Awake & Dreaming: a new novel
This book started with an opening scene that - if I recall correctly - was in my head when I woke up one morning. I wrote it between March and May, and have been tweaking and polishing since then. Click AWAKE for Books2Read link and click image below for AMZ link.
Cover image is from Mrezababaei Photography; @mrezababaeiphotography unsplash.com. Thanks for making this photo (of this incredible-looking man) available!
Three key things about AWAKE & DREAMING:
It may fairly be described as New Adult; my main characters, Freddie Chandra and David Marlowe, are 23 and 18 respectively when the story begins;
The action gets to Los Angeles after some time spent in Macau, Singapore, and a nameless private island in the South Pacific;
It is a story about two people who have nothing of their own, until they find each other.
Freddie and David have traumatic pasts. The nature of their traumas is quite different, but they’ve dealt with them similarly: by making themselves helpful to other people, and earning various measures of security that way. They are both orphans who have - by chance - fallen under the protection of an Asian pop star and his wife.
New Adult in this case does not mean College Romance. These two young men work full-time. Freddie is a multi-lingual interpreter, and as such a valued member of the pop star’s public-facing team. David, given a choice of possible employments, decides to work with a botanical specialist. When at length he has to account for himself to the press, he tells them “feel free to call me a gardener.”
One key thing about David: he is aphonic. He can hear, but he can’t make a sound. It’s an uncommon condition in the absence of other disabilities. I didn’t try to establish the why of it; the pop star’s resident physicians do their best, but ultimately the answer is “this is how I have to go on.” As part of his on-boarding process, David gets his first cell phone. Being able to communicate via text changes his life every bit as much as going to work for the pop star.
This is a coming-of-age story about characters unlike any I’ve written before. (Not just because of their youth.) The biggest difference for Freddie and David, in the context of the story universe, is that they are not yet integrated into the community I’ve created. Before the end of the book Freddie has become acquainted with some of those people, including Gary Fisher (Lost & Found), Mateo de la Cruz (Beat), and Rory Atwood (Stripped). The book concludes in 2019, by which time Freddie and David are 26 and 21, and are full-time Los Angeles residents. I am nearly positive we will meet them again.
Content warnings: sex on the page; homelessness; childhood sexual abuse (past); violent death of a sibling (past); sexually transmitted disease.
