Old Music for New People: Coming Soon

My coming-of-age novel, Old Music for New People, will be published by the independent publishing house The Story Plant on December 7th. Go here or click on the cover widget (near the top right on the screen if you are using a big screen; probably down low on the scroll if you are using a small screen) to go to the book’s landing page. You’ll find all the links you could ever need to pre-order the paperback and digital versions now. Reviewers with NetGalley accounts can now also access the ARC (Advance Reviewer Copy) at the NetGalley site. This is my first official novel, so I can use any and all the reviews I can get.

So what’s the book about? Well, there’s a big conversation going on in this country right now about gender identity. Mainstream media tends to focus on silly issues like the bathrooms people are allowed to use and whether transgender girls should be permitted to play sports with other girls.

Gender is such a phenomenally core aspect of life for people everywhere. It is the first differentiation ascribed to every one of us, and has probably been the root of humanoid cultures for hundreds of thousands of years. It is also the bedrock element of self-definition each of us must grapple with all the time (even when we don’t realize it). We try to be simplistic about boy-girl stuff as we move through our days, but the more involuted the society, the more insidious and powerful gender becomes as an institution and an organizing principle.

With all of that, then, the actual complexity of gender questions are definitely a focal plot element of my story, but there’s a lot more going on in this novel as well, because that’s the way things are in the actual life we all live. Old Music for New People is also a story about family, the magic of music, and the simple poetry of summer days and nights. There’s romance, baseball (Fenway Park!), and weird discussions during family dinner. Pieces of this story may even be impacted by some of the mysteries of the cosmos themselves (always a good excuse to read novels).

Readers of Old Music for New People will need to decide for themselves whether I’ve done a decent enough job telling the story of Ivy, Rita, Delmore, Zaxy, and Bailey (along with their parents) as they search for answers to questions like: “Who am I?” and “Who are you?” and “Who, then, are we?”

Here’s a piece of the official summary of the story from The Story Plant website:

Thus begins a summer where Ivy’s worldview will expand, where she will discover new layers to herself and those around her, and where stepping forward into the unknown will emerge as a bold adventure.

https://www.thestoryplant.com/old-music-for-new-people

I remember the summer I was 15 all too well. I’ll be writing a bit more on that here at this website in the next few weeks. I wish I could return there now and give myself some advice and guidance. Maybe, in a weird way, this story is an attempt by me to provide that advice and guidance now. Everything changes sometimes in the blink of an eye and we don’t even realize what happened until years later.

Go to The Story Plant site to read more. You can even find a link to the first chapter of the book. And if any of this seems interesting and exciting, please tell family and friends about Old Music for New People. Let your local librarian and bookstore owner know about it as well.

More information on Old Music for New People can be found here: https://www.thestoryplant.com/old-music-for-new-people

Head over to NetGalley if you’re a book reviewer: https://www.netgalley.com/catalog/book/232356