Not My Ruckus by Chad Musick - Genre: Literary - Clare knows only bad girls shoot people and set fires. But being good won’t save her best friend.
by Chad Musick
Genre: Literary
Publisher: Cinnabar Moth Publishing LLC
Date of Publication: 16 February 2021
ISBN: 978-1-953971-00-5
ASIN: B08LKJ12P2
Number of pages: 320
Word Count: 86,000
Cover Artist: Nada Backovic
Clare knows only bad girls shoot people and set fires. But being good won’t save her best friend.
Folks know 14-year-old Clare isn't normal, even for a tomboy. She runs too much, talks too little, carries a gun too often, and holds a grudge forever. Only her papa's job at the bank keeps gossip quiet. It's unwise to risk the cold anger of the man who knows everyone's secrets.
Clare feels prepared for everything from fire, to flood, to what her momma calls demon attacks. When her neighbor Esther kisses her, though, Clare has no ready script. Maybe she could write one, given time she doesn't have. At the moment of that first kiss, Esther's mom is bleeding out from a gunshot wound.
Clare can read the signs everyone else is determined to ignore. A murder was only the beginning. Esther needs protection, whether she wants it or not, and Clare won't abandon her friend just because things are hard.
Maybe one day she'll be forgiven for doing what's needed.
An Interview with Chad Musick
Welcome to JB’s Bookworms with Brandy Mulder. Please tell us about your newest book.Not My Ruckus is a sapphic romance, or a tear-jerker, or a story of resilience. It depends on who you ask. The basic story is that a teen, Clare, decides she’s going to save the girl-next-door from child abuse, and then discovers that this is a lot more complicated and more personal than she expected. There’s a murder and a lot of mayhem and violence and grief. It’s not an easy book, but many people seem to enjoy it.
Writing isn’t easy. What was the most difficult thing you dealt with when writing Not My Ruckus?
Putting myself in the headspace of the narrator every time I wrote. In many ways, Clare is who I was as a teen, but that’s not a time in my life I wouldn’t want to return to. If I was writing a particularly hard scene, I didn’t feel much like talking afterward. Because of that, I mostly wrote early in the morning before work. At the time, I was working as an editor, which didn’t involve talking to anyone.
Tell us a little bit about your writing career.
Most of my writing career has been since 2012, even though I wrote a lot before that (it’s just unpublished). In 2013, I started working as an academic editor. I fixed people’s writing and grammar on scholarly topics (mostly mathematics, in which I have a PhD, and related subjects). Most of my authors didn’t speak English as their first language, so I got really practiced at following the exact conventions of whatever subject. Mathematics and biology use not only different words, but different patterns of grammar and flow. I did that job until 2019.
I’ve published a few stories, a few poems, and one novel. I’ll publish another novel early next year.
They say Hind-sight is 20/20. If you could give advice to the writer you were the first time you sat down to write, what would it be?
Push through. I started quite a few novels before I finally finished one. I’d get 30 pages or 50 pages in and would feel like the story wasn’t really going anywhere, so I’d just stop writing. I still feel that urge, but I know that it’s the point at which the novel goes from “this story could be fantastic” to the reality of executing on the story. For me, it’s the point where possibility becomes more concrete and Decisions have to be made.
What was your most difficult scene to write?
The waking-up scene in Not My Ruckus. Saying more would be spoilers, but anyone who reads the book will know which one I mean.
Are themes a big part of your stories, or not so much?
Themes and motifs are both a huge part of my stories. Sometimes they’re jokes and sometimes they’re more serious. Not My Ruckus has a motif of sounds, of things being sounds, and also a throughline of fart jokes. Thematically, it’s very focused on how people respond to bad things.
My next book has a strong theme of language and the (non-) difference between speech and communication.
What are you working on now?
I’m working on a novel about a television-obsessed dragon. At least, they claim to be a dragon trapped in a tower by a magician who gets mad when he loses at MMORPGs.
Is there a release date planned?
The dragon book, not yet titled, will be out in February of 2022.
Who is your favorite character from your own stories, and why?
My favorite character is Fred. He’s a paper tiger, and he’s dead. He’s my favorite because he’s entirely self-obsessed. He works “tiger facts” into every topic and is always moaning about being dead. (Fred narrates Imaginary Friends, which is scheduled for release in 2024. Sorry for the wait!)
Most writers were readers as children. What was your favorite book in grade school?
