Today I am so pleased to welcome Marie Sexton to Joyfully Jay. Marie has come to talk to us about her latest release, Trailer Trash. She has also brought along a great giveaway. Please join me in giving Marie a big welcome!
Hello, everybody! I’m Marie Sexton, and I’m here today to talk about my New Adult novel, Trailer Trash. Trailer Trash is an ‘opposites attract’ story of two high school seniors in small-town Wyoming in the mid-1980s.
One of the things I really wanted to capture in writing Trailer Trash was the myth of small-town America. I spent the first eleven years of my life in small-town Wyoming. Now, my hometown wasn’t anywhere near as small as Warren (my setting for Trailer Trash), but it wasn’t very big, either. I think the population topped out at just over ten thousand people at the height of the oil boom. By the time we left in 1984, the boom was over, and the population was falling. There were empty houses on every street. A whole subdivision of not-quite finished homes sat on the hill above our neighborhood, abandoned when the bottom fell out of the boom.
My parents (mom and stepfather) moved to Colorado, much to my dismay. I was eleven. I wanted to stay in Wyoming where my grandparents, my cousins, and my father and stepmother lived (although the latter pair moved to an even smaller town in Alaska a year later).
It didn’t take me long to realize that living in Fort Collins, Colorado was infinitely better than my small hometown. Here in Colorado, we had malls. We had MTV. We had four movie theaters, one of which had four screens! (Back in my hometown, there was one theater, with one screen. They showed a family-friendly movie at 7:00, and a rated R movie at 9:00, except when Star Wars was showing. It was allotted both slots.) Here in Colorado, we had a roller rink, several arcades, miniature golf, a go-kart track. We had everything! And what we didn’t have could certainly be found just down the road in Denver or Boulder.
When we went back to my hometown to visit, or when I visited my father in Alaska, I began to realize just how few options teenagers in those small towns had. There seemed to be two choices on weekends: go out and get drunk with a bunch of boys who were anywhere from five to fifteen years older, or stay at home. Go out to the rock quarry, drink a keg, smoke a joint, get laid…. Or stay at home. There didn’t seem to be much in between. It’s certainly possible there were sides of the teen life that I just didn’t see, but it always felt very claustrophobic to me.
I also began to notice as I grew older how the myth of the wholesome small town didn’t apply to the adult world, either. My hometown became known in the 80s for its position in a rather lucrative drug trade. Years later, when I was out of college and working, I met a woman who’d grown up in Rock Springs, which isn’t far from my hometown. She was ten or fifteen years older than me. When she heard where I was from, her response was, “Oh yeah, that’s where all the cocaine was, back in the day.”
So, in writing Trailer Trash, one of my goals was to capture that severe lack of options, and to debunk (to some extent) the myth of the wholesome, picturesque small town. But of course along with that, I wanted to capture the excitement of first love. My hope is that the two things combined will make for a fun and memorable story.
Blurb
It’s 1986, and what should have been the greatest summer of Nate Bradford’s life goes sour when his parents suddenly divorce. Now, instead of spending his senior year in his hometown of Austin, Texas, he’s living with his father in Warren, Wyoming, population 2,833 (and Nate thinks that might be a generous estimate). There’s no swimming pool, no tennis team, no mall—not even any MTV. The entire school’s smaller than his graduating class back home, and in a town where the top teen pastimes are sex and drugs, Nate just doesn’t fit in.
Then Nate meets Cody Lawrence. Cody’s dirt-poor, from a broken family, and definitely lives on the wrong side of the tracks. Nate’s dad says Cody’s bad news. The other kids say he’s trash. But Nate knows Cody’s a good kid who’s been dealt a lousy hand. In fact, he’s beginning to think his feelings for Cody go beyond friendship.
Admitting he might be gay is hard enough, but between small-town prejudices and the growing AIDS epidemic dominating the headlines, a town like Warren, Wyoming, is no place for two young men to fall in love.
Bio
Marie Sexton lives in Colorado. She’s a fan of just about anything that involves muscular young men piling on top of each other. In particular, she loves the Denver Broncos and enjoys going to the games with her husband. Her imaginary friends often tag along.
Marie has one daughter, two cats, and one dog, all of whom seem bent on destroying what remains of her sanity. She loves them anyway.
Connect with Marie:
- Website:Â mariesexton.net
- Twitter:Â @MarieSexton
- Facebook:Â facebook.com/MarieSexton.author
- Goodreads:Â goodreads.com/MarieSexton
Giveaway
To celebrate, Marie is giving away a $50 gift card to either Amazon or All Romance Ebooks, winner’s choice. Leave a comment to enter the contest. Entries close at midnight, Eastern time, on March 26, 2016. Contest is NOT restricted to U.S. entries. Thanks for following the tour, and don’t forget to leave your contact info!
