A Writer’s Conundrum
I mentioned in an earlier post that since completing The Scar Boys I’ve written a second novel and am hard at work on a third. The second novel, titled House of Stone, bears no relation to The Scar Boys. It’s told in the third person rather than the first, it’s set 2009 rather than in the 1980s, and it includes a preponderance of adult characters.
It’s this last fact, the many adult points of view, that form the basis of my conundrum. House of Stone lives neither in the adult nor young adult (YA) world. (And forget “New Adult,” that category has been fully co-opted by late-teen romance.)
“Len,” a YA editor said to me, “I loved the writing, the twists, and the characters in this novel, but this isn’t a teen novel, it’s an adult novel.”
Having published — or I suppose that I will have published — a YA novel, some folks think I should be concentrating on writing teen fiction. While House of Stone straddles the line between adult and teen, it can’t really be considered either. Adult editors are likely to think it’s too juvenile, and teen editors are likely to think it’s too adult. Problem is, I kind of like that it sits in this intersection. Don’t get me wrong; I know it needs work, but I’m not sure that work should be an attempt to better define the intended audience.
Below are the first few pages of House of Stone. In these pages you will meet two characters, Jared Stone and his daughter Jackie. Without giving too much away, I can tell you that the book belongs to each of them equally. There’s also an ensemble cast of other adult and teen characters, all of whom manage to push the story forward.
With all this in mind, I come to you, faithful reader of LenVlahos.com (and notice that I say reader in the singular, because I’m pretty sure there’s only one of you) for advice. From the small writing sample below, what do you think? Does this feel like the start of an adult novel or a teen novel? Should I try to mould this in one direction or the other? Or should I just not give a rat’s patootie about genre and write and shop the book I want to write and shop?
What do you thinK?
Thanks in advance for your advice!
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House of Stone
Copyright Len Vlahos, 2013
Prologue
Jackie Stone
(Before)
Jackie Stone loved her father. She loved him a lot.
She loved his face — a round, peach-colored blob floating above her unfocused eyes in the hospital on the day she was born.
She loved his voice — singing Willie Nelson and Ray Charles’s “Seven Spanish Angels” so softly that only newborn Jackie could hear it, knowing instinctively that this was friend, not foe. (Even Jackie’s mom, lying on a table in the operating room, a curtain protecting her from having to watch the scalpel slice through her abdomen to free fetal Jackie from the umbilical cord wrapped around her neck, couldn’t quite make out the song her husband sang to their new daughter.)
And she loved her father’s kiss — so warm, so soft, so gentle on her forehead, and so filled with safety and protection, that for a moment, she thought she was back in the womb.
When Jackie finally met her mother a moment later, she loved her, too. But the first bond, the one formed with her father, was unbreakable.
Jackie was a calm and alert baby. It was as if she was months, not minutes old. As she grew up, she loved to hear her father tell the story about how she had laughed during that first night in the hospital. “Everyone tried to tell your mom and me that you had gas, but we knew better. This little girl, we told each other, was ready to embrace the world.”
Unfortunately for Jackie, the world wasn’t ready to embrace her.
The first problem was her sister, Megan. Two years younger, Megan came into the world kicking, screaming, and crying. Toddler Jackie didn’t know what to make of this focused bundle of hurricane force wind, but it didn’t matter. Her sense of sibling responsibility was deeply ingrained; she did everything she could to nurture and protect her little sister. Megan took full advantage. From simple things like getting Jackie to give her a treasured toy, to, as they got older, manipulating Jackie into doing her homework, Megan was alpha to Jackie’s beta.
As the girls grew up, Megan made herself the center of attention and the apple of everyone’s eye. She was a girly girl and the queen bee of her grade in school. Jackie was the polar opposite. Shy and awkward around most people, Jackie blended into the background, became part of the wallpaper. She was a beautiful ochre flower floating in a sea of beige. There, but only if you looked close. She hid beneath baggy pants, bulky sweaters, and baseball caps. Most days, Jackie wanted nothing more than to disappear.
Unless she was around her father.
Perched on her father’s knee—a spot she still treasured even now at 15 years old—Jackie’s smile would light up, and suddenly you could see how beautiful she was. He would tell stories, listen to Jackie talk about school, and sometimes just read to her. On Wednesdays they would snuggle in together to watch American Idol.
He was her anchor, and she was his transfusion of blood.
Jackie Stone’s entire universe existed in orbit around her father, and as far as she knew, it always would.
Part One
Jackie, Jared, and the Glioblastoma
(Thursday, September 10, 2009)
Jared Stone liked his brain. He liked it a lot.
Sure, there were times —- the monotony of the evening commute, the repetition of cooking a familiar meal, the late innings of a lopsided baseball game — when it would seem to shut down, switch to some kind of autopilot. But for the most part, Jared’s brain was hard at work.
It helped him navigate the halls of the state capitol in Salem, where he was serving his third two-year term representing the good people of suburban Portland. It told him how to read the inscrutable faces of his wife Deirdre and his two teenage daughters Jackie and Megan, to know when they needed him or when he should give them a wide berth. It knew which foods tasted good, which women were attractive, and which colleagues had a problem with body odor. And it seemed, generally speaking, to know right from wrong. Jared’s brain, you could say, was his best friend. Which is what made it so hard to hear that his brain had a high grade glioblastoma multiforme, or would have made it hard had Jared known what a high grade glioblastoma multiforme was.
“A glio what?” he asked.
The doctor, a gray haired woman with a square jaw and white sandals like Jared’s Aunt Eva used to wear, looked at him for a long moment. “I’m sorry Jared, it’s a brain tumor.”
He let the words roll around his brain: I’m sorry Jared, it’s a brain tumor. Was she sorry that it was a tumor, or sorry that she hadn’t made herself clear when she used the term high grade glioblastoma multiforme? Was the part of his brain that he was using at that very moment the part with the tumor?
“And?” he asked.
“And it’s not good news,” the doctor answered.
“Not good news?” Jared was having trouble understanding the conversation. He knew he needed to focus, knew it was more important now than ever that he focus, but he just couldn’t seem to do it. It was this intermittent lack of focus, these spells of confusion and memory loss, along with the persistent pain in his right temple, which had brought him to the neurologist in the first place.
“No,” the doctor said. She waited for Jared to catch up, which he did.
“Not good news,” he said, now a statement of fact.
“It’s inoperable.”
“Inoperable,” Jared repeated, this time understanding immediately.
“The only course of therapy I can prescribe is palliative.”
“I’m sorry, doctor, I don’t know that word,” he said, but he didn’t know if that had always been true, or if he had once known the word and had forgotten it.
“It means we can try to alleviate your suffering, but we can’t do anything about the growth. It’s going to stay.”
“The growth is going to stay?”
“Yes.”
He let this roll around his brain too, and again wondered if the thought was rolling over, under, around, or through the tumor itself. “Can I live with a tumor?” he asked.
The doctor let out a sigh. She hadn’t meant to and stopped herself mid-breath, so it came out as an “ahh,” and sounded more like a noise of agreement than sorrow. Then she said “No.”
“No,” Jared repeated.
“No,” the doctor said.
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