Category: Avalon Summer (Page 1 of 2)
Seven years ago, I hadn’t yet started my career as an independent author. I was still finding my way as a writer, so I decided to write a NaNoWriMo novel based on my memories of childhood.
It wasn’t a memoir, though. I’m a fantasy author. I wanted there to be some magic in this story, so I had to make it fictional. My inspiration was Ray Bradbury and his beautiful ode to childhood, Dandelion Wine, a novel I hold dear to my heart.
So I invented Sarah Lewis, a ten-year-old from California who spends the summer with her grandparents in Michigan.
(“Sarah Lewis” by the way is an homage to two icons from my childhood: Sarah, the name of the lead character in Jim Henson’s Labyrinth, and Jenny Lewis, child star of the 80s and early 90s. I wished I could be them when I was a kid.)
I worked on the NaNoWriMo novel for awhile back in 2015, but then I set it aside and started work on my first published novel, The Thirteen Treasures of Britain. Treasures came out just after I had given birth to my second child (in 2016), and I was all set to start working on book two of the Merlin’s Last Magic series, when I found out I was pregnant again.
This third pregnancy threw me for a loop, and to take my mind off the mounting pressure to finish my Merlin series, I returned to my little side project.
Avalon Summer became my low-pressure respite from the demands of my day job, motherhood, and trying to write the next book in my fantasy series. When I was working on Avalon Summer, I could return to the days of my childhood: to the early 90s, to endless bike rides, to playing adventures in the woods. I would cue up my old R.E.M. albums and just write, remembering what it was like to be a kid again.
I worked on this book off-and-on for several years, just dipping into it when I needed a break from normal life.
But then about a year or so ago, something happened. I started to work on Avalon Summer A LOT. Maybe it was the pandemic, or maybe it was just the right time for it, but I became so caught up in Sarah’s story that my nice little side project became the main event. I started working on Avalon Summer all the time.
And then something else happened.
In the course of the story, Sarah finds a dusty old paperback called Gates to Illvelion. It contains some eerie parallels to her own life.
When I was writing about the paperback and its effect on Sarah, I realized I needed to make up some chapter titles, some characters, and some plot points for this non-existent book to fit into my narrative for Avalon Summer.
So I did.
And then I decided to write the entire book.
The result — Gates to Illvelion — is an homage of sorts to the pulpy genre fantasy of the 1970s. Inspired by writers such as Peter S. Beagle, Patricia McKillop, and Andre Norton, I wrote Gates to Illvelion as something ten-year-old Sarah would get immersed in and even disturbed by.
I wrote it under a pen name — A.R. Rathmann — and not to spoil things too much, but I decided to make the identity of A.R. Rathmann a plot point in Avalon Summer.
If this sounds a little confusing, well, it is.
I wrote a coming-of-age novel in which a young girl is obsessed with a fantasy book by a mysterious author, and then I went and wrote the fantasy book this young girl becomes obsessed with.
Because of the nature of these two projects, I decided to do a Kickstarter campaign that showcased the connection between these two books. Readers scrolling through Amazon wouldn’t know or understand that Gates to Illvelion is a new release pretending to be an old vintage paperback. And they certainly wouldn’t understand that Gates to Illvelion plays a role in the plot to another novel, Avalon Summer, a coming-of-age story about a girl spending the summer with her grandparents in Michigan.
These two books have a story behind their creation. The Kickstarter was my way of sharing that story.
But now the books are getting released to the general public on May 30, 2023, so I thought a blog post was in order to explain the connection between them. Buyers scrolling through Amazon still won’t know the connection between Gates to Illvelion and Avalon Summer, but I’m hoping word of mouth will provide some illumination.
Of course, each book can be read independently of the other. They aren’t connected except in a meta, self-referential way.
And I’ve kept the pen name “A.R. Rathmann” separate from my “Jennifer M. Baldwin” identity. A.R. Rathmann is listed as a separate author on the retailer websites and on Goodreads. Perhaps this isn’t the best tactic marketing-wise, but it’s how I wanted to do things.
Summer is almost here, and so are Avalon Summer and Gates to Illvelion. I hope you’ll want to sit on the handlebars and come along for the ride.
The campaign for Avalon Summer and Gates to Illvelion has begun on Kickstarter
I can’t believe I’ve already reached my funding goal and unlocked all the stretch goals! I’m in shock, frankly. Everything else at this point is gravy.
Both of these novels aren’t coming out officially until summer 2023, so to get advanced copies, consider backing the Kickstarter.
I’m offering both ebook and paperback versions of both (with some special perks if you pledge at higher levels), as well as stretch goals that include two short stories and a digital copy of The Thirteen Treasures of Britain, so please join the campaign if you can!
