A Female Deer

So I did have a request to talk about my latest (definitely) and greatest (hopefully) project.

For obvious reasons I cannot post a snippet, but I can post an elongated blurb that allows me to do three things at once: 1. procrastinate; 2. explore my feelings on it; 3. post the moodboard.

Here we go!

Picture it, kids: The lowlands of Tennessee. An autumn. A darkness more felt than seen. Mid-to-late-’90s when Walkmans were clipped to everybody’s hip and the cool kids listened to AFI. And nine high school boys all arrive by caravan to the mouth of the wildlife management area to begin the Doe Hunt of their generation.

The story follows Farley West, a 15-year-old long dismissed and regarded as less masculine than his peers. He’s ready to prove himself a real Young Buck to his friends, his dad, and, above all, his uncle who has been there for him since childhood. But when the Doe Hunt starts, his friends immediately turn on him and from the way they salivate and call him, "Doe," with those sugar-choked voices, Farley has a feeling that they aren't exactly looking to shoot him.

Here’s my glorious moodboard for it; it’s really hot so bring a cold Gatorade.

I have a lot of love for feminized boys/men; how their society tells them what they are because they seem to fit into a certain category by either personality or body type (twinks, for example), and how the guy himself responds to that. Is it easy to wear other people’s expectations when you’re conventionally attractive and you’re rewarded for fitting into the box? Is it heavy? Is it both at once and what does that mean for him? And does he ever resent being placed on a pedestal? How much is he thankful to the pedestal when he sees others struggling in the mud down below?

Because of all those things buzzing through me when I wrote this, they’re pretty prevalent themes in the manuscript. The amount of violence in this isn’t new or special for me, because I’ve done a lot of it before, but I think the speed at which it happens is rather novel for me specifically. The events in the main storyline happen over a weekend, and there’s a second stream that takes place throughout Farley’s life growing up in Red Creek.

My first novel took place in White Hill, which is the sister town of Red Creek, both separated by about fifteen miles of turnpike. If anyone starts a rumor that I want to build a world around these two towns a la Derry and Castle Rock, you let them know THEY’RE RIGHT.

I like familiarity, I like to have already been oriented in a story when I start writing it, and this is the best way for me. One of the main characters in this novel is also a satellite character in the first novel, which is nothing if not fun. I just want to get back to enjoying my goddamn writing life for once.

If I ever had a class of kids who asked me if I would recommend becoming a writer, I’d tell them fuck no. It’s awful and lonely and sad and you lose your innocent love for it. You gain a forced love for it, like a marriage you know you can’t exit, like one from the old days before women could divorce. You stew in it and have to live with it because if you don’t, people will say, “Well, what was it all for?”

So then you look around the room of your own and you see a little love. Something you can hold in your hand. You cup it carefully to try and keep the wind from blowing it out. It warms your face. And you remember the roaring firestorm of your youth and think, This will do. For now.

That’s this novel.