Tag Archive for Book excerpt Shaken Preller

Pausing to Breathe: An Excerpt from SHAKEN

November 7, 2024 / / No comments

–

–

Nelly instructed Kristy to place her hands on her belly

and focus on the rise and fall with each breath.

“Let yourself get big,” Nelly said.

“So many girls today want to shrink their bellies

down to nothing.

Let yourself get big. Develop those diaphragm muscles.

They will serve you well.”

–

–

I’ve been thinking that I’d like to share another scene from Shaken, but which one? I was unsure until, er, recent events forced my hand. Yesterday and today I’ve been seeing a lot of “just breathe” advice. But how, exactly, does one do that?

In this scene, we see Kristy in art therapy practicing that calming strategy. 

To write this scene, I called upon a friend, Erin Svare, who teaches yoga and fitness and women’s health. Erin gave me a lot of the language that I put into Nelly’s mouth. 

Two certified art therapists were also hugely helpful for those scenes, “helpful” in that I couldn’t have possibly done it without them. They answered questions, read first drafts, offered comments and encouragement. Thanks again, Tracy Gilbert and Maria Lupo, for the important work that you do — and for sharing a small piece of that with me. 

SETTING THE SCENE: It is late in the book, Kristy is recovering from post-concussion syndrome, and things are looking up. She meets with Nelly, her art therapist, for their penultimate session, which includes watercolors, breathing exercises, and goldfish. 

—

It was one of those times with Nelly when it didn’t feel like therapy at all. Truthfully, it rarely did. Maybe that was another one of Nelly’s tricks? Today was their ninth appointment, and next to last. Something about insurance only paying for ten. Nelly gave Kristy a few prompts and Kristy just . . . drew. Painted, actually, with watercolors, which she enjoyed. Nelly didn’t try to interpret the meaning of Kristy’s pictures. She never did. It wasn’t like that. Kristy just felt chill. Relaxed and calm. She found that she liked making art—so long as she didn’t worry if it was “good” or not— and the creative time helped her think about things. Strange how that worked.

Sometimes she talked about those thoughts with Nelly, and other times Kristy just turned them over in her mind: like a spade digging into the moist earth.

“I think you are doing very well,” Nelly said toward the end of the session, bracelets jangling, as she and Kristy put away the art supplies.

Kristy didn’t understand at first. She studied her painting and made a face. “Very well” seemed like a wild exaggeration. Nelly had asked her to draw herself picking apples from a tree. So Kristy did. It wasn’t anything special. In the image, Kristy stood on a ladder, reaching up and collecting the apples that were red and ripe. At the last minute, Kristy included Jimbo in the picture holding the ladder steady, and Binny, who was saying in a word balloon: “I’ll make a pie!”

“I guess it’s okay,” Kristy said. “I’m not very good at people.”

“I don’t mean your artwork—which is beautiful, by the way, and happy—I mean you.”

“I think so, yes,” Kristy agreed. “My headaches have mostly gone away. I still get anxious sometimes.” “That might always be true,” Nelly advised. “This life comes with stress. Tell you what. Let’s practice your breathing.”

“Again?” Kristy asked, but was already eagerly rolling out an exercise mat. She lay down on her back. “Practice makes perfect,” Nelly said.

“Well, actually, no,” Kristy contended, propping herself up on an elbow. “Coach Izzy, my school soccer coach, she’s a stickler for technique. She says that if you practice the wrong way, then you are just hard-wiring those mistakes into your muscle memory. She says, ‘Perfect practice makes perfect.’”

“Ah, gotcha,” Nelly replied. “Coach Izzy sounds like she’s on the ball.”

Nelly instructed Kristy to place her hands on her belly and focus on the rise and fall with each breath. “Let yourself get big,” Nelly said. “So many girls today want to shrink their bellies down to nothing. Let yourself get big. Develop those diaphragm muscles. They will serve you well.”

Nelly continued talking in a soothing tone. “You know that feeling when you can’t catch your breath? When your breathing gets shallow, high in the chest? Those are our emergency breathing muscles.”

“Panic attacks,” Kristy said. “I feel like I’m drowning in air when that happens.”

“It’s a scary feeling,” Nelly said. “That’s why we’re practicing this now. Belly breathing is a tool, Kristy. A tool that is always with us—we just have to remember to use it. Belly breathing calms the nervous system, slows the heartbeat, and primes the body for work. When you feel those anxiety triggers coming along, breathing can help you cope.”

Kristy murmured, relaxed and entranced. Eyes closed, ears listening, heart open.

“We know that great athletes in every sport have an ability to tune out the noise. They eliminate the distractions. They silence the negative self-talk in their own heads,” Nelly said. “I’ve worked with athletes right here in this office. Believe me, it works.”

