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The Swanson Shuffle

The Swanson Shuffle Set in 1974

My new novel, The Swanson Shuffle, is set in 1974, a tumultuous year for many of the characters — and the U.S. Think Watergate for starters.

First, a quick summary of the book for those just tuning in: Two years out of college, Bia Fernandes gets hired as a live-in staff member in a psychiatric halfway house and learns a lot more than she expects about the residents plus herself.

It was during the 1970s that Massachusetts, where this book takes place, was closing its state-run institutions for people with intellectual disabilities and mental illness. The state was criticized for the conditions in these facilities, prompting court rulings and a drive for community-based care aka deinstitutionalization.

Swanson House, where Bia lands a job, would qualify for community-based care as it was supposed to help patients from mental hospitals make the transition to being on their own again. Residents were expected to have jobs and take their meds. They interacted at meals, meetings, and various activities. Unfortunately, the staff members like Bia got zero training. Basically, they were expected to be nice role models.

News that happened in 1974 is woven into the book.

Among it was the kidnapping of newspaper heiress Patty Hearst by the Symbionese Liberation Army, a story of interest to Bia. Later, Hearst became a fugitive wanted for serious crimes by the group.

Of course, Watergate was a big deal that year. The residents are devoted TV watchers and their main source of info is Walter Cronkite, who they fondly call Uncle Walter. Yes, there is a chapter when Uncle Walter speaks after Nixon resigns from the presidency on August 9, 1974. It coincides with a pivotal night for one of the staff members.

That winter, Massachusetts implemented gas rationing in response to the oil embargo by OPEC the previous year. Here’s how Bia explains it. (Paul is a fellow staff member.) “We and everybody else can only fill up on certain days depending on whether the last number of the license plate is odd or even. The house station wagon is odd, which is fitting. Paul claims the gas crisis is bona fide bullshit. The big oil companies are only doing this to scare people into thinking we’ll run out, so they can do whatever they want, like start a war in the Middle East.”

In one scene, the house station wagon runs out of gas after Bia picks up residents at the end of their shift at a local factory. She’s ticked off because a staff member, actually Paul, didn’t gas up after the morning run, but she needs to get everybody home. So, with Carole at the wheel, Bia and two residents, Lane and Kevin, push the car through a neighborhood to a gas station.

I peer over the car’s hood toward the garage. Two men are in the office playing cards. They don’t bother coming out, and then I see the cardboard sign in the window: NO GAS. They gotta be shitting me. How could they be outta gas?

“What’s the matter, Bia?”

“Nothing, Lane. Why don’t you go inside the car? I have to get somebody.”

I march toward the office. One man nods to the other when I knock on the glass. He waves me away.

“Outta gas,” the man mouths as he tilts a beer toward the sign.

I don’t believe him. I knock again until the same man comes to the door.

“Hey, girlie, can’t you read the sign? We’re outta gas.”

I gesture toward the station wagon. Carole still sits in the driver’s seat, but she’s rolled up the window.

“I did. I just need a couple of gallons.”

The man steps outside the office door. A jagged scar runs up the right side of his face. He smells like beer and cigarette smoke.

“Nah, we don’t have anything. Not a drop.” The scar twitches when he squeezes the corners of his mouth. “Sorry.”

“But we’re outta gas.”

He snorts. I bet he got that scar in a knife fight in a bar. Maybe it happened because he didn’t give somebody gas.

“I guess, hon, that makes the two of us.”

I don’t believe a damn word he’s saying.

Read how Bia figures a way out of this situation. Here’s the link to The Swanson Shuffle.

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The Swanson Shuffle

Who’s Who in The Swanson Shuffle

As promised in my last post, I will share info about residents who live at Swanson House — the psychiatric halfway house in my new novel, The Swanson Shuffle, which has an April 30 release. Yikes, that’s getting closer.

I confess the characters I create in my novels are real to me. I know how they look, speak, and act. That’s true of the residents who live at Swanson House.

First a little info. Except for one, the residents are former patients from a public or private mental hospital. They pay minimal rent and have a job, typically at one of the factories in town. The residents are expected to keep up with their meds and have regular visits with a shrink. They have a few household chores.

Bia Fernandes, who tells this story, gets into being their helpmate despite zero experience. She also likes the residents, actually more than the other staff members, Ben, Nina, and Paul — with good reason.

Here’s a brief look at several.

Lane is a smart 20-something who came to Swanson from an upscale private hospital when the insurance runs out. He compiles his observations in small notebooks with titles like Twisted People. This from Debbie, the staff member Bia replaces: “Lane’s a smart goofball. His folks have bucks. I don’t understand why they let him stay in a dump like this.”

