Title: Screaming Divas
Author: Suzanne Kamata
Genre: YA
Expected Release: May 18, 2014
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Synopsis
At sixteen, Trudy
Baxter is tired of her debutante mom, her deadbeat dad, and her standing
reservation at the juvenile detention center. Changing her name to
Trudy Sin, she cranks up her major chops as a singer and starts a band,
gathering around other girls ill at ease in their own lives. Cassie
Haywood, would-have-been beauty queen, was scarred in an accident in
which her alcoholic mom was killed. But she can still sing and play her
guitar, even though she seeks way too much relief from the pain in her
body and her heart through drugs, and way too much relief from
loneliness through casual sex. Still, it's Cassie who hears former child
prodigy Harumi Yokoyama playing in a punk band at a party, and enlists
her, outraging Harumi's overbearing first-generation Japanese parents.
The fourth member is Esther Shealy, who joins as a drummer in order to
be close to Cassie--the long-time object of her unrequited love--and
Harumi, her estranged childhood friend. Together, they are Screaming
Divas, and they're quickly swept up as a local sensation. Then, just as
they are about to achieve their rock-girl dreams, a tragedy strikes.
Excerpt
from
The Screaming
Divas
By
Suzanne Kamata
Trudy
got her hands on a guitar. Actually, it was her father’s
guitar, the one he’d played
in his band. The instrument had a history of smoky bars, fields of
wild flowers, park benches, Greyhound buses. It had been all over
the place, probably even Dahomey.
She
was going to ask to borrow it, but when she dropped by Jack’s
apartment, he wasn’t home.
Trudy decided to cart the guitar off anyhow. He never played it any
more and besides, he might say no if she asked him to loan it to her.
He didn’t trust her so
much since all the trouble with Adam.
She’d
practice and innovate and turn herself into a brilliant performer.
And then she’d start a
band. It would be the most exciting thing to hit the town since
General Sherman. Yeah, these were good thoughts.
By
day, she practiced. By night, she hung out at The Cave, playing
records or slamming on the dance floor. During breaks, she looked
for musicians in the Pink Room.
“Hey,
Maddy. I’m starting a
band. Wanna join up?”
Her
roommate Madeline tossed a
lock of black hair out of her eyes. “You
must be out of your mind.”
Trudy
shrugged. She asked Jeff, the David Bowie lookalike. She even asked
Johnny Fad. People laughed, blew smoke in her face. Sometimes they
just turned away as if they hadn’t
heard her at all.
Why
did everyone treat her proposition like some sort of joke? She was
as serious as she’d ever
been. The more she practiced, the more
she knew that her dreams lay in music. She closed her eyes and saw
herself on the stage, crooning into a mike while a huge crowd lit and
lofted their Bics in tribute.
When
people were drinking and dancing, they weren’t
in the mood for serious talk. She had to find another way to put her
band together.
Trudy
made a flyer with scissors and magazines and Elmer’s
glue. When she was finally satisfied with her work, she rode her
housemate’s rickety bicycle
to Kinko’s and made a
hundred copies. Then she ran around Five Points with
a staple gun and plastered them to every
telephone pole in sight. When she was finished, she went back to the
apartment, picked up her guitar, and waited for the phone to ring.
“Hey,
what’s this?”
Madeline barged into her room just
after midnight, smelling of booze and smoke. She waved one of
Trudy’s flyers in the air
between them.
“I’m
starting a band,” Trudy
said. “I told you
already.”
Madeline
shrugged. “Yeah, whatever.
I wish you hadn’t put our
phone number down, though. We’ll
get half a million calls from creeps.”
Trudy
didn’t answer. Why was
Madeline being such a bitch? She looked really cool with her
tattooed shoulder and asymmetrical haircut, but sometimes she could
be totally square.
“I’ll
get my dad to buy us an answering machine,”
Trudy said. “That way we
can screen calls.”
Madeline
nodded, seemingly consoled, and wandered off to her room.
Trudy
giggled softly. Jack would never fork out cash for something like
that, but the lie had worked.
The
first call came at noon the next day.
“Hey,
I’m calling about the
band,” a gravelly voice
said.
“What
do you play?”
“Bass,
drums, whatever. I’m
versatile. Hey, wait. You sound really familiar. What’s
your name?”
“Trudy
Sin.”
“Hey,
I know you. You’re
that firestarter.” The
line went dead.
Later,
Southern Bell called about an overdue phone bill. The manager at
Yesterday’s, where Madeline
waited tables, called asking Madeline to report to work early.
Someone dialed a wrong number.
Where
were all the budding musicians, the soulmates in tune with her
dreams? Trudy set aside her guitar and put on some music. She threw
herself on the bed and let Patti Smith comfort her.
How
was she ever going to start a band?
Maybe
she could go solo – set up
a drum machine and play the guitar herself. She wracked her brains
trying to come up with someone who’d
gotten famous without back-up.
Her mind went blank.
Two
nights later, when she came home from a trip to the Quick Mart down
the street, Madeline greeted her with, “You
got a phone call. Someone wants to join your band.”
“Great.
Who?” She pictured a pale,
black-haired guy in leather, a guitar strapped across his
hard-muscled body.
“I
dunno. She said she’d call
back.”
She?
Well, okay. This could be good. A girl group. Yeah, that’s
the ticket. They’d be like
the Supremes with instruments. The Gogo’s
with attitude. It would be a good gimmick, something to get them
started while they developed as a band.
About The Author:
Five-time Pushcart Prize
nominee Suzanne Kamata is the author of the novels Screaming Divas
(Merit Press, 2014), Gadget Girl: The Art of Being Invisible
(GemmaMedia, 2013) and Losing Kei (Leapfrog Press, 2008), and editor of
three anthologies - The Broken Bridge: Fiction from Expatriates in
Literary Japan, Love You to Pieces: Creative Writers on Raising a Child
with Special Needs, and Call Me Okaasan: Adventures in Multicultural
Mothering (Wyatt-Mackenzie Publishing, 2009). Her short fiction and
essays have appeared widely. She is the Fiction Co-editor of
literarymama.com.
Author Links:
Official Website: http://www.suzannekamata.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/shikokusue
Thanks for being on the Screaming Divas blog tour, Shelby!!
ReplyDelete-Nichole