The story is a first person narrative spoken by Long Peterson, written in the tradition of S.E. Hinton's `The Outsiders' and J.D. Salinger's `The Catcher in the Rye'. I wrote it when I was sixteen, during August to December 1994. It was almost written in `real time', the `first day' in the novel being a week after I had started to write it.
The narrative begins on Long's seventeenth birthday and the story is an extended flashback of the events of August 22nd to September 5th (the present), concerning such things as his relationship with his best friends Gil and Bethel, his family, and the band in which he is lead singer. It was inspired both by a (then) recent trip to America and my own paranoia regarding my place in the world. I especially wanted to capture the `in between' or transitory times of our lives which bridge events together - change is the main theme of the story. Other themes include the traversal from childhood to adulthood, the mass media and popular culture vs. nature, the blurring of the boundaries between `alternative' and `mainstream', the Baby Boomers vs. Generation X, as well as more conventional topics such as friendship, sex and love, and mental and physical escape. I have an insider's knowledge of the young adult market (being an active member of it myself) so have purposely tailored the story to the 15-25 year old market (or thereabouts) by including the things I and others have found lacking in most contemporary fiction and enhancing the aspects of it I do find satisfying.
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