Sycamore Souls finished

Late last month I finally finished the project I began in November as my National Novel Writing Month project. It’s a literary novel I’ve called Sycamore Souls. The first draft came in at a little over 93,000 words and, while it is a pretty rough draft, overall I’m pretty proud of it.

Sycamore Souls is about Kelsi Duncan, a woman in her twenties who moves from Casper, Wyoming, to a small northern Oklahoma city called Nokomis after meeting a guy online named Tucker. She lives on her own and goes to college in town, but she doesn’t feel as if she belongs. She’s never lived in one place very long because of her military father’s indiscretions with women.

When Tucker’s grandfather, Dennis Aiken, falls and breaks his hip, Kelsi volunteers to leave her waitressing job to live with him as his caretaker. Dennis, a widower, is a long-standing and respected member of the community and begins introducing Kelsi to others, so that she begins to feel like she has roots in the city.

One of the odd tasks Kelsi has to do as Dennis’s caretaker is drive him to an old city park and help him set up two lawn chairs under the spreading branches of a mature sycamore tree. Dennis and his wife Gloria planted the tree when they were children in elementary school and it has been instrumental in their lives since then. Dennis insists that Gloria sometimes comes and sits with him under the tree. Kelsi, who is sensitive to such things, does see a distorted, translucent shape sometimes that she believes is Dennis’s wife.

As Dennis and Kelsi grow closer, she sees what real love is through the stories he tells her about Gloria and their life together. Her friendship with Dennis transforms her life.

I don’t know of any writer who enjoys writing a synopsis of his/her own work, and I’m no exception. Hopefully the bit I’ve given you will intrigue you enough to come on over to my Patreon page and sign up for the Bronze Level membership. I’ll be posting chapters of Sycamore Souls there as I revise them and you’d be welcome to read and comment on them during the process.

I’m going to spend some time shopping this one to agents in hope of a traditional publishing deal, so it will not be immediately available from MoonHowler Press after the revision process. If I can’t get a deal, or can’t get a deal I like, then I’ll self-publish.

For now, though, come on over to my Patreon. Chapter One is waiting for you.