Today on Love Bytes we have author Courtney Lux and her blog tour of Small Wonders.
Welcome Courtney!
Author Name: Courtney Lux
Book Name: Small Wonders
Release Date: September 22, 2015
Pages or Words: 282 pages
Publisher: Interlude Press
Cover Artist: Cover and Interior Illustrations by Elizabeth Vest
Blurb:
A pickpocket who finds value in things others do not want, Trip Morgan meets and becomes involved with Nate Mackey, a down-and-out former Wall Street professional who looks eerily like a child in a photograph Trip found years before.
It’s part of a collection of stolen trinkets he’s collected since he arrived in New York. He keeps it all close and works out a life he could have if he could ever let someone keep him long enough for him to build up a treasure trove of small wonders all his own.
In confronting their own demons and finding value in each other, Trip and Nate may find that their relationship is a wonder of its own.
Categories: Contemporary, Fiction, Gay Fiction, M/M Romance, New Adult, Romance
Today I’m very happy to be interviewing Courtney Lux author of Small Wonders. Hi Courtney, thank you for agreeing to this interview. Tell us a little about yourself, your background, and your current book.
Hi and thank you for having me! I am a Minnesotan-turned-New Yorker, and I am actually a part-time writer. I got my B.S. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and I’m finishing an M.S. at New York University in Communication Sciences and Disorders, so I live a bit of a double life. While working my way through graduate school, through a series of a lot of late nights and days spent in coffee shops, I wrote my first novel, Small Wonders.
Small Wonders is the story of Trip Morgan, an individual who ran away to New York City from a hard home life in the south when he was only sixteen. Trip is living with an eclectic band of roommates and he makes a meager living working as a busker, and, at times, as a casual sex worker in order to keep surviving in the city. Trip entertains himself pickpocketing inconsequential items off people, but when he “accidentally” lifts a wallet off of Nate Mackey, a 26-year-old working in finance, he is struck by the uncanny resemblance of this man to a child in a photograph he found years before. Trip and Nate meet and form a sort of unconventional relationship and really work to navigate both themselves and one another.
Was there a basis for you story? A previous experience or something else?
The story really started with Trip Morgan, the main character. Small Wonders took me about six months, but Trip took me years to figure out. Once I understood what made him tick, his pickpocketing was what really set the story into motion. The pickpocketing idea—specifically what it is that Trip takes—came from me finding random items in the bottom of my purse and just thinking about what someone would think if that was the item they lifted off me. Everything just sort of snowballed from there.
What skills do you think a writer needs?
Creativity, flexibility, and an open mind. Obviously the creativity needs to be there just to form ideas and characters and that whole bit, but I think in a lot of ways that willingness to be flexible with yourself is just as crucial. Sometimes you think something is going to be great and you’re really into it, but it’s just not working and you have to kill your darlings to really make your story into something special. As for being open-minded, that applies to notes from the editor and to your own ideas. It’s easy to want to shut down something that seems uncomfortable or risky, but giving it a shot can really bring a story to an amazing place.
What for you is the perfect book hero?
I am a sucker for a character with some serious flaws. I’ve never been a big fan of the perfect, pristine protagonist because I don’t feel like I have a reason to cheer for them because they’re kind of “already there” in a sense. I like getting to see a character work her way through her issues or see him get called out from time to time, I think that’s what makes someone worth cheering for.
Is there anything you find particularly challenging in your writing?
The “down time” is always tough. Nobody wants to read a Charles Dickens-style pages upon pages description of characters sitting around not really doing anything if it doesn’t advance the story, but it’s also not realistic to just have constant high action/big moment scenarios. Balancing the more domestic, mellow moments with material that still progressed the story or developed the characters was a bit of a balancing act, but it was a fun challenge.
Tell us about your favorite childhood book.
I could rave about children’s books for days. My mother, thankfully, loved reading to me and my siblings when we were little, and we used to read 2-3 books every night before bed. I loved A Fish Out of Water by Helen Palmer Geisel, any of the Shel Silverstein poetry books, I got a huge kick out of Robert Munsch books like Stephanie’s Ponytail and I Have to Go, and we probably read Stellaluna by Janell Cannon about 1000 times. I really could go on for days. Don’t even get me started on YA novels. I was ravenous for books when I had to beg someone to read to me but once I could read them for myself, I almost always had a book in my hand.
