Title: New Boy at the Academy
Series: Tales from the Academy, Book One
Author: Sam Hawk
Publisher: NineStar Press
Release Date: March 25, 2019
Length: 79800
Genre: Contemporary YA, LGBT, YA, /1980s, Southern US, high school/academy, bullying, coming-of-age, coming out, homophobia, family drama
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Synopsis
Timmy had no clue that the first day of 10th grade at the Academy would rock his world. He thought it would be just like last year, with its endless bullying and recesses spent reshelving books in the library with his best and only friend Carleen. The sissy boy and the fat girl had bonded over their shared outcast status. But Carleen shows up filled with sassy confidence and declares they’re going to rule the school. By Christmas, the freaks and nerds would be the cool kids, and the mean girls and jocks would be the outcasts. Something had happened to her over the summer, but what?
And then, the two of them lay eyes on the new boy at the Academy. Doug has auburn feathered hair, veiny biceps, and green eyes the color of Sprite bottles. Plus, he’s come all the way from exotic Los Angeles, California. He rocks out to Patti Smith while Timmy loves ABBA. How does someone so cool end up in tiny, conservative Edgewood, South Carolina?
When Carleen immediately declares Doug a fox and her new prospective boyfriend, Timmy is shocked at his jealous reaction. He’s not supposed to like boys in that way, is he? Doug stirs up weird new emotions deep inside him as Timmy embarks on the adventure of his life. He and his hometown will never be the same.
- If I were snooping around your kitchen and looked in your refrigerator right now, what would I find?
Embarrassingly cheap Chardonnay, Home Chef meal kits, a bottle of champagne for emergencies (as my Dad taught me), and sweet iced tea.
- If you could be a superhero, what would you want your superpowers to be?
I’m such an introvert that my answer is invisibility. I would love to be invisible so I could write as much as I want without distractions.
- If you could trade places with one of your characters, who would it be and why?
I would love to trade places with Doug, the new boy who comes to Patriot Christian Academy all the way from exotic California. He’s so cute and cool that everyone wants to be his girlfriend or boyfriend or best friend. It’s hard for me to imagine what that feels like. I’m much more like Timmy, who is shy, sheltered, insecure and can’t believe that a cute boy likes him.
- If you could sequester yourself for a week somewhere and just focus on your writing, where would you go and what would the environment be like?
It may be clichéd, but I’d go to a beach in the fall. I’d have a house with big windows looking out at the ocean and I’d position a writing table and chair right in front of it. I’d stock the kitchen with hot tea and chardonnay and get to writing.
- What’s the one thing, you can’t live without?
Sweet tea and chardonnay. That’s two things. Sue me.
- What internet site do you surf to the most?
Writersamhawk.com, of course! You should visit.
- If you had your own talk show, who would your first three author guests be and why?
I would have Mark Childress, author of Crazy in Alabama and other books. He’s my favorite author because his books are Southern, about something, and full of humor. He finds humor in dark situations which is what I strive to do.
I would have North Morgan, author if Into. His book was such a clever and devastating look at gay culture today. We worship and elevate the hot guys, the Instagays. We want to be them. Into made me glad I’m not one of them.
I would have Marlon James, author of A Brief History of Seven Killings. His command of voice is extraordinary.
20 When you got your very first manuscript acceptance letter, what was your initial reaction and who was the first person you told?
It was on a Saturday night, about 11. I was mindlessly fooling around with my phone while my husband snoozed on the sofa and Saturday Night Live played on the TV. Suddenly, an email popped into my in-box with the subject line of The New Boy at Patriot Christian Academy, which was the working title for New Boy at the Academy. I opened it and read a lengthy email from an editor at Nine Star Press, detailing what she liked about my book and her ideas for editing it and moving it forward. At the end, she said if I’m amenable to these ideas, she’d like to offer me a contract to publish my book. I looked at it without really taking it in, at first. I had to re-read it three times before it dawned on me what was happening. I woke Wes up and said “I think I just got an offer to publish my book.”
Actually, it was a quiet moment. I didn’t hear trombones and brass bands and I didn’t dance around the room. I sat there, re-reading the email feeling a deep, satisfying happiness. It was like the song, A Quiet Thing from the Broadway musical Flora the Red Menace, perfectly performed by Liza Minelli. Yes, I’m a show tune queen, but read the lyrics and you’ll understand.
When it all comes true
Just the way you’ve planned
It’s funny
But the bells don’t ring.
