Where the What If Roams and the Moon is Louis Armstrong by Esther Krivda ** Extract**

 Today we have a  magical realism / literary novel which is aimed at the older teens reader and those aged 12-14 who are really avid readers. We have an extract for you to read but first here is a little more about this unusual book.

A writer, a girl and her parents’ heads are filled to their tippy tops with voices that order them about; tell them one thing one day, the opposite thing the next and sometimes are not even kind to them. ‘Is there more than just me in me?' they fret, til finally they confront their voices, ‘Who are you and why are you haunting me?’ But when the voices answer, can that writer, the girl and her parents live with what they’ve learned?

Extract

Set Up:  Meet Great Aunt Hortense, who terrifies ten-year-old Sophia; who vexes Dr. Sigmund Oomla, Sophia’s Father; but who is Sigrid Oomla’s, Sophia’s Mother, only living relative.  

“The picture of persnickety, our Great Aunt Hoity – Queen of Toity!  With her pince-nez on the tip of her upswept nose!  Which peaks out sharply from her snapped-up head!  Where her gray hair is piled like stones around her face which is up-snooted and prune-wrinkled whenever she has to talk to anyone except the President of Harvard University, and since whomever she is talking to isn’t the President of Harvard University, as he has never visited our village even once, her face never, even for one second, ever deprunes or desnoots!  AND she thinks being richer than everybody in the entire village means she can lord herself over everyone.  But that is hardly the worst part!  For the worst hard-to-take part is, EVERYONE LETS HER!”

That, Readers, was what Sophia’s Father had to say about Sophia’s Great Aunt Hortense, but certainly never when his wife, Sigrid, was even remotely close, as his wife was rather fond of the Lady.  But then Great Aunt Hortense was both Aunt AND Mother and Father to young Sigrid as her parents had died in a tragic car accident when she was seven-years-old turning their only child (with her candyland voice) the charming, very flirty, hyper-articulate Sigrid, into a sad orphan.  But an orphan not sentenced to an orphanage: for just one day after the tragedy, Aunt Hortense, little Sigrid’s only living relative, did her duty.

Rather fond of children, however, Aunt Hortense was not.  Nevertheless, she adopted her niece and then raised Sigrid as if she were her own child.

Well, are you wondering – Did that Persnickety Old Prune, who was rather unfond of children, turn the charming child into a Persnickety Young Prune?  And did her husband, the psychoanalyst, wonder the same thing?

As for those questions, Readers, his way of wondering about them was to mosey on up to them and instead of answering them candidly - he’d ask questions that had the answer he preferred already built in.  Isn’t my Sigrid well-adjusted?  So lively?  Articulate?  With her voice so dream-girl, so from a time long gone?  How ever could Persnickety have turned my Princess into a Prune?  And then he’d mosey on away from it.  So at least, according to his way of gathering evidence, the Persnickity Old Prune had not.  Besides, hadn’t he always noticed that Sigrid always treated her Aunt like she did only right and could do no wrong?  So how could he have let fly a lampooning word about the Old Prune anywhere near his wife?  What would his wife think if she heard it?  Why it would’ve wounded his Sigrid in her heart.  And wounding her there would’ve wounded him, too.  There.  In his own heart.  For oh! did he have a heart when it came to his wife!  It could admit, but just barely, that his charming wife, who-was-no-prune, was one of those ‘EVERYONE LETS HER.’

However, what he and his heart could not only admit, but state crystal clearly, though only to himself, was that Great Aunt Hortense was rather fond of money.  But when he could no longer deny that just about every man, woman and child on the planet was imbibing his wife’s concoction and she had become an even richer woman than her Aunt, a terrible fear took possession of his heart, a fear that reared up in his head as often as the Loch Ness Monster reared up its head - which was never - a fear that if his heart would’ve known he had and could’ve named, he wouldn’t have breathed it ever again to a living soul, including himself.  And that was this:

HIS WIFE WAS RATHER FOND OF IT TOO!

So - Did that Persnickety Old Prune, who was rather unfond of children, turn the charming child into a Persnickety Young Prune?

Readers, would you’ve had the heart, the nerve to fire it at him point-blank now that you know what he fears?

Odd, you say?  A psychoanalyst?  Not able to speak his fears and feelings out loud?  Not even able to examine himself privately, confidentially to find out what his hidden fears and deep feelings were?  I say, though he spent his life examining the hidden fears and deep feelings of others, when it came to his own, especially those that involved his heart, his connoisseur ears and his charming wife, who-was-no-prune, he was as good as nothing.  So if he did fear that his wife had even a smidgen of her Aunt Hortense’s traits in her somewhere, it never had gotten as far as his mouth.  But don’t think him a poor psychoanalyst.  Anyone who has ever fallen in love will understand that when it comes to love, some of us are deaf, dumb and blind; even those, like him, who have sensitive, perceptive ears that can hear music when none is playing and who can speak sensibly about the human drama that unfolds before them.  And even those with x-ray vision, like psychoanalysts, who are trained to see what’s buried inside the psyches of others.  Just like he was trained to see.

                                                                    About the Author

Esther Krivda has acted; studied ballet; worked as an admin in the movie studios in LA and in a talent agency in NYC; and loves to sing and draw faces. But she didn't discover writing til she took a course in Stop Motion Animation and soon found out her movie would need a script. And that’s when she got the idea of a little girl who cries out but only the man-in-the moon hears her. She never turned the idea into a Stop Motion Animation movie but she did turn it into this novel, her first.

You can follow Esther here: Website   |  Twitter  |  Facebook 

Book links: Amazon US   |  Amazon UK

Thanks to Esther Krivda and Anne Cater of Random Things Tours  for a place on the tour. 

Catch up with the rest of the tour!