Today, he has encountered no southerners and only a few tourists from elsewhere, and he’d be okay with that if it weren’t for the rain. It comes fast. One minute it’s sunny and lovely and easy pickings, and the next the sky’s gone black and people are running from the park with street-vendor umbrellas popping open over their heads or shopping bags held up as makeshift shields. Trip switches to catchy pop numbers and more recent music, but it’s no use.
Some days this works. People take pity on a not-quite-twenty-something singing in the rain. Older women especially seem to take in the auburn hair stuck to his forehead and his relatively petite stature and read hungry young desperation in him. They offer him sympathetic smiles and a few soggy dollars.
Other times, playing in the rain has the opposite of his intended effect—strange boy with strange eyes playing his guitar as if he doesn’t know the rain is there. Those people see the darkness in him: a boy with a chip on his shoulder that makes them nervous. Those people give him wary looks and a wide berth. Trip’s not sure he blames them.
He’s a little put out and a lot cold, so he sells his umbrella for a few dollars before shouldering his guitar and closing the lid on his coffee can to set to work at his other favorite occupation.
He’d been a decent pickpocket in his younger years, but now, after a lot of practice, he’s a better thief and a good runner when he needs to be. Not that he steals anything of particular worth. He finds value in treasures scrounged from the bottoms of pockets.
Loose change, hair binders, halves of Vicodin, broken cigarettes, crumpled matchbooks. All of it has a purpose, a certain sense of importance. He envies women and their big purses. They’ve got whole bags of riches waiting to be exhumed. Though, more likely than not, those little trinkets will remain forgotten and neglected in the bottoms of Marc Jacobs clutches and Target sale hobo bags.
Other people don’t see it—the value in these things. Maybe that’s why he steals from them. Nothing they’d miss: a worn dollar here, a business card there. He keeps it all close and works out a life he could have if he could ever let someone keep him long enough for him to build up a treasure trove of small wonders all his own.
For now, he will live with worn shopping lists, broken crayons and ticket stubs he lifts off of others. He keeps them in a beaten-up bag that is more duct tape than canvas and lets them build up stardust. Then, in those lonely hours of the night, he scatters them across the floor and works them into constellations to which he assigns stories. Some he writes down; others, he forgets before the next day. It’s not a financially savvy task, but it’s his favorite, and it passes the time as well as anything else.
Buy the book:
Courtney Lux is a Minnesotan-turned-New Yorker whose love for the city is rivaled only by her love for wide, open spaces. She is a graduate of University of Wisconsin-Madison and a soon-to-be graduate of New York University. When not playing writer, Courtney is an avid reader, constant dreamer, and lover of dogs, wine and being barefoot. Small Wonders is her first novel, and is the recipient of a Publishers Weekly starred review.
Where to find the author:
Twitter: @courtney_lux
Tour Dates & Stops:
22-Sep The Novel Approach, My Fiction Nook, Prism Book Alliance, Hearts on Fire
23-Sep Butterfly-O-Meter, Bike Book Reviews, Mikky’s World of Books
24-Sep Kimi-Chan, Just Love Romance, Inked Rainbow Reads
25-Sep Divine Magazine, BFD Book Blog
28-Sep Wicked Faerie’s Tales and Reviews, V’s Reads, Bayou Book Junkie
29-Sep Book Reviews, Rants, and Raves, Happily Ever Chapter
30-Sep Velvet Panic, Love Bytes
1-Oct MM Good Book Reviews
2-Oct Molly Lolly, Amanda C. Stone
5-Oct Scattered Thoughts & Rogue Words, Jessie G. Books
Rafflecopter Prize: $25 Interlude Press gift card for one winner and five others receive a copy of ‘Small Wonders’
Hi, Courtney! Good luck with the release!
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Hi Courtney! Congrats on the release of Small Wonders