I'm often asked, "what are you currently working on?" This is where I'll attempt to answer that question and also give you a peek into projects I've recently completed.
I just did the edits on a novel called Twang that is coming out August 1, 2012 from Abingdon Press. Here's something I wrote to describe it that I call 'back cover copy.'
The songs Jennifer Clodfelter writes and sings aren’t from her imagination. With innocence and passion, Jenny pours the pain from her childhood into the lyrics of one Billboard Country hit after another. Her manager assures her that confronting formative years wrapped in violence and poverty is a necessary evil, part of the unstoppable force of her destiny to become a Country Music Diva. And for a while, little Jenny Cloud is in heaven. She basks in the spotlight on stage and the wild applause of her fans. But as she pours herself into writing more and more autobiographical songs, Jenny begins to find the emotional fallout is staggering. When she revisits a dark memory she thought was long-buried, she begins to seriously wonder if the high price she’s paying to write her hits is worth it. Jenny’s hairdresser, Tonilynn, sees the wounded little girl beneath the star’s on-stage smiles and she attempts to fix her broken spirit along with her hair by counseling Jenny to pour yet another long-repressed story of her father into a song. Is singing for her sanity a possibility in this instance? Will this hit song be therapy enough to reconcile Jenny and her dark past? Jenny Cloud faces the music with music.
I'm also in the middle of a new novel I am calling Scarlet Says. Here's some 'back cover copy' I've been playing around with.
‘Fiddle dee dee,’ and ‘Tomorrow is another day’ – these bold phrases from the lips of her idol are music to Joan Meeler’s ears. She admires Scarlett O’Hara’s passion, her strength and the way she thumbs her nose at propriety. But, besides living in Atlanta, Georgia and loving a barbecue, the 30-year-old administrative assistant at Giffin & Burke has pathetically few similarities to Scarlett. Bookish and overweight, Joan’s tendency toward nervousness in social situations keeps her from being the outspoken rebel her heroine is.
Joan becomes the secret hostess of a blog called Scarlett Says and finds she’s not reticent when she’s behind the keyboard. She loves dispensing advice, finding great fulfillment in counseling others on the most perplexing issues of life with the devil-may-care tone of her heroine. She builds a huge base of followers and for awhile is reasonably content. Then Joan ‘meets’ Charles, a man who reads her blog faithfully. They strike up an on-line friendship, and Joan begins to dream of something more than a thousand-page novel to curl up in bed with. She struggles to find boldness when Charles travels to Atlanta from Manhattan, reluctant for him to see who she really is. Siegfried, the aging janitor at Giffin & Burke, the only one who knows about Joan’s alternate personality, tells her “You deserve to be happy too.” With Siegfried’s soulful recitations from the Proverbs, Joan learns she has to look within her own heart to uncover an inner confidence she never knew she possessed. Scarlett Says is a story about the transforming power of words, both good and bad, and those vulnerabilities that hold us back from our potentials.
I'll add more details as the novel progresses. In the meantime, happy reading!
