Brooke Wright has only two goals her senior year at Charity Run High School: stay out of trouble and learn to forgive herself for the past. Forgiveness proves elusive, and trouble finds her anyway when she discovers a secret club at school connected to the death of her best friend. She learns that swim team members participate in a “Fantasy Slut League,” scoring points for their sexual acts with unsuspecting girls.
Brooke, wracked with guilt over her friend’s death, decides to infiltrate the league by becoming one of the “unsuspecting girls,” and exact revenge on the boys who stole away her best friend. An unexpected romance complicates her plans, and her dogged pursuit of justice turns her reckless as she underestimates just how far the boys will go to keep their sex club a secret.
(This is a New Adult fiction book with mature themes. It contains graphic sex and language and a description of sexual violence.)
Sponge
People like to ask
me where I get my ideas for stories.
“From you,” I
reply, and they look confused. And then the confusion turns to
suspicion.
“Oh really?”
they ask tentatively.
“Mmhmm,” I
reply. I drum my fingers on my writer’s notebook. (Well, okay. I
don’t have a writer’s notebook. I store everything in my head. So
I drum my fingers on my head.)
“Sooo . . . what
do you have in there?” they ask.
“You’ll find
out in my next book.” I smile and wink.
They’re getting
scared. “Were you at Kroger last week? Did you see me in the
bakery? I swear to God I didn’t do what you think you saw! It was
somebody else! Please don’t put that in your book!!”
“Oh, I saw you
all right. And it’s sooo going in my book,” I reply.
“You writers!”
they scream. “You think you can slap a disclaimer on your books and
write whatever you want!”
“Can’t we?”
The truth may
shock you. It may scare you. It may piss you off. But your favorite
writer? Well, she most likely got some ideas in that favorite book of
yours from spying on people. Maybe even you. That’s right.
Flat-out, creepy-but-trying-to-look-nonchalant-about-it spying. And
it happens every second of the day. You’re just not aware of it.
We’re sponges,
see? We soak up everything we come into contact with. Smells, sounds,
tastes, conversations. We store these tidbits away (either in our
heads or in notebooks) to later develop into characters or plot
ideas. Because the bottom line is this: we can only infuse so much of
ourselves and our experiences into our characters and stories before
they turn utterly tedious or narcissistic. One of my favorite things
about Brooke in Going Under is that (aside from her foul
mouth) that girl is nothing like me. (And for the record, I like her
a whole lot better!)
So who do I spy
on? Where do my ideas come from? Well, all over. I’m acquiring
ideas all the time (and I should really start writing them down
instead of relying so heavily on my memory). One I’ve been trying
to work into a story for a long time comes from an acquaintance who
described a church for me she used to attend. One located in the deep
South. One with a preacher who liked to stand up at the pulpit and
call people out for their transgressions during the service:
“Pete! Jimmy saw
you down at Pumpkin’s Bar last Friday! Now we all of us in this
congregation know that you have an alcohol problem, son! So what were
you doin’ at Pumpkin’s?”
All eyes on Pete.
Poor, poor Pete.
“Darlene! I done
told you to stop gossipin’ about Jimmy’s wife behind her back!”
Jimmy’s wife
looks outraged.
“If you’ve got
somethin’ to say to her, say it to her face! But make sure you say
it in a loving, Christ-like way, of course.”
Yeah, so I’m
trying to work that in because it’s too hilarious to be true, but
it’s so freaking true. And stories like these are precisely why
writers spy. We soak up these events, these real-life
people/caricatures, these conversations because they make delicious
stories. They add what our imaginations can’t. And when you write
realistic fiction, you need that. The world around you becomes your
candy store of ideas, and you begin to discover that reality is
pretty crazy.
I love reading
reviews of realistic fiction that state, “Oh, that isn’t very
realistic,” or “That could never happen.” Wanna make a bet?
That story you just read is a collection of soaked up people and
events sprinkled with the ideas of the author. It may not be one
hundred percent true, but it’s pretty darn close.
So the next
time you’re out and about, you might want to look over your
shoulder. Go ahead and let your eyes dart around. Think twice before
you do what you’re just about to do. Because we’re watching. The
notebooks are open, people. We’re watching and we’re jotting.
Totally. Creepy.
S. Walden used to teach English before making the best decision of her life by becoming a full-time writer. She lives in Georgia with her very supportive husband who prefers physics textbooks over fiction and has a difficult time understanding why her characters must have personality flaws. She is wary of small children, so she has a Westie instead. Her dreams include raising chickens and owning and operating a beachside inn on the Gulf Coast (chickens included). When she's not writing, she's thinking about it.
She loves her fans and loves to hear from them. Email her at swaldenauthor@hotmail.com and follow her blog at http://swaldenauthor.blogspot.com where you can get up-to-date information on her current projects.
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