Shalanda Stanley received news last Christmas that would change her life – her book would be published by Random House LLC.
The young adult novel titled “Drowning is Inevitable” starts off in St. Francisville, La., and is about friends Olivia and Jamie who together accidentally kill Jamie’s dad. Not knowing what to do, they get scared and leave town with two of their friends.
The story is narrated by Olivia, who is about to turn 18, and has been under suicide watch from an early age.
“When Olivia is three days old, her mother kills herself on her birthday by walking into the Mississippi River,” said Stanley. “And because of that Olivia has sort of grown up with the town watching her kind of expecting her to be like her mom.”
According to Stanley, a professor of curriculum and instruction, the book plays with the theme of how children are expected to fall in their parents’ footsteps.
Stanley received inspiration for her novel from St. Francisville, a “gorgeous town with huge oak trees and so much history.”
“I was touring the graveyard and there was a tombstone from the 1800s. I noticed the date because the girl died on her eighteenth birthday and I went to the town records just to see if I could find out specifically how she died and there were no records,” said Stanley. “That’s kind of where the spark came from in regards to what are the chances of that being random?”
Stanley said she likes to tour graveyards.
“I got my daughter’s name off a gravestone, which is kind of creepy. And in the book, Olivia’s mom got Olivia’s name off a tombstone,” Stanley said.
But Stanley doesn’t remember the name on the 1800s tombstone.
“In the book she’s Lillian, but I don’t think I used the actual name,” said Stanley. “I did use real names, last names, from St. Francisville that I pulled off gravestones or from the phonebook. But no first names.”
She began working on the book in 2011 and it went in submission last June.
Stanley said she still has one more revision to do and is waiting on an edit letter from her editor with some ideas for the book. For Stanley, revisions have been the hardest part of writing.
“First drafts are awesome, blank pages are awesome, research is awesome, revision hurts. It really does,” said Stanley. “For me especially, I hate change, so once I set something, I feel this is right. But it’s not. I had to completely deconstruct my novel and reconstruct it so that it was ready and that’s difficult.”
The book is to debut in fall 2015.
Emily Lovelady, a senior elementary education major, is a former student of Stanley’s and can’t wait to read her book.
“Dr. Stanley is hands down the best teacher I’ve ever had. She is inspiring beyond words,” said Lovelady. “Under her instruction, I learned to be emotionally engaged in instruction. Most of the time not even feeling like I was in class, but only having a conversation.”