Kevin, the youngest resident, maybe 18, is Lane’s sidekick. If Lane is doing something, Kevin is with him — like going on the weekly grocery trip with Bia. He’s thin, with short brown hair, ears that stick out, and really bad skin. Not much is known about his background. The kid hardly talks. He’s a listener.

Angie is one wild woman, who claims to have been a groupie to big rock stars. She doesn’t hold back on her comments or actions. As Debbie warns Bia: “Don’t believe a damn word that comes out of Angie’s mouth. She’ll brag about being a groupie. She was probably a stripper or maybe a hooker. She’s just found a good place to hide out for a while.”

Jerry is the house’s cool guy who grew up poor in a New Jersey city. He got into drugs, and all the old stuff started coming up in a troubling way. He began hearing what people were thinking, and as Debbie tells Bia, “Nothing good’s going to come from that.” Jerry has a relationship of sorts with Angie. But he has goals beyond Swanson.

Who else is at Swanson House? Alice, who is much older than the other residents, falls asleep mid-sentence. Caroleclaims doctors stole her baby. Then there is Big Jim and Little Jim. Stanleyand Brian both have mother issues. Mark is the new guy.

Here’s a scene early in The Swanson Shuffle. Bia, who is spending the night as part of the interview process, plays cards with some of the residents.

Stanley deals me a lousy hand. No face cards, and I get low numbers and four suits. We’re playing for matchsticks. I haven’t won once although I came close when Jim’s three-of-a-kind beat my pair of aces. They tell me they used to play cards in the wards all the time.

“Don’t feel so bad,” Jerry says beside me. “We’ve had lots of practice.”

Jerry pushes against Kevin’s cards. All night he has to be told to keep them up. Kevin bats his lashes, and the skin around his acne reddens when he’s reminded.

Lane’s feet jump beneath the table and kick mine.

“What’s he got this time?” he asks.

“Never you mind,” Jerry says.

“I’ll take three,” I say.

Everybody laughs. They know I’ve got nothing, and the cards I’m dealt don’t help. I can’t even get a pair.

“Maybe we should be playing for money,” Jerry says, whistling as he lays two cards on the table.

Lane grins when he gets his.

Jim squints at him across the table. “Lane, you’d make a better poker player if you didn’t give away your cards. Don’t you know what a poker face is?”

“Poker face,” Lane says.

“Look at Kevin.” Jim nods. “He has the perfect poker face. Nobody can tell what’s going on inside. Now, if he can just keep his cards up, he’ll do fine.”

Kevin shoots Jim a grateful grin. The kid hardly talks. He’s a listener. Ben said Kevin is not quiet, he’s silent. He calls him Kevin the Spy.

I fold. Not even the best bluffer could fake their way out of this one. Jim is next, and he goes to the sink to fill the kettle for Sanka. He stands by the stove, waiting for the water to get hot enough while the others play out their hands. Jim marches in place because he takes the same drug as Lane. So does Stanley. They go every two weeks to get a shot at the hospital. They take Lane with them.

Angie enters the kitchen and begins circling the table. A bandana holds her hair, so it forms a lumpy halo around her head. She wears a long shift of paisley fabric with a v-neckline so low anybody could see her breasts.

“You gonna play all night?” Angie asks me on the third go-round.

“Why? You want to join us?”

Angie holds a square piece of paper by her side so no one else can see it. She sniggers.

“Nah, I wanna show you somethin’.”

“Hey, Jim, deal me out of the next hand,” I say. “I’ll be right back.”

Angie tips her head. She wants me to follow her into the pantry, and when I do, she yanks the pull chain on the bare bulb overhead and shuts the door. She lifts the paper.

“See. There.”

I bend closer. It’s a terrible photo of a man and woman, too dark, and whoever took it didn’t hold the camera steady. It could’ve been at a party or a bus station or any place really. I study the photo, and then Angie’s face. She thinks I should recognize these people. Angie frowns when the guys in the kitchen let out a roar. Somebody had a big hand.

“Is that you?” I ask.

“Yeah, me and Mick Jagger. It’s in New York. See his arm around me?”

I can’t see the arm, but I think I recognize her hair.

“When were you in New York?”

“When Mick was on tour. They let me go backstage. Neat, huh?”

She smiles when I tell her, “Yeah, really neat.”

Here’s the link to The Swanson Shuffle to buy as an eBook or paperback. Thank you if you do.

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The Swanson Shuffle

 The Swanson Shuffle:  Bia Tells This Story 

When I began writing The Swanson Shuffle, I wanted people to experience this story along with the protagonist, Bia Fernandes. Hence, the book is written from her point of view. And I do it in present tense so the reader is discovering what will happen next along with Bia. (By the way, the official release for The Swanson Shuffle is April 30.)

