Nicole Sarrocco
From North Carolina comes the electrifying new voice of Nicole Sarrocco, author of the Occasionally True series of novels—about finding grace in chaos, making peace with the passed, and for heaven's sake not making too much of a spectacle of yourself. 2015's Lit by Lightning (vol. 1 of the series), is a witty, hilarious, disturbing Occasionally True tale of ghosts, manners, and the family we choose and the ones who choose us. The forthcoming Ill-Mannered Ghosts (Nov. 2016) continues the bizarrely hilarious misadventures begun in vol. 1, delivered in Sarrocco's signature style of collaged autobiographical snapshots, family anecdote, and whip-smart, gin-dry wit.
Nicole Sarrocco, the author of the Occasionally True series of novels, lives in Raleigh, North Carolina with her husband and two children. Raised on a tobacco farm on the Wake-Johnston County line, she has a PhD in English, and loves teaching high school. She never has pretended to be normal, but claims that good manners are in her regional DNA.
From her publisher: "She is brilliant—wondrously and completely mad—and that fancy PhD of hers is the only possible explanation for the fact that they let her teach children."
Please enjoy this excerpt from vol. 1 of the series:
Thomas is my last husband. You know how when you’re at a potluck and you go get a slice of pie – you really only intend to have one slice, so you try to pick out a good one. Sometimes there are real reasons to go back for another slice. Like if that first one, the one you thought was home-made chocolate chess pie turned out to be some store-bought fraud. Or, I don’t know, maybe you’re still hungry after eating the first one. But that third slice – and to be clear, Thomas is slice #3 for me – definitely has to be your last. So when I say he is my last husband, I don’t mean ‘latest,’ I mean last. Past three, and there’s words for what you are, and ain’t none of them nice. I’m more certain about this part than I am about anything else. It’s important to know that from the beginning.