Mad Love (29 page)
Authors: Suzanne Selfors
From Heartstrings Publishers’ sister company,
FIRESTORM PUBLISHING,
comes a refreshing new voice in the horror genre.
by Realm
They put the cat into a cage and took her to the cat show.
It was a small cage, two feet by two feet, and made of metal bars. The woman had worked for many days decorating the cage. She’d added a white shag carpet. She’d sewn a red velvet pillow and had hung red velvet curtains. The man had made a cardboard crown and then tied it to the cat’s head with ribbon. When the cat pushed the hat off, the man told her that she was a bad kitty and that she needed to wear her crown. He pointed to a sign on the front of the cage.
PRINCESS’S PALACE
, the sign said in glittery letters.
All day long, kids stuck their sticky fingers into the cage. “Look, Mom, she’s a princess kitty,” they said.
The cat narrowed her yellow eyes and crawled under the red pillow. The woman scolded her for hiding and pulled her out from under the pillow. But the cat crawled under the pillow again.
“What’s the matter with you?” the woman asked. “Why don’t you want to be a princess?”
“She doesn’t appreciate anything we’ve done for her,” the man said.
An extralong, extrasticky finger poked the cat’s leg and the cat growled. It was there, under the pillow, where she began to formulate her plan. An evil but necessary plan. She wasn’t sure if she could pull it off, but she knew one thing. They’d be sorry.
They’d all be sorry.
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from the manufacturer
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WARNING
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Bipolar disorder has been in the news a lot lately, but that’s not why I wrote about it. It has long interested me because I suspect that my father suffered from it. Though he went undiagnosed and though he didn’t have the extreme bouts of depression, his mania was obvious and often uncomfortable. He self-medicated with alcohol. Knowing what I know now, I wish I could go back in time and help him. Like Alice, I wish I could fix things.
Sometimes life and story collide in an odd way. I wrote the first draft of
Mad Love
in the depths of a Pacific Northwest winter, which tends to be cloudy and dark. I placed my story in mid-July, in the neighborhood of Capitol Hill, during the worst heat wave to ever hit Seattle. I chose a heat wave because I wanted to put my characters into an uncomfortable environment. The only way to make Seattle, a mild and friendly city, uncomfortable was to raise the temperature.
And as it just so happened, when I went to revise the novel five months later, my daughter was registered for a writing class in Capitol Hill, Alice’s neighborhood. So I found myself revising the story while sitting at the Capitol Hill library, in the middle of July, during the worst heat wave to hit Seattle. No kidding. In my story it reached 105 degrees and in reality it reached 106. I like to think I influenced the heavens. I’m not making this up.
Every writer has a story that drives her to the edge. This was mine. It took me a long time to figure out Alice and her world. At times I nearly gave up. I threw away entire chapters. I killed off characters. I changed the voice. But finally it came together and I’d like to thank the people who helped me with the first draft—my writing group members, Sheila Roberts, Susan Wiggs, Anjali Banerjee, and Elsa Watson; my literary agent, Michael Bourret; and my husband, Bob Ranson.
I’d also like to thank LeAnne and David, the owners of Hot Shots Java in Poulsbo, Washington, and their wonderful staff, because that’s where I do a lot of my writing. They are always so nice to me. They fuel my creativity.
I’d like to especially thank the two people who went through the subsequent drafts, listened to my worries, and saw the story when I couldn’t—my editor, Emily Easton, and my daughter, Isabelle. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.
Also by Suzanne Selfors
Saving Juliet
Coffeehouse Angel
Copyright © 2011 by Suzanne Selfors
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
First published in the United States of America in January 2011
by Walker Publishing Company, Inc., a division of Bloomsbury Publishing, Inc.
E-book edition published in January 2011
www.bloomsburyteens.com
For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to
Permissions, Walker BFYR, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10010
Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:
Selfors, Suzanne.
Mad love / Suzanne Selfors.
p. cm.
Summary: With her famous romance novelist mother secretly hospitalized in an expensive mental facility, sixteen-year-old Alice tries to fulfill her publisher’s contract by writing a love story—with the help of Cupid.
ISBN 978-0-8027-8450-6 (hardcover)
[1. Love—Fiction. 2. Authorship—Fiction. 3. Cupid (Roman deity)—Fiction. 4. Manic-depressive illness—Fiction. 5. Mental illness—Fiction. 6. Mothers and daughters—Fiction. 7. Seattle (Wash.)—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.S456922Mad 2010 [Fic]—dc22 2010023261
ISBN 978-0-8027-2257-7 (e-book)