So who is Bia Fernandes? Two years out of college, she wants to try something more meaningful than the job she has. So, she applies for a position living and working in a psychiatric halfway house. Here, I will let her tell you herself.

I called Swanson House after I saw an ad in an alternative weekly. The pay is $115 a week plus free room and board. No experience necessary. This job sounds more interesting than the one I now have doing piecework for a wholesale jewelry business in Cambridge. I sit at a bench soldering silver circles for eight hours, and there are only so many dangly earrings and bangle bracelets you make before you forget this job is supposed to be creative. You think of rich girls with tanned arms buying them in some beach boutique and believing they’re getting that hippie look down, but they don’t have a clue.

And I will never ever work another job that requires an apron and comfortable shoes. I did that in college, carrying trays of pizza and beer to frat brothers slumming it at a townie bar, and summers, waiting on tourists in fish joints on Cape Cod.

The halfway house takes in patients from mental hospitals, so hopefully, they can make the transition. Also, at this the time, 1974, Massachusetts was in the process of closing its mental hospitals. Many patients were released to halfway houses like Swanson House, where the staff has no experience or training.

Here’s Bia again. Another decision she is about to make is dumping her longtime boyfriend.

I think I might have this job. Even so, I haven’t given my notice yet, but I have it all mapped out in my head. I’ll bring enough to make my room comfortable and store the rest at my parents’ house. They don’t want me to work here, my kid sisters told me, but they’ll keep quiet about it. It’s their way.

My soon-to-be ex-boyfriend Danny has the same idea. He told me when we were at the New Year’s Eve party it wouldn’t be a safe place to live. One of the guys could go crazy and rape me. He asked me what I know about working with the mentally ill, that talking somebody down from a bad acid trip doesn’t count. He reminded me about the Psych 101 class I hated and how I begged the professor to give me a C, so it didn’t ruin my GPA.

Danny does have a valid point. Most of what I know about mental illness is what I’ve read in books or seen in movies like The Snake Pit, that really old one in which the actress Olivia de Havilland goes crazy, and a pipe-smoking doctor tries to figure out what went wrong in her life. Naturally, it had something to do with her childhood. When she gets better, the movie plays the song, “Going Home,” which gets me all choked up.

Actually, I’ve been to a mental hospital many times. One grandfather spent his last six years in one, not Alden, but another state hospital closer to where he lived. Every Father’s Day, we took my grandmother, who was happy to put up with her husband only once a year, to visit him. We had a picnic on the hospital grounds and brought my grandfather a carton of Lucky Strikes as a gift. He took my sisters and me to the canteen for ice cream. His friends wanted to meet us, and those men scared us.

What I like most about Bia is that tries to see the good in people. The woman she will replace calls the residents “dented cans,” as in, those dents are permanent. Bia chooses not to believe that.

Her job requires her to give rides for those residents who don’t have a car to work and doctor appointments. Bia helps them draw up the week’s menu for the house’s cook and go grocery shopping. She engages with the residents in such activities as card games, volley ball games, field trips, and watching the news about Watergate. There are weekly meetings. She and the three other staff members interview potential residents.

Bia enjoys relating with the residents. She’s actually very good at it. I will be sharing posts about those characters like Lane, who compiles his observations in small notebooks with titles like Twisted People; Angie, who claims to have been a groupie to rock stars; Jerry, the ultra-hip ex-carny; Carole, who says doctors stole her baby; and Alice, who falls asleep mid-sentence.

Here’s a scene during Bia’s weekend visit that is part of the interview process. Staff members Ben and Nina, plus the residents are having dinner together. Tonight’s menu is pancakes and sausages. Bia, who is a vegetarian, skips the sausages.

Angie drops back onto her chair, and then she gets busy using the side of her fork to cut the pancakes into soggy chunks. Her mouth is full when she says, “Bia, did I tell you I hung out in New York with Mick Jagger? Yeah, the lead singer with the Rolling Stones. Of course, you know who he is.”

Anybody who remains at the table doesn’t say a thing to cross her.

“Of course, I do. He’s a big deal,” I say.

Angie’s smiling.

“I hope they hire you,” she says loud enough for Ben at the end of the table to hear.

Is it an easy job? No. Some residents struggle badly. The three other staff members at Swanson have their own problems, especially one who gets too close to the people they are supposed to help. But it’s a meaningful experience for Bia, and I hope for those read this book.

Here’s the link to The Swanson Shuffle. Thank you.

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The Swanson Shuffle

The Swanson Shuffle Launches April 30

Ta-da, my next novel, The Swanson Shuffle has an official release: April 30. For me, that will be a happy day as this novel finally will be available to readers as an eBook and paperback. The link’s below. 

