Archive for Kentucky

Crowd for author Kris­ten Sim­mons at Carmichael’s Book­store in Louisville, KY

Louisville’s favorite local book­store Carmichael’s was down­right stuffy tonight, packed as it was with women and men of all ages.

They gath­ered for a Q&A and read­ing by for­mer Louisvil­lian and cur­rent Florid­ian nov­el­ist Kris­ten Sim­mons.

Sim­mons’ debut novel, “Arti­cle 5,” is, accord­ing to Carmichael’s,

a dystopian teen thriller. Set in a future Amer­ica where the Bill of Rights has been revoked and replaced with the Moral Statutes, it is the story of 17-year-old Ember Miller and her free-spirit mother. When her mother is arrested for being morally sus­pect, Ember is sent to a repres­sive reform school. What fol­lows is a tale about stand­ing up for what you believe in and for what’s right — even if there are hor­rific con­se­quences. Fans of The Hunger Games will love this excit­ing new novel, the first in a planned trilogy.

Ember and her mother live in Louisville but are torn from their home in Chap­ter 1. Sim­mons said that she and her hus­band used to live very close to Carmichael’s (on Frank­fort Avenue), and that, like the main char­ac­ters in “Arti­cle 5,” she thinks often of the place she once called home.

“Even though we’ve moved out of this place, we think about it a lot, and we ref­er­ence it all the time,” Sim­mons said of her and her hus­band Jason.

After a Q&A with the audi­ence, Sim­mons read the arrest scene from Chap­ter 1, in which Ember’s mother is arrested for retroac­tively vio­lat­ing Arti­cle 5 of the Moral Statutes, which states that “Chil­dren are con­sid­ered valid cit­i­zens only when con­ceived by a mar­ried man and wife.”

A few of the other Arti­cles include, “Arti­cle 1 — The United States embraces the Church of Amer­ica as her offi­cial reli­gion. Arti­cle 2 — Lit­er­a­ture and other media con­sid­ered immoral are hereby banned and shall not be owned, bought, sold, or traded in any capac­ity,” and, my per­sonal favorite, “Arti­cle 4 – Tra­di­tional male and female roles shall be observed.”

You see where Sim­mons is going with this. It is the Rom­ney, Gin­grich, San­to­rum vision of Amer­i­can. It’s the Amer­i­can fore­warned in “The Handmaid’s Tale,” in “The Hunger Games,” and by today’s online fem­i­nist com­mu­nity. But our brave, rebel­lious hero­ine Ember isn’t going down with­out a fight.

Kris­ten Sim­mons sign­ing her debut novel “Arti­cle 5″ at Carmichael’s in Louisville, KY.

Sim­mons spoke openly about how hard she her­self had to fight to get pub­lished. She wrote for seven years before catch­ing a break, and in that time accrued over 200 rejec­tion let­ters. Sim­mons views this period as prepa­ra­tion for the time in which the “stars aligned” for her.

Sim­mons said, “It was the right time. It was the right man­u­script,” refer­ring to “Arti­cle 5.”

What did Sim­mons do to sup­port her­self dur­ing these seven years of writ­ing and rejec­tion? She worked as a men­tal health ther­a­pist (a few of her for­mer co-workers were in the audi­ence tonight). Men­tal health issues are explored in “Arti­cle 5,” as the main char­ac­ters attempt to deal with the var­i­ous crises they must face.

The sec­ond install­ment in the tril­ogy is set to come out next Jan­u­ary, and the third and final install­ment the Jan­u­ary after that. Buy “Arti­cle 5” at your local book­store or online.

Don’t go look­ing for it at Carmichael’s tonight, though. They’re hap­pily sold out.