I Tried: Tales of an Emerging High School Feminist

I Tried: Tales of an Emerging High School Feminist is here.

The Nakadas in 1988 and 1992.
I Tried tells of the days in-between. 

Today, on my oldest brother's birthday, the third book in the Through Eyes Like Mine series is ready for the world. It has gone through so many revisions. I wrote it in present tense, changed it to past, and then changed it back again. I drafted poems and worked them in. I took them all out. I created a preface and an afterword. I took them both out. I drafted notes for my past self before each school year. I cut them out.

The manuscript sat with agents, and then with a small press. They passed, but asked for revisions. I revised. They asked to see it again. They passed.

I'm not passing. It is here, in its simplest, most distilled form. It matches the style of Through Eyes Like Mine and Overdue Apologies, even though our narrator is clearly growing up. It has been read by dear friends from high school: Loretta, Sarah, Val, Holly, Dayna, Jamie, Jason and Matt, and by family. Other friends and family passed on reading it. That's okay. It is a book, and it is done. It is about what happens to a girl in high school. It is about what happened to me as I prepared to fly into the world. 

Within the pages of I Tried are: "Picture Day" which first appeared in Compose, "Geometry" published in Lady Liberty Lit, and "Open Gym" from East Jasmine Review. 

For your listening pleasure, the soundtrack for this book includes songs by The Smiths, The Smitheereens, The Cure, Jane's Addiction, The Church, REM and Depeche Mode. I'll post a playlist like the ones for the first books in the coming weeks. 

Until then, enjoy I Tried, and please know, I did my best.