Over the next few weeks, I will share posts about the book’s pieces, that is, its story line, characters, setting, inspiration, and what was happening in 1974 when the book takes place. Today, I am writing about the title, The Swanson Shuffle, and what that means.

Two years out of college, Bia Fernandes leaves a dead-end job to work and live in a psychiatric halfway house, where she learns more than she expects from the ex-patients who live there. The Swanson House is a century-old mansion that must have been grand in its day when it was owned by the Swanson family who got rich from the mills in that town. Since then, it’s been an inn, a rooming house, and now a psychiatric halfway house. The building will eventually be demolished when an interstate is extended through that town.

That’s the Swanson part.

As for the shuffle, I will let Bia, who tells this story, explain what that’s about. At the start of the book, she has arrived at Swanson House for part of the interview process.

I pull my black VW Bug onto the long drive of Swanson House and park beside a maroon-colored car with fins. A man leaning over its chrome grill squints as he raises his head and pushes his long, dark hair back with the side of his arm. I remember him from when I came for the interview last week. His name is Jerry, and the man marching in place beside the car’s front fender is Lane, actually Lanford Dawson V. That’s what he told me, and I haven’t forgotten because he made such a big deal about the V and when he said, “I come from a long line of Lanes.”

I’m here for the overnight visit, part of the hiring process to see if I can cut working and living in a psychiatric halfway house. I’m early, but I’ve already driven once around Petersville, and it looks just like another Massachusetts mill town barely holding onto itself. The houses, mostly triple-deckers, are a little worn, and downtown is a strip of dusty stores a few blocks from the brick factories. A supermarket, an International House of Pancakes, and a couple of car dealerships are on the outskirts of town, where a patch of scrubby forest ends.

Lane stands beside my VW although his feet still move on top of a thin, gray crust of snow. Up and down. Up and down. Like somebody ordered Lane to mark time and forgot all about him, so he keeps doing it. I asked about it when I was here before. Debbie, the staff member who’s leaving, said it’s a side effect of the drug Lane takes. Two other guys at the house also take it, and they do the same exact thing. They call it the Swanson shuffle.

I witnessed such a side effect when I was a live-in staff at a psychiatric halfway house a long time ago. To be clear, this book is not a memoir. But I believe my personal experience allows me to give an accurate portrayal of what could happen when people with zero experience in the mental health field are hired to live with ex-patients. 

The residents are expected to have jobs, take their medication and do chores. They interact at dinner, meetings, card games, and activities such as volleyball games in the backyard. The staff members are supposed to be role models and help in any way they can. That’s how Bia feels when she is hired. But, alas, that’s not the what happens in The Swanson Shuffle. More soon….

Here’s the link to The Swanson Shuffle to pre-order your Kindle version. (Paperback readers don’t have to wait and can get a copy now.) Thanks for your interest.

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The Twin Jinn

Two Days of Magic

THE TWIN JINN AT HAPPY JACK’S CARNIVAL OF MYSTERIES FREE ON KINDLE

Alas, I don’t have magical powers although I truly wish I did. So, instead I created magical characters in a book for middle-grade readers — The Twin Jinn at Happy Jack’s Carnival of Mysteries. And I want to cast a little magic on young readers by making the Kindle version free Feb. 1 and 2. Just click on the link above. No tricks. Just magic.

By the way, the second in the series — The Twin Jinn and the Alchemy Machine — will be out next month. Two more are in the works. I’ll tell you more in the near future.

My own childhood was filled by imaginative play with my sister. One of us would think up a fantasy to play with the start: “Let’s pretend.…” Another outlet was reading — spending hours and hours lost in those words. 

When I became a mother, I enjoyed watching my children do the same. (My son, Ezra, created the illustration for the cover, which I believe captures the playfulness of the characters.

Actually, the words “let’s pretend” is the motivation behind my fiction. I sit in front of my laptop and let my imagination take over whether I am writing for adult or young readers. 

My genies or jinn, as I prefer to call them, don’t live in lamps. In The Twin Jinn at Happy Jack’s Carnival of Mysteries, they perform a magic act in a traveling carnival. People may think they are doing tricks like human magicians, but jinn have many powers such as being invisible, flying, casting spells, oh, the list goes on. 

The twins are Jute and Fina, brother and sister who are 11 by human age but 111 by jinn age. They are sweet but mischievous and like so many siblings, competitive. Their parents, Jeffer and Mira, are protective, but that’s because they tricked their evil master into letting them go. Yes, he’s searching for them.

This series has a lot of what entertained me as a book-reading child: genies, magic, and family. Now I offer it to middle-grade readers, those who read to children, and perhaps adults who want a little magical realism in their lives.

Here’s the link again: The Twin Jinn at Happy Jack’s Carnival of Mysteries.

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