It’s a quiet thing
New Boy at the Academy
Sam Hawk © 2019
All Rights Reserved
Edgewood, South Carolina
1980
God didn’t answer my prayers and bring the Rapture on Labor Day, so I had to start tenth grade after all. I stepped in front of the mirror to assess my new back-to-school outfit. I hated it. I’d begged Momma to buy me the alligator shirt from Belk’s, which really cost her a lot, but did it have to hug my body so much? I tried stretching it out, but it would only stretch so far. I thought I’d look like Tom Selleck with his big veiny arms. Instead, I looked like the Pillsbury Doughboy. I was trying to flex my chest when Momma walked in.
“Honey, get a move on. We have to be out the door in fifteen minutes, and you haven’t even touched your Pop-Tarts.”
“Momma, I think I need to change clothes.”
“What are you talking about?” she asked as she pulled and tugged on my shirt. “This is what you wanted. You look very handsome.”
“But it fits so close.”
“Timmy, I have told you time and again you’re not fat. It’s all in your head. You are absolutely average on the height and weight scale and exactly where you need to be at fifteen.” She patted my tummy, causing me to suck in. “You’ll lose that little bit of pudge in no time in gym class.”
My heart sank at the thought of gym class, and I almost lost my appetite for Pop-Tarts. Almost. Momma smoothed down my cowlick at the kitchen table as I bit into the brown sugar cinnamon pastry.
“Thank goodness you inherited the Ashburn hair,” she said. “Such a beautiful chestnut brown and such a noble hairline. It’s a sign of your aristocratic heritage, you know, on my side of the family. All the Ashburn men had beautiful hairlines. Thank goodness you take after me and don’t have your daddy’s stringy mess.”
I guessed my hairline was okay, but my new haircut was way too short. Daddy had taken me to get it cut only after Momma called him ten times to remind him. He and Momma got divorced when I was two, and it was always weird when he came by, which wasn’t often. Naturally, he took me to the awful old barbershop next to the pool hall instead of the new unisex salon in the Augusta Mall I was secretly hoping for. He told the barber to “buzz it” and then went next door for a beer. I managed to talk the barber into keeping a little length, but not much.
“Now go brush your teeth quick as a bunny rabbit,” said Momma. “Carleen’s mother called this morning and said her car’s not running and could I run by and pick her up for school. So, we have no time.”
Carleen’s house was across the tracks, and I knew Momma didn’t like going over there, but Carleen had been my best friend since kindergarten. Actually, you could say she was my only friend. She was the only one I talked to for hours on the phone at night; the only one I hung out with after school; the only one to ever invite me to a sleepover, which Momma had never allowed me to do since boy-girl sleepovers just weren’t done. I hadn’t seen her all summer because she’d been working at her grandparents’ peach farm. I was glad we’d be going to school together on the first day. I needed my friend with me.
We pulled in front of the house, and Carleen came right out.
“Good Lord, Carleen’s put on even more weight this summer,” said Momma.
Momma was right. Carleen had always been the biggest girl in class, and she wasn’t getting any smaller. I recognized her smock top from last year. A smock top was supposed to fit loose, but hers pulled in all the wrong places.
“Hey, Carleen,” said Momma as Carleen got in the car. “You sure do look pretty for your first day of school.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Thompson,” said Carleen. I waited for an eye roll, but she just smiled at Momma like she really believed it. I looked at her more closely, and there was something different about her. Was it confidence? If so, it was new. Was that lip gloss she was wearing?
“Hey, Timmy, did you hear we’re getting a new boy in our class this year?”
“No,” I said, dreading the addition of another redneck bubba to the roster.
“They say he’s from California and he’s real cute.”
“Really? California?” said Momma. “What’s he doing here?”
“I think his momma’s people are here. He’s related to all those Herlongs.”
“Does that explain the lip gloss?”
“Timmy, don’t be rude,” said Momma.
“I just wanted to look pretty for the first day of school,” replied Carleen.
“And you do,” said Momma.
When Momma pulled up in front of Patriot Christian, Carleen looked me square in the eye and gave me a big smile and a thumbs-up.
“Come on, Timmy. We’re gonna rule the school in tenth grade. Let’s do it.”
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Sam Hawk’s fiction is inspired by his experiences at a private Christian Academy in rural South Carolina in the ’70s. He survived his Southern adolescence with his sanity relatively intact and went on to earn degrees from the College of Charleston and the University of South Carolina Law School. He also served in the U.S. Army as a JAG officer for twelve years. He resigned his commission when it became clear he was expected to persecute homosexuals as part of his job.
Sam then moved to Dallas, Texas where he met the man of his dreams and found his LGBT family. Sam and his husband have been married for over ten years and live with their Corgi and Chartreux cat in the requisite charming old house in a historic district where gay couples are legally compelled to live.
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