TL;DR—Today is October 9. It is my maternal great-grandmother’s birthday; it is the three-year-anniversary of my partner and I committing solely to each other; it is the day that my first full-length fiction, a romance novel that leans toward the literary—titled Finding Home—is released into the world for strangers’ consumption.
October 9 is a pretty cool day.
If you are interested, you can find the e-book here, and the paperbacks here.
My first novel is a romance. I keep saying that it “leans toward the literary,” because I realized early on that it doesn’t read like the contemporary romances out there right now. My lover, who hasn’t read a physical book in over a decade (he’s an audiobook girlie) zoomed through it in maybe three days—a miracle, a feat, beautiful proof of his love for me, and this is what he said: Your voice is incredible. This book made me laugh, cry, and smile way more than I’d have imagined. Congrats to my favorite author.
My first novel is a romance, but I realized while writing it that I do not strive to become a “romance author.” Rather, through this process—during which I wrote a character-heavy story, which does not really vibe in the current romance market (ty to all the agents who rejected me with this as the reason)(“where is the plot! plot needs to be at the forefront!”)—I came to terms with my writerly aspirations.
Namely, that I don’t give a rat’s ass about plot. I want to write flowery, fluffy prose about the human experience, in all its tangled and messy beauty.
I think I’ll be able to do that best in fiction—and this is mirrored by the other stories I’ve been playing with, that I’m hoping will slowly turn into full-length novels in their own time.
But for now, I want to take some time to dwell on this feat.
I wrote a book!
The first draft, finished in December of last year, was a whopping 105,000 words long. It was a mess, but it was my mess—in September I’d only had 40K down on paper, and I was just exhilarated to know that I could do it. I could piece an entire novel together (or at least the bones of one). I’ve been writing since I was little, though I’d only ever penned poems, small prose, and a few short stories. This was a whole new horizon to reach—and reach it I did.
In January, I endeavored upon my first “revision” period—which morphed quickly into a “rewrite.” In February, I sent my 95,000 word romance manuscript off to some agents…and had two bites…but both fell through. I reoriented myself with my story, and started revising again—which turned into (again) more of a rewrite-round-two.
I admonished myself. Why did I think querying was a good idea? Perhaps I should have waited. Maybe I should have sat on it. Thought on it. Given it some time. But alas. Now, I’ve got a finished product that I’m proud of—a much tighter story, clocking in at just under 85,000 words—and one that would have maybe caught a few more agents’ eyes…But at the end of my second rewrite, I knew I didn’t want to query again. Because by then, I’d realized what I know now: I want to write fiction, not romance.
My first novel is a romance, and there will be a second to follow—I fell in love with the side characters I created, and I am eager to write their story now, too; you’ll get a sneak peek at their book if you purchase a paperback—but why would I try to snag a romance-focused agent, if my heart wasn’t settled solidly on the genre?
I might not be re-branding myself and my Instagram as an ‘indie-romance-author-account,” but I did the damn thing. I wrote the book. I fell in love with the characters I created. And now, I want to share them with you.
FINDING HOME is my first novel, and it is certainly far from my last. Here’s a sneak peek, if you feel so inclined. If you missed it, there are links at the top where you can find information about the e-book and paperback. I printed this first run on my own dime, working with a small local printing business near me—so paperbacks can currently only be purchased through my website. However, there will most likely be a second print run available for wider distribution via Amazon sometime in the new year.
Thanks for being here. Thanks for taking a chance on me.
PROLOGUE
JAMIE ALTAIR DOESN’T recognize the face looking back at him in the hallway mirror.
Lately, he’s felt like an alien in his own body. Everything he touches grates across the pads of his fingers; sometimes he catches himself staring at his hands like they aren’t connected to the rest of him. He can’t shake the feeling that he has become someone that his younger self wouldn’t know, or want to know—and that’s unsettling.
Even more unsettling is the question that haunts his moonlit hours, long, drawn out minutes spent staring blankly at the ceiling, yearning for sleep. Would his parents recognize him in the state that he’s in?
He fears he’s wandered too far from the sixteen-year-old they left behind. That version of Jamie, the one they had loved and last known, had been exhilarated with the prospect of college. He’d had passion, a fervor for things; every Saturday morning saw him perched on the piano bench, playing some jaunty tune in the hopes of inciting the chime-like giggles of his mother. Laughs from deep in the belly, the kind that hurt, had been his favorite. He’d smiled so much, then—the grooves set deep in the skin of this stranger’s face serve as proof of that, though they’ve gone slack with disuse.
