback I can see is that you don't get to choose your cooking temperature on the steak, and I usually like mine rare to medium-rare, and this came medium-well.    The extra cooking time didn't damage the taste or the texture of the beef, though.  It was almost tender enough to cut with a fork. 

Nutrition Per Serving
Calories                    570kcal
Fat                            32g
Saturated Fat            12g
Carbohydrate            27g
Sugar                        6
Dietary Fiber            4g
Protein                    42g
Cholesterol            155mg
Sodium                    780mg

Use my link when ordering from Factor 75 and get a significant discount.

https://www.factor75.com/plans?locale=en-US&c=HS-26VKT8M3A&utm_campaign=clipboard&utm_source=raf-share&utm_medium=referral

Broken Promises

My parents worked pretty hard to instill several important lessons in me.  Some I picked up on better than others.  One was that I should always try to be useful and always try to help other people.  That was reinforced pretty heavily when I went to Boy Scouts or Sunday School.  The message was pretty clear.  You're here to have a positive impact on other people.  It might be more important than anything else.

When I was much younger, one of the things that made me really uncomfortable and unhappy was that it was really common for people to make social, even romantic, connections with me just because they thought I could help with their job or some other financial aspect of their lives.  

The end result was a situation where, whenever I met somebody, I'd wonder why they were there and if they really had any interest in me or were they just acting like it so I'd help them out.  The times when that did become a problem, it was almost impossible to tell if somebody was genuine or not, and I made several mistakes when I trusted somebody who was not.  

I don't know that I really blame them, though.  In your twenties, life is kind of a survival game.  Nobody is in a very stable situation, and taking a shortcut here and there can be very tempting, especially if your situation is really upside down and dire.  I don't think anybody ever set out to hurt me.  I think they just got desperate and saw me as a solution to their problem and didn't care enough not to hurt me.  

It was particularly bad with people who struggled with addiction issues.  With an addict, you're dealing with two people.  One is normal and moral and usually really nice, and the other is an animal out to survive however it can, which sometimes meant me.

Closing Time

 In the 70s, 80s, and 90s, Scrooges in Jackson was as close to Cheers as you'll find.  They even had a plaque from the guy who owned the real Cheers in Boston saying so.  It was official.

Today we buried a regular soldier from that campaign.  In among the high school friends, church friends, and family were Norm and Cliff and me.  In the hip-hop culture, there's a tradition of pouring out a beer for a friend who died too young.  We all die too young.  Some of us have had more beers than others, poured out or not.

Scrooges began when Billy Neville wanted to move his clothing business.  It wasn't a square lot, so they designed a structure with two large retail spaces but ended up with sort of an odd-shaped leftover space in the corner.  Since he was making his business an old English haberdashery, he had the idea of using this odd-shaped corner as an old English pub.  While the building was going up, he traveled to England and bought furniture for both his shop and this idea he had for a pub, including authentic English pub booths.  He soon found out that American asses must be deeper than English asses, so he had them modified to be about six inches deeper.  

Mississippi had been "wet" for a few years, and there were bars in Jackson, Cherokee being one, but there weren't any of what Neville considered "nice" bars.  Scrooges was the first.  He thought running a bar would be easy; everybody does.  It's not.  Pretty soon, he sold the bar to an ambitious young restaurant manager named Bill Latham.  

Bill owned Scrooges through its golden years, parlaying that success into a venture called "Amerigos" and another one called "Char," but also the ill-fated Wild Bills Caddilac Grill.  The bar changed hands several times after Bill, but it never regained the status it once had.

There's something to be said for sitting next to a guy for twenty years.  Some people at bars are really good at socializing.  Some of us prefer to sit in the corner; the great thing about a place like Scrooges (or cheers) is there's room for everybody.