I read a book a day for most of grade school. My teachers found me annoying and would send me to the library to shut me up. My favorites were mystery books – I devoured all of Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, Three Investigators, Encyclopedia Brown, … anything I could get my hands on, really.
What are your plans for future projects?
I have a contract with my current publisher for 3 more books. 2022 will be my dragon book. 2023 will be a book called Chalk about a guy who can do magic with chalk. 2024 will be Imaginary Friends, which is a follow-up to Chalk.
Is there anything you would like to add before we finish?
Be sure to check the content notes on Not My Ruckus if you’re a sensitive reader. The main character is a teen, but the book is very much for adults. I would have enjoyed it in my later teen years, but I definitely recommend against it for kids.
Thanks for the heads up on that. Good luck with Not My Ruckus, and thank you for being with us today.
Excerpt
Esther kissed me once for free, when we were both just girls. We were sitting watching the Rangers play baseball—not the Olympics, because it was the summer of 1980 and Carter was choosing to hide in a boycott rather than fight the communists who were running it—and Gunnar went to the fridge to get a fresh bottle of beer.“Daddy,” Esther called, “can we have some sandwiches?”
He grunted back, and we heard his breathing punctuated by the clatter of the silverware drawer and the rattle of the jam jar.
Esther swayed back and forth, making fun of how Gunnar had staggered as he walked to the kitchen.
“Usually I get his beers, or mom does, but you’re company.” She winked at me.
I wasn’t allowed at Esther’s house often, even though we should have been best friends all along. We were both 14, we lived across the street from each other, and we would go to high school together the next year, just like we’d always gone to school together. But her family wasn’t our kind of people.
On the day Esther kissed me, though, momma’d had a vision of her and Esther’s mom going shopping together.
When momma had a vision, you didn’t stand in the way, and so she had dropped me off and taken Esther’s mom in the big car to go shopping.
Gunnar came back with a paper plate of peanut butter and strawberry jam sandwiches for us, and a pair of beers for himself. He eased back down into his lounger with the creak of springs and scritch of leather on denim, and opened a beer. He let it dangle from his fingers, and it wasn’t long before he was snoring.
Esther crept up on him and eased the bottle from him.
She held it out, for me to drink. This was one of the reasons they weren’t our kind of people, and I shook my head no at her.
“I’ll scream,” she whispered, and held it out again. “It’s gross. He’s already drank off it.”
Esther pushed her finger into the neck of the bottle and wiped it, just a little pop of sound when her finger came out, then wiped the outside of the top. She made me take the bottle.
I drank some, of course I did. Not much, just a swallow, so she wouldn’t scream, and then I gave it back to her.
She finished the bottle, and then laid it down beneath Gunnar’s fingertips. There hadn’t been much left anyway, I told myself.
We sat on the floor in the Texas summer heat and leaned our backs against the new couch. The plastic on the seats got sticky and uncomfortable when the sun shone on it, but the unglazed terra cotta floor was cool, and her hand was warm when she put it in mine.
She was swaying again, and when she swayed my way, her head rested on my shoulder and stayed there.
“Esther,” I told her. She looked up.
“We’re best friends now.” She nodded.
Good. It was good to have a friend. Even if next year she didn’t join me in softball and running and volleyball and all the other sports I’d been denied in junior high because there were only intramurals, I’d still have a friend. Frank didn’t let me play with him anymore, because he was older and it wasn’t “cool” to have your little sister around, especially if she was better at baseball than you. He could get the bat on the ball sometimes, smash it high in the air with the powerful arms that he’d once used to hoist me on his wide shoulders, but he lacked control. Just about every hit was a foul or a pop fly. Even when he hit it well, he was never ready to run.
I’ve always been ready to run.
Esther didn’t care about baseball, even if she’d watch it on the tv with me. At school, I’d used to watch her when she double- dutched with the other girls, who called me boy like it was a curse word and stopped their ropes when I came around. “I have a secret,” she said, without lifting her head. “I want to tell it to you.”
About the Author:
Chad Musick grew up in Utah, California, Washington, Texas, and (most of all) Alaska. He fell in love in California and then moved with his family to Japan, where he's found happiness. He earned a PhD in Mathematical Science but loves art and science equally.
Despite a tendency for electronic devices to burst into flame after Chad handles them, he persists in working in various technical and technology-related roles.
Chad makes no secret of being epileptic, autistic, and arthritic, facts that inform how he approaches both science and the arts.
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheMusicks
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