Saxton Reads! & Reviews

Please welcome Guest Blogger Juliette Fay, author of Shelter Me

"For as long as I can remember I’ve always had a story or two running in my head. Possibly this is evidence of a minor psychosis issue, but nevertheless it’s entertaining and harmless—sort of like the imaginary friends small children have, only I don’t serve mine tea with my teddy bears.

I cook up a story to mentally play with, eventually get tired of it and start a new one. It’s very handy on long car rides and during boring work meetings. A couple of years ago I was driving somewhere with my youngest child, who was about four at the time, and we were both very quiet. I was mulling over some story, and suddenly he said to me, "Mom, have you seen Shrek 5?" I said, "No, sweetie, I don’t think that’s out yet." He said, "Yes it is, and it’s playing in my head!" And I thought, Wow, he’s got it too, Mommy’s little cranial DVD player.

I never wrote any of these stories down until a few years back when I happened to read a really bad book. It was a complete stinker, but I couldn’t put it down—it was fascinating in its badness! And I began to think, Even I could do better than this. I started writing out a story, and it was so much fun I couldn’t stop. It was like falling in love; I thought about my characters all the time and I couldn’t wait to get back to them to see what would happen next.

At first I was very secretive about it. I had no idea if I would ever finish, and I didn’t want people asking me "So, how’s the novel going?" if I was only ever going to write 17 pages. I had to test my own seriousness. After several months, I finally admitted to a couple of close friends that I was writing, and allowed them to read what I had.

It’s helpful for me to have a few trusted people read as I write because often their questions change the course of the story in small ways and occasionally in larger ways. Before the writing begins I generally have a sense of the narrative arc and major themes, but not chapter-by-chapter detail. It keeps the story a little bit of a mystery even for me, and I enjoy the surprise of it.

   That first novel was never published, but it was good practice. I started Shelter Me soon after, based on a story that had been bobbing along in my head since I got married: I had finally found somebody I wanted to spend the rest of my life with, but what if he got sick or had some sort of accident and died? How would I ever be able to pull myself back together? I tend to be a little bit of a worry wart, so ruminating on the possibility of his death really gripped me until I was able to make a story out of it and have the main character be someone other than me. And that’s how Janie LaMarche was born. 

I’m working on a new story now, inspired by the worst three years of my life: middle school. It’s about a newly-divorced mother trying to help her children navigate those piranha-infested waters, while dealing with her own insecurities and uncertain social status. Though not a sequel to Shelter Me, it is set in the same fictitious town."  Juliette Fay