She reviewed with Kristy a strategy called equal parts breath. “Inhale to the count of four, pause, exhale to the count of four, pause.”

Kristy practiced counting, imagined a box with four numbered corners and a little ball bouncing from corner to corner. “Now move your hands and feel how your rib cage widens and narrows. That’s right, put your hands right there. Your body is settling,” Nelly said. “Later you can lengthen your breath. Work up to a count of six, or eight. After more practice, try to go a little longer on the exhale. In for four, out for six.”

“It’s a nice distraction,” Kristy observed.

“Yes,” Nelly said with a light laugh. “You are focused on counting, being in your body. The outside noise goes away. You are in the present moment. Practice that every day and you are setting yourself up for success. The same way a basketball player practices foul shots. Then during the game, with all that outside pressure, she can calmly knock down those shots. Breathing is a tool you can access when you face stressful situations.”

“I like it,” Kristy said. “Makes sense.”

They moved to the leather chairs and grabbed handfuls of Goldfish from a bowl on the table. The perfect snack food, in Kristy’s opinion. The size, the little hollow part in the middle, the zesty flavor. What more could anyone want?

 

Share Share Tweet Follow Share Print Email
Category: Shaken / Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Huckleberry Finn — Archetypical Boys — and a Scene from My Upcoming Novel, SHAKEN (ages 9-13)

August 1, 2024 / / No comments

–

I’ve been on a good reading streak lately. You know the feeling. These times when you keep picking up good books and your mind feels engaged, buzzing with ideas and perceptions. I read Percival Everett’s new novel, James, which is Everett’s version of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, told from Jim’s point of view. A brilliant book. It led me to reread Huckleberry — it had been decades — which was also profoundly interesting, a book  wholly deserving of its place in the canon of American Literature. Not perfect, nope, but foundational in so many ways. 

Jim and Huck on a raft on the river.

It’s all right there.

Sidenote: 2007 saw the publication of Jon Clinch’s debut novel, Finn, which focuses on Huckleberry’s father. I remember loving this dark, gritty tale when it first came out — we meet Huck in this one, too — and now I feel that I need to revisit it again.

Anyway, that’s three supremely talented writers, like gold diggers seeking riches, working the same deep vein: that great fictional character, Huckleberry Finn. The distilled spirit of the American boy. Or, at least, one version of that boy.

In a similar way, I think of Ramona Quimby as a classic type of American girl. A powerful archetype, for Ramona is the most imitated character in all of children’s literature.

 

 

 

 

Inspired thus, and perusing the internet, as one does, I came across this illustration of Tom Sawyer by Norman Rockwell:

 

–

–

The image jarred something loose in me, because I have a similar scene in my middle-grade novel, Shaken (Macmillan, September 2024). There’s a boy sneaking out of a bedroom window late at night. Sure, I could look no farther than my own childhood to come up with that idea. But there was something else at play. Something deeper and more resonant. 

I should note here that the neighborhood boy in Shaken was inspired, directly, by my childhood friend, Jimmy Kuhlman, AKA, Jimbo Ku. But I now realize that the “Jimbo” in my story was also inspired by Twain’s depiction of Tom and Huck. All those characters (living and fictional)  flicker around the essence of the archetypical American boy, the mischievous & resourceful rapscallion. In my book, I wanted that character to represent a sense of freedom, which was something missing from Kristy’s mindset: a wildness, an openness . . . a touch of Huckleberryness.

Looking back, I understand that I treasured those qualities in my old (and still current) friend. He had an undeniable energy and rebellious intelligence. A rule-breaker. I wanted this character to enter Kristy’s world and leave her enriched and transformed. He’s just that kid in everybody’s neighborhood who is a little bit different. More alive, more free, more daring.

I sensed that those qualities were absent from Kristy’s highly-scheduled, goal-oriented routine. Today I look around and suspect that those qualities are missing from the life of so many young people. There’s just not enough time to muck around. Which is too bad, because so many good and valuable lessons are learned from just mucking about.

Here’s an excerpt from the moment when Kristy first notices — really notices — her next door neighbor. It is late at night and she is sitting on her front porch while the world sleeps. Or so she thinks:

–

This was where Kristy sat huddled under a fleece blanket late one evening long after her parents had gone to bed. Sleeping was still a problem—it never got back on schedule—especially since she no longer exerted herself physically with sports. Kristy used to fall into bed dead-tired; now she had become nocturnal, like a bat or a bandicoot. On this night, Kristy wasn’t doing anything in particular. Just being. Enjoying the silence, the body’s quiet, late autumn’s brisk, crisp, sharp aroma of decay.