Today I finished another chapter in Avalon Summer. It’s called “The Clay Mines.”
Not sure about it yet. The novella itself is based a lot on my memories from childhood, and sometimes I’m just writing things as I remember them, not really thinking about plot or structure or conflict or tension or anything, just seeing everything in my mind’s eye and transcribing it on the page. The ending of “The Clay Mines” was like that. I was just remembering things and putting them in there, hoping that somehow my subconscious was making connections.
When I go back and reread my words tomorrow, maybe I’ll see things that don’t fit and I’ll cut, or maybe I’ll see a place to add more, but sometimes it’s hard to judge. Everything is hard to judge when it’s your own work. There’s the version in your head and the version on the page — and they don’t match up — but it’s hard to know if what you put on the page is trash, or if it’s just that artists can’t judge their own work.
I think it’s probably better — as the artist — not to judge at all. Just put it all out there and let the readers decide. This is where enjoying the process — the crafting of the story — is more important than the finished product. Whether the “Clay Mines” chapter works or not is/should be an after-thought. I had fun writing it today. I had fun remembering and trying to picture everything clearly, and to my delight, I remembered a detail about my grandparents’ basement that I hadn’t thought of in years.
That memory alone was worth all the time I spent writing the chapter. Suddenly, with the memory of that detail, an entire vault of other memories opened up and came back to me. That experience is part of the reason I’m writing this book in the first place. I want to remember those forgotten details of the past and put them into some kind of coherent narrative, to lift them out of memory and bring them to the present. Today, I did that.
I turned forty this past year. 1992 was thirty years ago. Somehow, in my fortieth year, I can see images of my childhood more readily than I can see the here and now. They are TV images set to high contrast.
Seven years ago, when I began Avalon Summer (my fictional, fantasy adventure memoir), I didn’t reckon with the time that had passed between the early 1990s and 2015. I didn’t reckon with how much older I had grown. It felt like the past, sure, but it wasn’t that long ago. It didn’t feel that long ago to me. It hadn’t yet become “the past” the way my parents’ childhood decades had.
Now, I cannot help but reckon the time. 2022 and 1992 are thirty years apart. Thirty years is a big round number; it is substantial and significant and feels hard to ignore. Everyone makes a huge deal out of these decade-markers (like the incredulity my aunts and uncles and older cousins have when they realize I’ve turned forty — I, the “youngest” of the cousins). Thirty, forty, fifty, sixty, etc. These numbers denote something, I guess, when we notice them and point to them and say, “This is a marker of time.”
So it’s been thirty years since 1992, since I was ten-going-on-eleven, since I was in that liminal space between childhood and not-childhood (but not really adolescence, not yet), and I still hoped to run around the woods pretending to be on a quest, fighting ogres, and seeing elves without embarrassment, without judgment or teenage scorn. By the end of that year, such hope was gone. 1993 was a different time.
Everywhere I turn now, my memory sees my childhood. Maybe it’s because I’m watching Pee Wee’s Playhouse with my kids these days, or sharing grainy videos of old Muppet Babies episodes with them on Youtube; maybe it’s because I’m listening to Paul Simon say “call me Al” on the home stereo, or Cyndi Lauper comes up on my ipod in the car while I’m driving the kids to Grandma’s, and along the way, the sunlight bursts over the world and warms it on a cold April morning so that I feel a fleeting promise of what Saturday mornings used to mean, in my childhood, when I had a whole day to daydream and tell myself my adventure stories and read books and wonder.
I float back into memories a lot these days. Every new gray hair or old pop song does it. And thirty years was so long ago now that it feels long ago, it feels like the 1960s felt to me when my parents were forty: a golden-hazed Polaroid, an almost-foreign land — but it’s a photograph that’s coming more and more into focus, the contrast between then and now growing more and more pronounced. I don’t mean in a “Those were the good ol’ days!” kind of way where I deride all the changes that have happened these thirty years hence; I like a lot of changes we’ve seen; there have been and continue to be many good changes. I am not pining.
What I mean, simply, is that my childhood was a long time ago, so I can see the differences now. Technicolor has bled into the frames and rendered that part of my past ultra-vivid — but ultra-vivid because it has separated from the whole. It isn’t part of the continuum anymore: it’s a space set apart, at least for me.
I wish I could live in these images, honestly. They feel more real. Is this what it means to grow old: to be more in the past than in the present? To live the here and now like Dorothy in black-and-white Kansas while bright-colored Oz awaits when we close our eyes and remember? I don’t know. I don’t know if this kind of rumination is even very healthy or helpful. But it feels significant: a recognition of my mortality, perhaps.
