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Genre: Mainstream Fiction
About cubie_louiseLocation: Australia Home Region: Age:15 Website: http://cuban-sombrero.livejournal.com Favorite novels: Do I honestly have to pick? A *small* sample: The Book Thief, Mao's Last Dancer, Harry Potter, The Time Traveller's Wife, A Thousand Splendid Suns, His Dark Materials, Memoirs of A Geisha, Atonement, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Kite Runner, Looking For Albrandi, The Lovely Bones Favorite writers: (those whose books aren't mentioned above) Jodi Picoult, Jaclyn Moriatry, Meg Cabot, Kim Edwards, Kathy Reichs Favorite music: Panic at the Disco, Snow Patrol, Sam Sparro, Cute is What We Aim For, Birds of Tokyo, The Click Five, Imogen Heap, Sara Bareilles Non-noveling interests: reading, surfing, swimming, kayaking, watching tv, writing fanfiction, shopping, daydreaming, learning Japanese |
Joined: Juli 19, 2008 This Year: Official Participant NaNoWriMo History: NaNoWriMo posts: 73 NaNoWriMo buddies: 29
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Brief Author Bio: If we're talking actual biographical information, I'm fifteen, Australian, and tall with blue eyes and hair that looks like a horrid combination of brown and grey due to the regrowth. Otherwise, all you really need to know about me is: I'm just one of those teenagers you'd walk past laughing with her friends in the street. My "day job" is a high school student, although my major preoccupations are history and Japanese, and I'll do anything to get out of computer studies. When I leave school, I'm going to studying law, and either international politics or English literature, depending on what I decide sounds more fascinating. I talk too loudly, swear too much and sleep like a log, yet I still find time to surf, read, and watch a fair bit of TV. I think that's the major cause of both the caffeine and the procrastination, but neither of those is a habit I plan to break soon.
As a writer, I've mostly been preoccupied with fanfiction for quite some time. I've always been enamoured by the idea of writing my own novel, however, and Nano seemed the perfect opportunity to pursue that goal. For me, writing isn't about goals so much as the satisfaction of just writing, and I'm not in this for the word count so much as to have a great time writing a novel with the support of some of my favourite people in the world. This year, I'm attempting mainstream fiction with a slightly literary feel, partly because it's the genre I tend to read the most, and partly because I'm known for my shameless abuse of metaphors. It's going to be an interesting experience, but one that I'm really looking forward to! Dedication: (and that completely defeated the purpose of "brief") |
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Synopsis: Flaws in Science
For Grace O'Dwyer, everyone has something to say, and as a psychologist, it's her job to read their stories: both the ones they do and don't tell.
When her daughter, Chelsea, gives birth to twins - one of whom has heart defects - she has to confront her own past, and her own story... the one she's been hiding from herself.
Excerpt: Flaws in Science
The funniest thing was, Grace pictured her daughter in memories long gone, a wall of school photos and awards, lined up neatly in her mind.
Chelsea was twenty-three now, a world away from her fourth grade swimming certificate and her academic excellence awards. She was a journalism graduate, a waitress working shifts in between applying to every newspaper in the country, a girlfriend, possibly already a mother… a daughter.
In Chelsea’s mind, the distinctions were clear, a jagged line separating her priorities like earthquake zones. The biggest areas of land were dedicated to Anthony and the twins she was giving birth to right now, while Grace was allocated a much smaller land mass.
Her daughter’s life was like a tectonic plate, in that respect: sometimes she drifted and sometimes she crashed and sometimes she left disasters in her wake but, just like nature and science itself, everything happened for a reason and worked out at the end. She was Tony’s girlfriend and her unborn child’s mother first, and everything came in sequential order afterwards.
Trouble was, Grace was the jealous child in this scenario, and she wanted to be at the top of her daughter’s list.
It was inevitable, really, that hospitals were filled from wall to wall with the thoughts of the self-reflective. People who were near the end reveled in remembering their beginnings, their own personal Fountain of Youth with friends and lovers reflected in the scattered spray. Grace had her whole life ahead of her and yet, the road slipped away beneath her feet as she stopped still to stare into a future where she could not even make the top three in her daughter’s life. The idea scared her, quite a bit more than she was willing to admit.
Perhaps that was why Grace saw her daughter in memories so old she could almost sense they might tear at the edges if she handled them for too long. Like people who kept their pets alive in times of suffering because only saw the delusions that they wanted, she was simply increasing the pain that lay one step ahead on her path.
Soon, Chelsea would reach twenty-five, thirty, fifty, and Grace would not be able to reconcile her with that little girl in pigtails, her oldest daughter, at all. She would only be able to see the girl that aged in front of her, one picture merging into the next, and give a wistful smile.
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