In the past few weeks, as he’s watched the walls of this life crumble and fall, brick by slow brick, a second, panic-laced wonder has begun gnawing at him. If he tried, really tried, could he find his way back to that person, the hopeful and loving boy that he was?
As Jamie stares into the mirror, he attempts, one last time, to find any trace of familiarity. Glassy green eyes bounce back and forth as he combs through memories of the last few years, searching and searching for remnants of himself, of the Jamie that came to D.C. in the first place.
He comes up empty-handed, the same as before.
So, Jamie does what his body tells him to: he flees.
It’s an easy thing, to fly from this life he shared with Maggie; he pulled those roots up months ago. He doesn’t pack any bags or boxes. He leaves every semblance of this person that he is—the unrecognizable reflection—behind. Maggie may not even notice he’s gone, his toothbrush still damp, his suits still hanging like skeletons in the closet. Everything in this house is tinged with that man, and that’s not who he is any longer. That’s not who he was ever meant to be.
To truly leave, he needs to start anew.
To truly leave, he needs to go home.
His carabiner is gripped tightly in his first as he heads for the door, where he pauses, his feet stuttering to a stop a whisper away from the threshold. Squaring his shoulders, he takes a deep breath, wiping his hand down his face. The rough stubble on his cheeks pricks at his palms. Deft fingers make quick work of removing a singular key from the bundle.
The key that unlocks the door to the D.C. rowhome he bought with Maggie five years ago is placed gently in the catchall dish behind him. Jamie closes his eyes, squeezing the lids together, furrowing his brow in focus—
And it hurts, and he’s nervous, but he knows where he’ll go.
He chances one last glance in the mirror. There. The familiar glint in his eyes, that he hasn’t seen in so long, tells him what he already knows—
It’s time to head back to Ohio.
1
KENNEDY WILLIAMS PACES across her temporary living room floor, wine glass in hand, in an attempt to determine what she’s done to turn the universe against her.
This is not the first time she’s had this internal conversation, and it’s certainly not the first time she’s spent an entire evening devoted to analyzing her actions—over the course of the last year, she’s worn down many a pair of slippers treading to-and-fro, locked in an invisible debate. In fact, if her best friend Mia were to have stopped by the night before, she’d have found Kennedy slumped on the couch, feet slung over the side, fiery red hair grazing the floor, as she searched for a new perspective on her situation.
Kennedy doesn’t believe in coincidences. For her, fate is real and has its hands in everything. Every moment matters—every glance, every touch, every word, every breath. Nothing happens on accident; since her teenage years, she’s committed herself to the ideals of karma, cosmic retribution, destiny.
A decided romantic, Kennedy adores grand gestures and heartfelt admissions and that moment in all her favorite movies where two people lock eyes and simply know. Though she tries to swallow these scenes with a grain of salt—it’s cinema, after all—she can’t deny the pull deep in her bones, the hope she harbors for the kind of soul-deep love she’s seen reflected in the eyes of the characters reflected in her TV screen.
It goes deeper for her, this passion for the rosy, this youthful confidence in the push-and-pull of the universe. Kennedy admires the Romantics of the early nineteenth century, their work inspired by emotion, the bittersweet feeling of nostalgia sensed within the brushstrokes, the beauty of the untouched world. It all aches with possibility. Kennedy sees the artists of the Romantic period as her kin.
But her belief in fate and her usual optimism that the universe would work in her favor are not entirely conducive with the happenings of the last six months.
And so, she paces, and she wonders, and she tries to follow her footprints to figure out where she might have misstepped. Did she do something to alter the balance? Was she not paying enough attention, and ended up pissing off some higher power?
“Or is the universe attempting to push me even farther out of my comfort zone?” she wonders aloud. She pauses, nodding at the rightness of this idea. She pauses again, shaking her head—her body is tired from the last year of growth, of straining in a new direction. She’s not sure how much more stretching she can take. Draining the last of the merlot from her glass, she slides from her temporary living room to her temporary kitchen, the pop of the cork drawing a smile to her lips. Ah, sweet familiarity.
