Current Works

Current Works in Progress; An Overview

For all the projects I talk about, in various stages of completion.



Title: And You Tell Me I Am Home
Genre: Original Fiction
Form: Novel
Status: Initial draft complete; first edit in progress

My first novel-length story. Five years ago, Zeke McMahon left his hometown of Plainfield for New York, leaving his two best friends behind. When he finally moves back home, he finds the situation to be much more complicated than he remembered. One friend, Leigh, is in the midst of planning her wedding to her high school sweetheart, and the other, Emma, is recovering from a recent breakup. To top it off, Emma’s ex, Jay, is still friends with both Emma and Leigh. A coming of age story, Zeke learns who his old friends have become, how much time has changed everyone – and where his new place will be in Plainfield.

This story was originally based on a short story I wrote in college, titled Get Busy Living or Get Busy Dying. It was always a story I wanted to fix and expand, because the characters I created were based on people I knew, and the ten page story I originally wrote was nowhere near enough to house the relationships between these characters. I’m not sure the current 200 page draft is enough. That’s what revisions are for, and I’m learning that it’s harder to revise than it was to write in the first place.




Title: American Studies
Genre: Creative Nonfiction
Form: Novella; possibly a full-length novel
Status: Initial draft complete; restructuring and second draft planned

Dinty Moore, in his book The Truth of the Matter: Art and Craft in Creative Nonfiction, defines the term “creative nonfiction” as a combination of real people and places and authentic thoughts with literary techniques used to tell the story. This project is an example of such a work, retelling the author’s junior year of high school, when she was part of a rigorous program called American Studies. The class combined Honors-level English and history classes in a discussion-based learning environment, allowing students to interact with the class material directly. From writing 100-word essays and current event articles every week to going through the events of September 11, 2001 and dealing with the death of a classmate, the ten students in American Studies formed a unique social group whose impact on the narrator lasted past the last day of classes. Told in a series of small sections, the project covers the narrator’s journey – the author’s journey – as she interacts with each of her classmates and friends, develops friendships and relationships, and as such becomes more than just an observer of her high school life.

(Why yes, that was my thesis abstract.)

American Studies serves as my way of honoring and remembering the kids I went to high school with, now that we’ve all drifted apart. Some of them I have on Facebook, some of them I talk to through LiveJournal, but we’ll never be as close as we were during that one year in American Studies. The story here is much larger than it first seemed when I started writing it; confining it to one year won’t do it justice. Right now, I need to work on redefining the story arc and facing the hard stories that need to be told here – the ones I don’t like, the ones that leave myself vulnerable on the page. These are the stories that need to be told most of all.