Did you ever wonder how Tori and Chloe got together? In Facing the
Storm, Chloe says at one point, “Tori and I have been together for 17
years, 10 of them legally married. Why is this [prejudice] still
happening in this day and age?”
Fun fact: Tori and Chloe are
actually characters borrowed from a different story I wrote a decade
ago, specifically about them and what they went through in high school. It's always kind of been a fun little Easter egg for myself and the 3 other people who saw the manuscript for Our New Normal. After posting my short story online, though, I thought about Our New Normal and how I have this completed novel that's been sitting under my coffee table collecting dust through three moves.
I decided to read it again with practically new eyes as I hadn't even touched the Word document since 2011. I read through the entire book, and I was shocked at how good it is. There were a few times where I had to stop and remind myself that I was the one who wrote it, and I was a bit in awe that I could do it. This might sound conceited, but I still (like most artists) don't think that my work is worthy of praise like other authors get; maybe it's because I can't step back and appreciate it like a fan could? I think that's why I was so amazed; because of all the time that's passed since I looked at the manuscript, I was able to look at it like someone who just picked up the book on a whim.
Anywho, it needed a little tweaking, which I've done, and I decided to post it online. If it does well, I'm thinking about trying to get it traditionally published. But we'll see how that goes.
After reading it, though, it really makes sense why Tori and Chloe are preppers. If you think bugging out is a strange thing for a person to prepare for,
imagine being given a half hour to
evict the only home you've ever known and completely start your life
over from scratch. Now imagine you had to do that when you were 17.
Tori, compared to some people who face discrimination for whom they
love, got off pretty easy. She was allowed to take some of her
possessions, she had somewhere to go, she had some money to get started,
and she wasn't injured in the process. There are so many people who are
kicked out out of their homes in a moment's notice with nothing but the
clothes on their backs--and if they're REALLY lucky, it's not covered
in their own blood.
My novel about the beginning of Tori's and Chloe's life together, Our New Normal, is now up in its entirety on Wattpad
for free. Even though I wrote this 10 years ago, I never did anything
with it, partly because of my own fear of being persecuted for its
contents. Considering some of the negative comments I've gotten about
Chloe and Tori in The Storm Series (in which they're just two of an
entire cast of characters), I probably wasn't too far off. However, in
this day and age, I think it's important to get as many LGBT
stories out there; we as a community have made so many advances in the
decade since I wrote this book, but we still have a long way to go.
I considered modernizing it since I'm only posting it
now, but I didn't do that for one very important reason. In the book, there is
a scene where a petition is passed around a church to ban gay marriage; this
actually happened to me. While a petition has little weight after the Supreme
Court's ruling for marriage equality in 2015, back in 2007 it was a really big
deal as only Massachusetts had approved same-sex marriage at the time. I'm not
saying all churches are like this, but I can guarantee mine was not the only
one passing around these petitions. When you get to that part of the book, I
hope that you can envision yourself in that church and think about what you
would've done.
If you would like to read about Chloe's and Tori's origins, you can click here: https://www.wattpad.com/story/151735983-our-new-normal
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