Hi guys! ☺️💜
As I tend to write each year around these dates: come in, grab a comfy seat 🛋, some yummy biscuits 🍪 and be very welcome to Love, Dad.
I bet the title and the letter-shaped cover are already allowing you to guess that this is going to be mostly a family-theme-oriented coming of age litfic novella.
But what you don't know is that it shall also have a sprinkle of romance 💜
Its creation owes its existence to ONC 2024 prompt number 4:
4. When life gives you balloons, you fly up into the sky.
And, and: also a conversation from some days before the prompts came out, that I had with an incredible writer and a friend, Lisa London, who inspired me so much! She is participating in this year's Open Novella Contest as well, so check out her novella "Where Is Araminta Green?" that has the both of Only Murders in the Building and Wednesday worlds, and add it to your reading lists!
The biggest comp for this novella is "Crossroads," (2002) movie with Britney Spears, which I discovered thanks to my wonderful friend and authoress, WinterSleep85 . Her ONC entry "Lost in Shadows" deals with alluring, powerful and terrifying vampires. It's different from anything she's done before, so make sure you have it in your library!
The romantic moments in the story come from my love for the following two movies I saw with my mom. They are: "It Happened One Night" (1934) with Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert, and "Leap Year" (2010) with Matthew Goode and Amy Adams.
Ooh ooh, as well as my very recently discovered love for the TV show "A Murder at the End of the World" (2023) with Harris Dickinson and Emma Corrin.
There is this a-mazing scene where Harris and Emma (Bill and Darby in the show) are on the road in the car, and they are a bit angry with each other. She plays a song on her iPod, it's a random shuffle, and it turns out to be "No More I Love Yous," by Annie Lennox.
You can just see how they slowly get in the groove and forgive each other, and everything is alright again, while they don't even say a word. They just sing together and their mood brightens by a second. Tremendous acting by Harris and Emma both 💜 They don't speak at all to each other, but their eyes and their gestures say everything.
Here's a YouTube videocito so that ye can see I ain't lyin':
I hope that you like it and that you perhaps get inspired to see the show!
To me, there is something poetic about the notion of the road trip: that duality between the blend of the present and the past, what the roadsters perceive now versus what they already lived, the people they meet on the road...
All those destinies and life stories that intertwine in a huge human yarn, transcending time and space. Not to mention the quantity of life lessons one learns on such a trip.
And as it usually happens, the journey might turn out to be even more important than the destination.
The fourth source of inspiration for the novel is: surprise surprise: my own life.
At one point I had a similar altercation with my mom as the one April Lewis, my she-tagonist has, and I also left home on a train, determined to get to my dad's place; but I didn't get as far as April did 🤣
I did meet someone very similar to Dave, so that part is also based on a true story!
To tell you the truth, this is my very first attempt to write anything remotely lit-fiction-y. In 2019, I wrote an ONC titled "GG." While it had some minor elements of literary fiction, mostly isolated quotes, it was actually more of a phantasmagorical Alice in Wonderland-ish piece with sci- fi foundation.
Some of the quotes were admittedly life-lesson-ish, and they leaned towards literary fiction, but that was all. It never overpowered the whole middle grade fantasy vibe. Since then, I've been itching to try my virtual pen on another talelet or booklet of the literary fiction genre. Alas, I haven't truly been inspired until the re-apparition of the Open Novella Contest in 2024.
Love, Dad, is an attempt to combine both YA romance in the vein of "Once Upon a You," that I wrote just last year, and literary fiction road trip pieces a la "On the Road," by Jack Kerouac.
After having spent a couple of weeks on the hunt for an ONC prompt, tweaking existent ideas and brainstorming like crazy, all the cogs clicked into place and the clock finally started ticking.
This is the sixth consecutive time I am participating in ONC, and, err... It seems that I always come up with the complex-iest ideas! All Open Novella Contest projects I do end up just being something for fun and ultimately connecting with my fellow writers 💜, testing out new genre waters!
Thinking back, not a single one of them were the same genre at all. So in Love, Dad we also have this genre blend as well.
As to the word count:
My shortest novella was my first one, from ONC 2019 which barely surpassed 20k required words: "GG!" ❤️
Afterwards, all of them have been on the 30 000 - 40 000 words side.
Given the nature of this book I feel that the same shall happen with Love, Dad—it shall be long-ish, probably brushing 40k.
I adore getting feedback of any kind, and this book is in its first drafting stage, so if you want to tell me how you feel about what I wrote so far, see errors of any kind, or have helpful comments and suggestions:
Do not hesitate to shoot! 🔫
I would like to give a special thanks to the creator of my cover, EvaAcharya! She is an amazingly talented writer but also, as you can see, an incredible artist with a keen eye for detail who was so gracious to create this simple, yet impactful and poignant imagery, conveying the letter vibe.
Her entry this year is called Stone2Stone and it's a modern take on Medusa's story. It looks incredible, and her own cover is easily in my top three covers this years, it pops out so much.
And another huge thank you to two other super authors, AnnKReeves and AnnieRosebud who gave me some astonishing plot ideas when it came to MC's love interest, and especially the novella ending itself.
AnnK's ONC 2024 novella is called "The Escaped Con's Hostage" and it's a wonderful steamy take on a forced proximity trope! A must-read.
Talking about Love, Dad: April Lewis, who has a nice spring-y name, and was born in April xD is a she-tagonist of the book. She decides to flee her emotionally closed-off, controlling mother and go live with her dad. He's been working on the West Coast for the past couple of months and every month, two letters arrive. These letters from dad are like a lifeline to April, and at one point, she just decides to go and live with him.
As soon as she sets foot on the street, she's almost run over by the car! Was her controlling mom right all along? giggles
The reckless driver is none other than her classmate, Dave Rivera. He's a troubled boy whom she seldom talked to before, and who can't be more different than her.
After making sure April is just a little banged-up, Dave strikes a deal with her: he'll help her get to the West Coast free of charge, as long as she doesn't report him to the cops.
The two embark upon a road trip from NY to LA, navigating through stunning landscapes and meeting a colorful cast of characters.
While sharing life stories and exchanging experiences, armed with the wisdom from her Dad's letters, April and Dave discover that they are a lot more alike than they originally thought.
The journey slowly becomes more important than the destination, and their path takes an unexpected turn when a shocking secret comes to light.
If you dig the chappies, don't forget to star them or give me your opinion on them! That allows me to tap into the readers' thoughts and see what I'm doing well, and what I can improve upon! ❣️
And that's it!
All that is left is to thank you for passing by and reading my ONC entry.
I do hope you'll enjoy it!