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MAD SEASON: ELLES GARITY’S STORY

Gregory Armstrong

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GENRE:  Literary Fiction

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BLURB:

Fifteen years ago, Elles Garity’s world came crashing down, in more ways than one. Now in her mid-twenties, long since removed from the small island town that she grew up in and never dealing with the pain of her loss, life is calling her back home. In the affirmant of recent unfortunate events Elles finds herself at a turning point once more. This time though, she’ll be forced to confront both her unresolved grief and the people and places she left behind. It won’t be easy. Along the way Elles will learn the truth behind a new friend’s dark connection to her tragic past and be the last to uncover unthinkable family secrets that will unravel everything she ever knew about the family she thought she lost.

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Excerpt One:

Now, I was questioning all of it. I didn’t deal with things well. I didn’t allow anyone to help me deal with things. My life, the road I was on, the lane I had shifted into when I took the wheel, to put it quite figuratively, looked dark and dismal. I was solely responsible for switching my life into cruise control before ever giving myself a chance to learn to drive the damn car.

All these things ran through my head. I didn’t speak to Loyal about any of it. Where would I start? How could she possibly understand my position? Not that I gave her a fighting chance. Time sort of stood still as I sat there frozen, empty. I started this. I made this mess. I had no fucking clue how to fix it. I closed my eyes for a while, and when I opened them, it hit me like a slap to the head. The answer was staring me in the face. Where it all went wrong is where it needed to begin again.

“Grace, I’m worried about you.”

She had never said those words to me before. Ironic, though, how it came across, how I took it—her spotting the wreckage and expressing concern to the very person who was entangled in the heap. Out of upheaval, I took solace in a clouded idea to uproot myself once more. I emerged partially from my funk, oddly enough,

with a wayward smile and slightly brighter outlook. I turned to Loyal, sincere. “Everyone must think I’m horrible.”

AUTHOR Bio and Links:

Born in Westerly, Rhode Island, and a Connecticut native all my life, my family eventually moved to Norwich in 1977, where I grew up. I attended and graduated from Norwich Free Academy in 1991. It was there, in my final two years, where I acquired a passion for writing. At the time, the school provided a writing center, a classroom filled with computers, designated as a creative writing outlet for the students, and overseen by the now accomplished author Wally Lamb. Here, we were free to use our time working on our own projects, developing, learning, and sharpening our writing skills. Each class, we would gather in a circle to show and share our work with Mr. Lamb and the rest of the class by either reading or having our material read aloud, and hearing feedback from our peers.

Mr. Lamb’s writing center instilled a desire in me to one day write a book and become an author, just as he was doing, putting the final touches on his debut novel, She’s Come Undone. Unfortunately, for me, that is when that dream of mine became a struggle that would last decades. At the age of three, I contracted meningitis, which caused me to go completely blind and left me hospitalized for several weeks. Despite doctors believing my vision would never return, it did, slowly and to a certain degree, although my optic nerve had sustained too much damage and I was declared legally blind.

Growing up was a struggle. Socially, I was quiet, shy, uncomfortable knowing I was different from all of the other kids, because of my physical limitations and lack in self-confidence. Reading was also a challenge. Even though I soon got my first pair of glasses, which made my vision clearer, being able to see the print on a page was still a major issue. For those reasons, I have never been much of a reader, and how does someone who doesn’t read, who doesn’t study the art of literature through books, because it was a strenuous activity on my eyes, learn how to write?

The fact that I found myself stuck, without the necessary tools and unsure of my own talents and abilities to be a quality writer, all the other insecurities of my childhood at play, I gave it up for a time. My active imagination for storytelling did not. As I got older, and into my teenage years I started listening to more music to fill a void. The more I listened, the more I began to broaden my tastes in artists, groups and genres, and the more I heard stories in the songs. Music, along with television and movies, were combining to strengthen my inspiration to be an aspiring author.

One such movie, which mirrored many of my own self-imposed hurdles, was Eddie and the Cruisers. The character of Eddie Wilson, lead singer of a fictional rock and roll band, was consumed by the notion that his music was never good enough, that if they were going to be a band, they had to be great, if they were going to release an album, it had to be great as well. I had obviously grown-up learning and hearing about the great authors and novelists of all time, the great classic books. I had always put that pressure on myself, the same way Eddie Wilson did. I was convinced that I didn’t know how to write, and even if I did, would it be good enough? I had been told, taught by teachers and others, that there were rules to the writing game, including creating a story outline, character development, a whole assortment of proper steps to follow and processes before the writing even began.

Over the years, I started a novel a time or two, hating it, and giving up again. I met my future wife, got married, started a family, and quit my average job to become a stay-at-home dad. Through all of it, thirty-plus years, that ever-present need to write gnawing at me, the urge still there, my vivid imagination still running wild—I couldn’t ignore it anymore. I had to let that creativity out and give it a real and focused purpose. With the rough idea of a plot in mind, I sat down at the computer and finally let all of those insecurities go. With a shot of determination and a relaxed mind, I slowly but surely discovered my own writing style, and found my storytelling voice. To hell with all the rules, the unrealistic expectations I placed upon myself, the result—a deeply, emotionally charged story of tragedy, personal reflection, and redemption, that is Mad Season.

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