Now That My Novel is Put to Bed, Time to Focus on My RETELLING!

On January 1, 2021, The Great Gatsby entered the US public domain.

Why is this information pertinent to me? I’ve always held this novel up as the measuring worm with which to measure all other novels against. I know, I know…it has its issues. I am not going to hold a novel published on April 10th, 1925 up to today’s societal standards. There are too many problematic novels to count. Times change.

I have always been a great lover of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s masterpiece. It is one of the shortest novels ever written and it contains in its pages an entire enchanted world. I love it unapologetically.

Why am I talking about it today? Why am I defending it?

Because I FINALLY finished all the last minute edits on my 2016 Muskoka Novel Marathon novel, I WILL TELL THE NIGHT. It is sitting in the hopper over at Amazon waiting for this coming Tuesday. It will drop at that time and be in the world for readers to scrutinize.

With that novel off my to-do list (F_I_N_A_L_L_Y!!!! They really do haunt you!), I am now free to explore my 2024 Muskoka Novel Marathon novel. I’ve done everything I can with I Will Tell the Night. It was time to release it, come what may. I really hope my readers like it.

On to my pastiche to The Great Gatsby. I don’t dare call it a re-telling, though it sort of is. It’s more a pastiche of the great American novel.

This telling of the cad/lover/loser/glamorous Gatsby is set in Toronto. There is no East and West Egg. There is a downtown condo that looks out across the water onto Toronto Island. There is a light at a house on that island that my ‘Gatsby’ is mesmerized with. Antoine Bouchard is the name of my Gatsby. He’s a newly rich man sitting in his ivory tower, obsessed with a light coming from a house on the island…as well as the man inside that house.

The story is–you guessed it–an LGBTQ+ retelling of The Great Gatsby. It follows Bouchard, by way of my narrator Marcus, through his broken relationship with the high society man he loved when he himself was a pauper…to the loss of that relationship and his own eventual rise to riches and his desire to rekindle the relationship even though the man has moved on and married an equal.

The novel shifts a little between Toronto’s Gay Village and Toronto Island, though not as much as I originally intended. The working title is ON THE ISLAND AND IN THE VILLAGE, though that might have to eventually change. I lost sight of the village a bit in my story.

I’m getting excited about this story as I re-read it, edit it and work on its ending. I think I may have something here…though I’m nervous about it standing up to its influencer. I’m not trying to re-write this great book, of course. But I am attempting to touch on its atmosphere and mood…and loosely retrace its steps with a queer eye.

While I sit in the cave and work on this one, don’t forget to PREORDER I WILL TELL THE NIGHT! It comes out Tuesday. Pre-orders ALWAYS help!

I WILL TELL THE NIGHT Amazon USA

I WILL TELL THE NIGHT Amazon Canada