When Luke offered up this stunning lakefront property to her as a transitory headquarters, Kennedy had thought it was a sign that things were looking up. She’d packed what little she’d taken with her from her ex’s house, a few meager tote bags that had flanked Mia’s couch during the months it had served as Kennedy’s bed, and tumbled into her car, absolutely beside herself with relief over no longer imposing on her friend’s hospitality.
This was the first time Kennedy was truly on her own in all of her twenty-five years of life. She’d gone from living with her parents and their stifling belief of what her life ought to look like, to living with her now-ex and his equally stifling belief that he knew what was best for her. She found this phenomenon equal parts daunting and exhilarating.
It’s been two months since Kennedy escaped to the lakefront cabin offered up to her, temporarily, by Luke. Two months since the stress of finding a place to park all of her stuff was crossed off her to-do list. Two months freed up from that worry, so that she could, ideally, worry about everything else.
Yes, Kennedy realizes that she could have spent that time healing her heart by enrolling in therapy, taking up journaling, or scoping out a more permanent place to call home when her time here came to an end and Luke inevitably turned this place over to folks who’d be paying real rent. She could have spent that time hunkered down, scouring the internet for the best cities to move to as a newly-single twenty-something.
Instead, she has been celebrating.
There are a lot of things to celebrate, if you take the time to search for them. And by the looks of the recycling bin, filled to the brim with empty wine bottles, Kennedy has certainly been searching.
Her first night in the cabin, a pile of unpacked bags forming a giant, hulking lump on the couch, Kennedy celebrated sleeping in a queen size bed all by her lonesome.
When she was fully settled in, Mia came over with housewarming gifts: a coconut cream pie and an extra-large bottle of merlot, both of which did not see the light of the morning. Three days later, Kennedy had a solo-celebration over the fact that when she called her mother to say hello, be courteous and cordial, they made it through their conversation without the topic ever veering toward her failed relationship. This was the first instance of a Hugh-free chat with Penelope Williams since the pair had broken up, six months before. July was full of little moments like that, small firsts that Kennedy decided to commemorate, because why not?
Today is another day of celebration—this one just happens to be a bit bigger than the rest. On this unassuming, late-August day, she’s received some monumental, potentially-life-changing news, and she doesn’t quite know what to make of it. A small part of her feels like the universe is laughing at her, while the other, larger portion of her heart—though beating frantically with nerves—believes that this could be the key to the future she’s always dreamed of.
Hence, the pacing.
As Kennedy shuffles back and forth across the weathered hardwood floor at two in the morning, silently piecing together her response to the email sitting at the top of her inbox, the merlot on her tongue tastes a tad more bittersweet than usual.
Learning that she’s been offered a mural arts fellowship on the six-month anniversary of her relationship ending, the day the metaphorical rug was ripped out from under her feet—it feels like an act of divine intervention, but one that could swing any which way. If she accepts, seeing as today feels rather steeped with cursed energy, will she be doomed to fail? Or is this a gift, an opportunity to remake herself, to finally take the reins and mold her future with her own two hands? She’s just begun to lean toward the latter, her mind flooding with color schemes and flowering dogwoods, textures and ideas, a perfectly worded acceptance email taking form–
And then the doorbell rings.
The graphics that I’ve included in this post have all been shared on my Instagram. Come join the club.
At some point soon, I hope to share with you some details of my two current high-priority projects—one is a gothic novella (with romance!), the other is a speculative fiction novel-in-progress featuring a modern-day witch-hunt, a coyote funeral, and the weird-earthy-gritty-Florida-girl whose home is trying to tell her something.
Then there’s my two other WIP novels, one (working title: PULSES THAT BEAT DOUBLE) that is shaping up to be a lit-fic about a watery-motherless-unsure girl and her college experience, with a little over 20k words, the other being a not-love-story (working title: TENDER) about an unnamed narrator who becomes darkly enamored with an edgy Princeton girl studying Russian Literature and breaking hearts like bread…
Have I mentioned that there aren’t enough hours in the day?
On top of writing, I am also a collage artist—I dropped off three pieces for consideration for a months-long local exhibit last week; I am set to exhibit my work in one of my favorite Philadelphia coffee shops in December; in the new year, I’ll be installing my art on the walls of my local library’s main branch—and an artist in general. I create booknook boxes, mini scenes to stow on your shelves; I make bookmarks and cards, whimsical little creations. I’ll be tabling at my first real festival the weekend of the 19th—if you’re in Jersey, hit me up and I’ll send you the details.
Practicing resurrection,
McKenna Lynn