The problem, as I see it, is that this feeling — this experience of my past — is what I want to convey with my novel, Avalon Summer, but I know I’m failing at it. I know I’m falling short. And I wish I knew how to fix it. I can see it all so clearly — I can feel it so deeply — but I’m afraid I can’t help you see it or feel it that way. No matter what I write, no matter what words I use, the communication of these feelings eludes me. This is the anxiety of the artist, I guess. The continual failure of a sub-creator who can only render shadows on the wall when she wants to breath life into clay.
I want Avalon Summer to be finished this year. Thirty years from 1992 to 2022. I don’t know why, but that feels fitting. It began life as a NaNoWriMo novella, then it became my “side project” when I needed a break from writing the Merlin’s Last Magic series, and now it has been my focus for the past twelve months — this side project has become the center of my imagination. The memories and ideas that have lingered with me for thirty years have burst through the wall like the Kool-Aid man, like a Nickelodeon orange splat across the screen, like the feeling of a Saturday afternoon bike ride through my old neighborhood.
Avalon Summer is meant for anyone who has ever read a book that made them glad to be alive, for anyone who has ever wanted to lay down alone in the grass and think, for anyone who has ever wanted to be loved despite feeling undeserving. It’s for the square pegs and the dreamers. For the misfits and the weirdos.
I don’t know if I’ll finish the book this year. Days flow by and so much still seems undone, but I know I’m trying. I know I’m trying to find the words and fill the pages. I haven’t abandoned Merlin’s Last Magic or the second book in the series (Ysbaddaden), but right now, I have to finish Avalon Summer.
I’m looking ahead: another Saturday morning, R.E.M. comes up on the ipod as I drive the kids to Grandma’s, and along the way, a breeze blows through the open window and cools the world in warm July so that I know the fleeting promise of what a Saturday morning still means. It’s still a day for daydreams and adventure stories and reading books and wonder. And on the shelf is my own book, a letter to myself, a moment of grace. Anyway, that’s what I hope.
The 1980s spilled into the early 90s.
This is a phenomenon we see throughout the 20th century. The early 60s were a continuation of the 1950s (until Kennedy was assassinated). The early 70s continued the tumultuous counter-culture of the 1960s (until withdrawal from Vietnam).
And the early 90s were one last flourishing of the tubular 80s: neon was still en vogue (though perhaps declining); jangly college rock was still ascendant; hip-hip was still funny and loose and political; for me, Nickelodeon still represented the kid-centric spirit of the age, with its slime and its orange splat and its strangeness.
The 1980s were the decade of strange: Pee-Wee Herman, They Might Be Giants, Dungeons & Dragons, Garbage Pail Kids. The early 90s were strange too; Ren & Stimpy were born, and Dick Tracy came to the big screen, and R.E.M. could sing about “Shiny Happy People.”
The early 90s are R.E.M. to me. The early 90s are color-change t-shirts. Super Soakers.
First emerging in the 1980s, “nerd kid culture” took wing in the early 90s. The dweebs from all those John Hughes movies gave us permission to be proud pre-teen dorks in the early 90s. Drop Dead Fred told us to go play with our imaginary friends, and Salute Your Shorts invited us to make summer camp adventures in our own backyards.
The backyard was still a world in the early 90s. So were sidewalks and community swimming pools. So was candy from the corner store.
Do I sound ancient? Do I sound like I’m murmuring “the good old days”?
Well, I am. If today is all flatness, then the 1990s were the last decade of dunes and divots and bumps. It was a pimpled decade — especially the early 90s — not yet completely air-brushed.
Everything is on the internet now, or so we tell ourselves. Hundreds of thousands of websites and articles and listicles about the 1990s, but none of them really contain the early 90s. Not my early 90s, anyway.
My early 90s are not these flattened versions, these smoothed out versions that we see reflected back at us today, all these websites showing us the same things. My early 90s doesn’t exist on the internet. It can’t.
It’s too personal, too wrapped up in the strange confluence of pop culture and real, lived experiences that make my memories my own. When we write about these decades in our usual flattened way on the internet, we reduce them to the culture of the time, to advertisements and trends. But these don’t capture the experience of living through a time period. They don’t reveal what it felt like to live in that era.
Maybe this is why I decided to write Avalon Summer, my weird memoir-that’s-not-a-memoir. I wanted to see if I could capture the experience of my childhood. Stories, after all, aren’t websites or articles or listicles. Perhaps narrative is the only way we can really express the lived experiences of our memories.
Looking for the early 90s is quixotic. It only exists inside my head, just as it only exists inside your head, if you were lucky enough to be alive back then. I don’t know why I want to write about it, except somehow, I want you to understand. I want you to go looking for the early 90s too. It won’t be found in a “You Might Be a 90s Kid” video or a pop culture website. It can’t be found on the internet at all.
And that’s why we have to find it.
