WBHS graduate writes young adult romance

For Casey Brown, a 2014 graduate of Wittenberg-Birnamwood High School, the process of writing her first novel has taken quite a long time.

Brown started writing the story that would eventually become “The Summer That Dried My Tears” in the seventh grade. She told a group attending her book presentation April 6 at WBHS’s library that while her friends had other hobbies like crafting, her passion during her teen years was writing.

The book follows an 18-year-old girl named Danny, who lives in the city and deals with an abusive father who won’t let her do anything with boys for fear they might do her harm, ignoring his own physical abuse that he inflicts. One night, Danny decides to take a chance and go with some friends to a party, which brings her to a farmhouse in the countryside and has her come face-to-face with a young, horse-training cowboy about her age.

“I had an inspirational teacher,” Brown said, describing her English teacher at the time as someone who “made writing a lot of fun for those of us who got into it, and some of us got rewarded for good writing.”

Writing prompts from her teacher were always fun to get into, and Brown enjoyed writing a number of short stories. She said she branched out and began writing her “side project,” as she described it, which would turn into “The Summer That Dried My Tears,” a young adult romance that blossoms in the countryside.

“I got about four chapters in, and then I started high school, and you get kind of busy. It fizzled out,” Brown said. “I did pick it up around junior or senior year and thought, let’s get a big push.”

Brown said she wrote a few more chapters after that, but then she went off to college, and the novel got put on the back burner again. Despite not writing intensively for a while, she said she kept having this nagging thought in the back of her mind that she needed to finish the book, knowing it would be a thrill to have her name on the cover of something printed.

“I just wanted to finish it and hold it in my hands and say that I did it,” Brown said, pointing out that becoming a bestseller or even making a fair amount of money wasn’t foremost on her mind.

Brown finally got it done after she finished college, saying it took her about a year to finish the rough draft. She tried looking at traditional publishers, but she found she was getting nowhere, so she decided to self-publish her book through Amazon.

“Everyone online was trying to scam you into using a vanity press,” Brown said. “They just take your money and don’t do anything with you, so you have to be careful about that. There are so many people out there (writing books) and the market is pretty flooded, especially in the young adult category. It’s hard to find an agent to represent you.”

With no one wanting to take a chance on her, Brown decided to take a chance on herself, and she discovered that writing the story was far from the end of the process. Besides editing and re-editing, Brown had to learn how to design her own cover, set up the proper spacing for the size of the book she wanted to print.

“Everything that you see here was pretty much done by me,” Brown said as she held up the book. “I was DIY (do it yourself) and had zero dollars in my budget.”

She noted that writing the synopsis for the back cover was “brutal,” saying she had difficulty summing up the book in just a few sentences.

“It was a learning experience,” Brown said. “I learned some things about so many topics writing this one book.”

“The Summer That Dried My Tears” can also be classified as a western romance, as well as a Christian romance. She described it as being “PG, maybe PG-13” when it came to the heat factor that romances are known for.

Brown made up her own website to showcase “The Summer That Dried My Tears,” as well as a couple of shorter e-books she had written on dog training. She noted that she put a couple of blog posts on the site that described her process in writing but noted she hasn’t embraced the blog as heavily as she probably should.

“I’m not the best blog writer,” Brown said.

The inspiration for the book came from the music that Brown listened to, with some chapters based on specific songs, although she declined to reveal additional details.

“A lot of times, I would listen to a song, and then I would write a chapter,” Brown said.

Brown is a substitute teacher for the Wittenberg-Birnamwood School District, and she said she enjoys telling some of the younger students, especially the avid readers and writers, that writing a book is something they can do, too.

“It doesn’t have to be for your own gain, just some personal goals,” Brown said. “If you want to do it, you can do it.”

Brown had mixed emotions once she put the end of her story into words.

“It’s a little bit sad to be done with it, that it’s over,” Brown said. “However, I was also glad because it was all out on paper, and it’s all out of my head. That was a huge relief.”

So would she write another romance, or another novel, for that matter?

“Maybe,” she said. “We’ll see if there’s a part two. We’ll see.”

lpulaski@newmedia-wi.com

AT A GLANCE

WHAT: “The Summer That Dried My Tears”

WHO: Casey Brown

WHERE: Books are available locally at 505 Creative Living, 505 S. Webb St., Wittenberg; and Emma Kait’s Coffeehouse, 389 Main St., Birnamwood.

COST: $10

ONLINE: Books are also available through Amazon and on Brown’s website, www.clbrownauthor.com