Authorpreneur Dashboard – Kelly Johnson Owen
The College Chronicles: Freshman Milestones
Romance
SLEEPING FEET FROM STRANGERS is not a description Cadence Cooper remembers from the brochure that brought her to Charlestowne College, but this jarring reality becomes one of many she encounters as a freshman. Threatened with expulsion from a “Demon of Darkness” professor and tormented by a hellacious roommate, Cadence struggles to survive in this realm of hookups and higher education. Here sex, drugs, and drinking become subjects of study just as much as coursework. Just when she’s ready to give up the dream of a college degree, she finds romance with a rock star classmate and a position as a student photographer. With her lens focused on the campus and Charleston, a stunning city that teaches its own powerful lessons, Cadence uncovers the details of a devastating rape, a mysterious suicide, and a secret group intent on exposing a scandal that will forever change the school. Knowledge never comes without cost—or surprises. Life with strangers transforms into profound experiences with friends, foes, lovers, and liars in and out of the Holy City’s classrooms. Cadence’s first-year journey begins with “English 101: The Composition of Life,” but where it ends shocks even her.
Book Bubbles from The College Chronicles: Freshman Milestones
The Genesis of this Novel
On the morning of March 6, 2009, in Room 319 of a campus lecture hall, my story came to me on the back of a student’s hand. Stressed about the in-class essay in which I had instructed students to write on every other line in their compositions, the young woman in the front row had written—SKIP LINES—in black pen on her left hand, underlined a number of times. As she leaned her head on her hand and began to write, I stared at those two words. Suddenly, I heard a voice in my head: Who the hell does she think she is asking us to remember to ‘skip lines’? Is that really important? But the voice wasn’t mine, it was my imagination projecting this Young woman’s voice (who was so polite she probably would never have uttered those words). As if by instinct, I grabbed a sheet of paper and after a short time, one side was filled with lines chronicling a series about college. For some reason, the pen in my hand was red—not my normal choice of color for grading—and the ideas appeared as if they had been shed in my own blood.