- By entering the giveaway, you’re confirming that you are at least 18 years old.
- Winners will be selected by random number. No purchase necessary to win.  The number of eligible entries received determines the odds of winning.
- If you win, you must respond to my email within 48 hours or another winner may be chosen. Please make sure that your spam filter allows email from Joyfully Jay.
- Winners may be announced on the blog following the contest. By entering the contest you are agreeing to allow your name to be posted and promoted as the contest winner by Joyfully Jay.
- Prizes will be distributed following the giveaway either by Joyfully Jay or the person/organization donating the prize.
- All book prizes are in electronic format unless otherwise specified.
- By entering you are agreeing to hold Joyfully Jay harmless if the prize or giveaway in some way negatively impacts the winner.
- Readers may only enter once for each contest. Â Duplicate entries for the same giveaway will be ignored. In the event of technical problems with the blog during the contest, every effort will be made to extend the contest deadline to allow for additional entries.
- Void where prohibited by law.
To a reader from the UK, Trailer Trash has been a real eye-opener, because even though I came from a small town (we didn’t even have a cinema after I was 6 years old) there was always the ease of escape at 18, with relatively cheap higher education and lots of travel options, with trains and buses and international airports within easy reach. The idea of needing to travel 30 miles to get to somewhere that even had a bus service, and having no options for getting there, is a definition of “trapped” that is truly scary.
(Also, whatever happened to Nate’s father? Did he stay in that small and dying town?)
Hi Jay and Marie, I have loved Marie’s books for years, ever since I discovered the genre. Bought the first Coda book on 2010 and I was hooked! I have so many of her books and am so excited about this new one. Can’t wait!
Thanks so much for hosting me here today, and thank you to the readers who have already stopped by!Â
Allie: I imagine he stays there a few more years, but probably not forever. 😉
Christina: Thanks so much for your support!Â
Thanks again!
Loved this book! It made me super grateful my parents moved the other direction than Nate’s dad – I went from smallish town in Southern Indiana to St. Louis at the start of 7th grade – so many more options for pretty much everything. Thanks for Nate and Cody!
:o) buttononthetop @gmail.com
I can totally relate to this post since I grew up in a small town.  There really wasn’t that much for teenagers to do.  It was about a 30 minute drive to the nearest city.  We did a lot of riding around in our cars.  There were places in town where we would meet up with friends, but sometimes the cops would tell us to leave.  There was a roller skating rink (it’s still open after all these years) and a miniature golf course that closed.  We had a Dairy Queen and Sonic.  You can imagine what teenagers do when bored. 🙂  I will say that the town has grown a lot since those days..movie theater, lots of restaurants and stores.
lkbherring64(at)gmail(dot)com
Well, this is going on my reading list for sure! Thanks for the giveaway as well 🙂
It’s going to be an interesting read, I have it in my wishlist.
serena91291@gmail.com
Thanks for the post. Â I can’t imagine growing up in an isolated, small town like that..I can see how drugs would be even more of a lure.
Trailer Trash is on my TBR list for sure.
jen(dot)f(at)mac(dot)com
I lived as a kid in a really small town, then just before my teens we moved to a bigger one and I can vow for the real big difference in options between something which is no more than a village and a small city. I went to University and have a quality job, whereas most people I grew up in that town didn’t manage to do so…
The book sounds great, Marie. I’m really looking forward to reading it!
susanaperez7140(at)gmail(dot)com
Ooh, I’m looking forward to this one! I grew up in a small town (though not quite that small) and I love seeing it portrayed the way I remember it. Thanks for the giveaway!!
This post reminds me of a Joel Plaskett song I really love called “Drunk Teenagers,” where a teenage boy complains about his neighborhood while he and his friends are indulging in the local weekend pastime of getting drunk at this big rock in the woods…
vitajex(at)aol(dot)com
Thank you for the interesting post. I’ve never lived in a small town and it’s interesting to hear about the differences.
humhumbum AT yahoo DOT com
Love Marie Sexton books and looking forward to reading this one. Very interesting to hear about very small town in US. I can see quite a few similarities with small rural town where I grew up in England.
Small town romance is a popular genre with it’s pretty scenery and close relationships which makes for a good escape from big urban congested cities. But the reality sounds so unfortunate yet compelling.
strive4bst(AT) yahoo(Dot)com
I grew up in a town just outside London so we were lucky there were three cinema’s and lots of shops etc. When we visited our relatives who lived in a seaside town (which was where I was born) it was so quiet and in the winter all the seaside shops were shut and it was like a ghost town.
