Lucille Guarino: Writing Lunch Tales: Suellen
I am excited to share the news of my new novel, Lunch Tales: Suellen. The way this story came about is quite different from my previous novel, Elizabeth’s Mountain, which was sparked by a dream. Lunch Tales: Suellen is drawn from my personal experience in working at a major New Jersey law firm for several years where I met a lot of colorful characters and made lifelong friends. Originally, when I drafted Lunch Tales, it was from four women’s points of view.
After I read it through, I realized that two of the characters in the story were the most interesting, so I went back and rewrote two standalone novels focusing on each one: Lunch Tales: Suellen, and the sequel, Lunch Tales: Teagan, which will follow. They are best friends with uniquely compelling and heart rending stories. Each woman is a major character in the other’s story, and the same supporting characters are in both novels. Once I decided to give each of these women more space for the reader to get to know them, they evolved in ways I never imagined at the start.
Fluidly resourceful and rebelliously sassy, Suellen Atkins can afford to be a little reckless with her life. Or so she thinks. When a former boyfriend, a special friend she’s falling hard for, and a shocking medical diagnosis converge, she will need to summon up the courage to face the truths about herself, and what she’s made of might just surprise her.
Suellen’s story is personal for me as I went through a similar medical crisis at the same age and know firsthand all the feelings and emotions she had to go through. I have met so many extraordinary and resilient women in my lifetime—inspiring women who have had to overcome hardship and health challenges. This book is for all of them.
Lunch Tales: Suellen
Coming February 13, 2025
Grand Prize Winner | A Woman’s Write 2023 Novel Competition
Old scars. New love?
Suellen Atkins’ trust fund has given her everything except love. As the youngest attorney in a major law firm, her life is filled with reckless spending and meaningless flings. But when she dumps her latest wild guy, he doesn’t leave quietly.
Unable to shake the feeling she’s being watched, Suellen runs into an old classmate at a colleague’s farewell. Adam Isaacson is one of the good guys — and that might be more scary than her stalker ex. With the echoes of her parents’ tumultuous marriage still ringing in her ears, Suellen can’t imagine anything this promising.
When a shock medical diagnosis complicates things, her proclivity for self-sabotage goes into overdrive. As life turns upside down, her lunch friends at the law firm become a lifeline in the storm. But even they, with all their good intentions and well-meaning advice, can’t save Suellen from herself. Nor can the man who’s fallen in love with her. Only she can do that.
PREORDER HERE
Lucille’s first novel, Like Wine, was a tribute to her mother, and getting it into print before she passed was her goal. She considers Elizabeth’s Mountain, winner of the Literary Titan Gold Book Award and Readers’ Favorite Award, to be her true debut novel. Elizabeth’s Mountain was also a finalist in the 2024 American Writing Award contest for the elite Hawthorne Prize.
Lucille loves stories that lift her up and gratify her. Taking little pieces of characters and sometimes seeing herself in them is one of her favorite feelings. An avid reader of most genres, the only thing Lucille likes more than delving and escaping into a good book is visiting noteworthy locations. Her most recent escapade road trips took her to Asheville, NC, Charleston, SC, and the Grand Canyon! And an international trip of a lifetime – Venice, Rome, and the Amalfi Coast.
Lucille has lived most of her life in northern New Jersey and now lives in South Carolina with her husband, and close to her two daughters and grandchildren.
Category: On Writing
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