SO, it’s official – my tenth novel and eleventh book, Five Funerals, will be published by Ruadán Books later this year!
Inspired by Edward Gorey’s The Gashlycrumb Tinies, Five Funerals tells the story of the small graduating class of 1995 at Bishop Carlbus Prep, a private high school in New Jersey. Just 26 kids made it to graduation day, but at a blow out party after the annual Senior Outing, one of them is dead. The incident stays with the rest of the class for the next two decades in very lethal ways until only six are left alive. After gathering for the funeral of classmate Zillah Scott, they compare notes and realize that the other nineteen kids who were at that party are all dead, most in improbably ways.
It’s dark, hilarious, and unique, if I do say so myself. Watch this space and my socials for updates on when the novel is officially releasing and all the details about it.
I started writing Five Funerals in 2018, but I’d been toying with the idea for a decade or longer before that. I’ve had a poster of The Gashlycrumb Tinies since college, and something about the matter-of-fact way Gorey details the bizarre deaths of these children has always stayed with me, and I thought you could translate the dark dream vibe that Gorey had into a more realistic story.
About seven years ago I finally started to really think through how you could actually do that, and for years I floundered. I kept trying to find a way to manage the girth of the story — you’ve got backstory plus twenty-six very specific death scenes, and I knew that I wanted to really explore the deaths, not just reference them. About the only thing I knew when I started seriously working on this novel in 2018 was that the first death — A is for Amy, who fell down the stairs — was the inciting incident, the core of it all.
But that’s all I knew. It’s taken me seven years to put this one together, and I’m excited to share it with y’all when it’s finally ready. I’ll keep y’all posted.