Thursday, March 10, 2011

A Name Worth Carrying

"Operation Novel", take 2.

"Novel" seems like such an odd word. To me, anyhow. Like a word you should only use to describe a book that says "Butterfly Kisses - a novel" on the cover, or Jane Austen books. I don't write "novels"! Not like that, anyway. I write stories. Adventures. Books. Tales.

However, "novel" is, by definition,

–noun
1.
a fictitious prose narrative of considerable length and complexity, portraying characters and usually presenting a sequential organization of action and scenes.

Length and complexity, characters, action, scenes...hm, I do like that. Maybe I can live with the word.


ANYway.


So, novels. Books, stories, whatever. And, I have a new one I'd like to talk about for a while. If you like reading things like that, please continue.



A Name Worth Carrying

This story is about Abigail Nicole Garrett, a fifteen year old sophomore. She's motherless and her estranged father is trying to locate her in order to make sure she doesn’t tell his secret to the police. The problem? She doesn’t know what that secret is.

When she's thrust into the foster system Abigail realizes that there are a lot of things she doesn’t know. What really happened the night of the car wreck? And why does she have a terrible suspicion that her dad had something to do with it? Has she ever known what a true family is? And why, of all things, did her parents name her Abigail?

At least one of these things she can change. Her name is Nicole, now. Not Abigail. And it doesn’t really matter...does it? Is there really all that much in a name?

~(@)~

From this synopsis alone, would you be interested enough to read any of the story? Does is pique your interest? Would you pick it up from the bookstore or library shelf long enough to at least read the first pages?

Soon (maybe) I will be posting excerpts from this book. It's almost 20,000 words, and five chapters in. It's a lot more character driven than Escape into Darkness, and could probably be better classified as a "man who learned better" story type (according to OYAN). So I'm having to think a lot more about compelling conflict. Who wants to read 200+ pages of a mopey teenage girl sorting through her emotional baggage? Bleh.

But it's really not that bad. At least, it's coming.

It's a work-in-progress.

(as a side note, the Escape into Darkness page has been updated...)

4 comments:

Tim said...

i would read it, it sounds really interesting, hope you post more of it soon.

MacKenzie Pauline said...

Thanks. :) Yeah, I'll try and get a couple excerpts up soon...

coffeechica said...

I am just now seeing this blogpost. I haven't been on google reader in awhile.
I would definitely be interested in reading this! Great book talk :) I like reading books with this type of theme. I am a character-driven reader most of the time. Anyhow, I'm rambling! I would love to hear more!!! :D

MacKenzie Pauline said...

Thanks, Essie! And I'd love to talk about it with you some time. :)