This was something new, the post-concussed version of herself, Kristy 2.0. Up all hours of the night, not busy, not active, not even restless really. The fall fragrances soothed and comforted her in a way they never had before—the smell of rotted plants and leaves and acorns: dark, rich, woody. Kristy sat content as an owl perched on a limb: watchful, alert, still.

A soft noise came from the neighbors’ house to her immediate right. The Sullivans. A second-story window shivered up almost soundlessly, but not quite. Dark curtains billowed. And a black-booted foot stepped out onto the front roof. A bent figure hunched through the opening and, once outside, carefully lowered the window shut. It was the skinny boy next door, the youngest of them all, sneaking out of his house. Interesting. Kristy felt like a spy, as if she were witnessing a minor felony, something that she wasn’t meant to see. The night whispering a secret into her ear, the moon lending its stolen light.

What was he up to?

His name, she knew, was Jimmy. They had never talked, not much anyway, though his family had moved in nearly two years ago. Though roughly the same age, their paths rarely crossed. He wore a private school uniform and rode the bus to get there. There were four or five Sullivan children—it was hard to get an accurate census—one of those sprawling families with an ever-changing assortment of cars cluttering the driveway. Teenagers coming and going. Young adults. Sometimes they even parked on the front lawn. The family had moved up from the city, Kristy believed. Two and a half hours on the train and a galaxy away.

The boy moved to the edge of the roof, rubbed his hands against his jeans. Then he leaned dangerously out over the black nothingness and, with one hand, grabbed hold of a drooping tree limb. He swung so freely, so effortlessly—like a gibbon brachiating through the forest. Kristy took a sudden intake of air when he dipped to a lower branch, wrapped his legs around the trunk for momentary purchase, then dropped to the earth as if he’d done it a hundred times before.

A lone car traveled down the empty road, casting long shadows with its headlights. The boy stepped close to the house into the shadows. The beams swept across the grounds like searchlights in a prison movie. The danger passed.

Even if the boy glanced in the direction of Kristy’s porch, he almost certainly would not have seen her, wrapped in the deep-blue fleece blanket pulled up to her neck. He furtively moved to the sidewalk and into the street, long strides and calm confidence. He carried something in his right hand. What was it? In answer to her question, the boy lowered a skateboard to the street and stepped onto it. He pushed off—one, two— smooth as silk over glass. With a practiced gesture, he pulled a hoodie over his head and disappeared into the night.

Where was he going, now in the witching hour, while all the world slept? To meet his friends? To party in the woods? To see his girlfriend? Or maybe he was like Kristy, awake because he was lured outside by the autumn air, a nocturnal creature of the dark. A fellow bandicoot. Maybe he couldn’t sleep. Maybe home was too hard. It was a puzzle that Kristy couldn’t solve. Not yet, anyway.

She longed to follow him into the dark.

–

–

For 7th-grader Kristy Barrett, soccer is life. It has always been at the center of Kristy’s world. Her friendships and self-worth, her dreams and daily activities, all revolve around the sport. Until she suffers from a serious concussion and has to set soccer aside for an uncertain amount of time. Kristy begins to struggle in school, experience stress, anxiety, and panic attacks which ultimately bring her to some questionable decisions . . . and the care of a therapist as she suffers from post-concussion syndrome. It’s a story about identity, therapy, new friendships, making mistakes and, finally, coming true to one’s ever-evolving self.

 

SHAKEN will be published on September 10th, 2024. It is available for pre-order. Thanks for reading.

 

Share Share Tweet Follow Share Print Email
Category: Readings, Shaken, the writing process / Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

SUPER SHORT EXCERPT from SHAKEN, a middle-grade novel coming on September 10th

April 18, 2024 / / No comments

–

Over the next few months, I’ll be sharing some excerpts and background info on my upcoming novel, Shaken. 

Very briefly, a 7th-grade soccer player suffers a severe concussion that effects her life in profound ways. She gets behind in school, feels stress and anxiety, suffers from panic attacks, and ultimately goes to therapy sessions (including art therapy!) which are depicted in the book. The story is about how Kristy responds to these setbacks, the new friends she makes, the mistakes and the good decisions, too. 

–

–

Light breaks through the curtains, bringing with it a sharp pain to her forehead. Kristy imagines a jagged crack running from eyebrow to hairline. She can’t bear to call out her mother’s name. So she waits, eyes squeezed shut, pillow over her face, like an aphid on the underside of a leaf. A black dot of silence. She’ll be better soon. As good as new. Running the field and scoring goals. This is the worst of it. Yes, she tells Megan Rapinoe, who is staring back at Kristy from a soccer poster on the wall, this is the very worst.

–

–

Something like the poster I imagine hanging on Kristy’s wall.

–

–

–

 

–

Share Share Tweet Follow Share Print Email
Category: Shaken / Tags: , , , , , ,
 
Website Hosted by Web Instinct