ShirleyAnn(at)speakman40(dot)freeserve(dot)co(dot)uk
I grew up in the country outside a small town. Â I would walk until out of my mother’s sight then stick out my thumb and hitch a ride; I know really dumb but I survived. Â There was one theater in town and on Saturdays kids could get in for a quarter, that included a small drink and popcorn. Â They would start with the newsreel then a cartoon, the newest episode of a serial followed by the main feature. Â Can you imagine what all that would cost now? Â I now live in a city of over 500,000 and my little town is well over 100,000. Â How things can change in 60 years!
Curious to see how the small-town elements are handled. I’ve lived outside a small town my entire life, and work in it about over half my adult life.
My oldest cousin is gay (though not officially out until a few years ago) and back in the 80s he got a GED in his Junior year so he could get the hell out of town. He’d been bullied and the school did nothing. Now I have kids coming into the library where I work talking about being gay or lesbian, or others who are, and it’s no big deal to them. It’s not that the bigots have disappeared, but it’s not as big an issue, at least for the younger generation.
I read Trailer Trash this week and it was one of the best books I have read! It’s a beautiful story of love and acceptance. The fact that it took place in the 80’s in a plus! I was a child & pre teen in the 80’s and I loved being taken back.
Thank you Marie for this amazing story!
Thank you, Suzanne! I’m so glad you enjoyed it. 🙂
I just want to add that I am reading this book right now and it is wonderful so far (review will be up next week). The small town aspect of it is particularly interesting to me. My college roommate grew up in a  small town, and although it was a lovely place with great people, a lot of this really resonates with what she told me about it. It was just so hard for the kids to find anything to do and they ended up getting up to a lot of trouble. Nothing was nearby, so it was either drive across the county or spend nice partying in the fields with lots of sex and alcohol. I think it is interesting in that the small town is so idealized in romance land and it is nice to see another side of things.Â
I assume (don’t know for sure) that the internet has alleviated this to some degree. I mean, my daughter can Skype with her cousins, or play video games with them, even though we’re in Colorado and they’re in Minnesota. It’s easy for teens to find a sympathetic ear somewhere online. Obviously this assumes a certain degree of affluence (having a computer in the home), but I imagine the claustrophobia of small towns isn’t quite as bad as it used to be.Â
Of course, there are a bunch of other, newer risks associated with online friendships, but I’ll let somebody else write about that. 🙂Â
Thanks!
Yes, I was thinking as I’m doing my review about how different life was before the internet. There was no streaming and no skyping and nothing else to put you in contact with the outside world so easily like you can today. I am sure all that helps.
I still live outside of a small town just as you describe. Population 6000! The only thing for kids to do here is the same as you describe above. Congratulations on the release and looking forward to reading it!
I know what you mean about kids having nothing to do. My town was small, but not super small and there’s wasn’t much to do. Movies if you had the money and could get there or the bowling alley. Otherwise, teens were out having beer parties. Every so often a video arcade would open up that had pool tables too, but eventually it would close because too many fights would happen. It’s even worse there now because they enacted all these loitering laws so that the teens don’t congregate in parking lots. Â There’s no where for them to go and be safe.Â
jczlapin@gmail.com
I was always a rabid reader and also a bit of an introvert, so when we were in a tiny little town in East Texas I just read a lot.
Of course the town library was a small storefront with books donated by a few residents, and most of them were Harlequins. I read zillions of paperback romances in the years we lived there. And yes, I think the internet would change things a lot. If nothing else, I would have had a much bigger choice in reading material. 🙂
I grew up in all manner of places (small and somewhat bigger as well as an island or three); I’m not sure that the teen years are easy in any setting! I’m looking forward to reading Trailer Trash. Thanks for a thoughtful post and the opportunity to win.
I’ve only lived in medium-sized as well as big cities so I grew up thinking of small towns as picturesque settings. For the most part, I blame Northern Exposure for this notion. LOL!
Trailer Trash sounds like a really fascinating book, Marie. I’m eager to read it (awesome giveaway too, btw!)
Congratulations on the new book, it sounds great!
annmarief115 at gmail dot com
Great post, Marie! I grew up in a city, so small towns were only places I visited family or friends or drove through, but what you write is definitely what I’ve heard. When you have nothing else to do (as teenagers) what are you going to get up to? Not everyone’s a bookworm after all. 😉 Thanks for sharing with us!
caroaz [at] ymail [dot] com
I grew up in a small farming town in California but really not really remote.  We were within 15 minutes of beaches, shopping  mall, and amusement parks.  So though I always considered myself a small town girl, I know the only thing that was a common complaint amongst us as teens was the city folks who left their trash on our beaches.
ree.dee.2014 (at) gmail (at) com
Quite a different atmosphere than my up bringing in coastal Florida!
Oceanakers @ aol.con
Congrats on the release. Some of my best memories happened in the 80’s. There are times where I would give anything to just go back. I’m looking forward to being able to pick this up. Oh, and love the cover. Thanks for a chance in the giveaway.
flutterfli01 (at) yahoo (dot) com