ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Hi, I'm Bill Elenbark.
I wrote my first novel longhand in the empty pages of engineering class notebooks at Rutgers University, tuning out professors blithely discussing the Mechanics of Solids (an actual class name!) to write fiction instead. I went on to get my engineering degree and a corresponding career but I continued to write in my spare time, the only thing that kept me sane after long days spent with math-minded engineers who never quite got my love of writing or indie rock music. I went back to school for a writing degree that exposed me to the brilliant insanity of artistic-minded friends and taught me the skills to write the YA stories I’ve always wanted to tell.
I started an indie rock music blog a decade ago and have attended several hundred shows in that time and I currently reside with my partner and our puppy Elie in Hoboken, NJ, not solely for the convenience of seeing little-known bands play intimate shows in Manhattan and DIY spaces in Brooklyn.
I started an indie rock music blog a decade ago and have attended several hundred shows in that time and I currently reside with my partner and our puppy Elie in Hoboken, NJ, not solely for the convenience of seeing little-known bands play intimate shows in Manhattan and DIY spaces in Brooklyn.
ABOUT THE BOOKS
I WILL BE OKAY
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Fifteen-year-old Mateo Tirado comes from a large Puerto Rican family that treats every holiday like a celebration: loud music, excessive eating, and more excessive drinking. On the night before their annual Fourth of July block party, Matt and his best friend Stick get a little high in the field between their houses and they kiss, for a moment, maybe longer, then Stick bolts so fast Matt can’t even process what happened. The next day Matt finds out that Stick’s father has died and he spends the rest of the summer trying to get back to that night. The problem is Stick doesn’t know who he is, or what he wants, other than his father back, and he knows for sure his father didn’t want him to be gay. He comes from an even larger family – thirteen children, most of the them adopted, but his house feels empty now and he comes around to Matt’s plan for a trial dating experiment – one week, no commitments – while Matt is nursing a broken wrist from baseball camp. But when Matt’s mom catches the boys kissing in the basement, the dating experiment ends and their friendship is threatened and Matt doesn’t know whether to risk his own father’s wrath and his future in baseball or go back to hiding all his secrets again.
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NOW AVAILABLE FROM WALRUS PUBLISHING
“So no job and no baseball… what are you planning to do?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “This.”
He glances to the right and plays with a smile.
“Yeah,” he says. “This is nice.”
I watch his shaggy hair and his eyes, bright blue like the sky – not this sky, with its moonlit grays and clouds so high you can’t see them, not even in the glow of the fireworks, but the afternoon skies with no clouds and no smoke and no buildings, no sounds, just silence through the fields where I played as a kid, all alone but not lonely and lost in the spread of the sky.
“You know, Trevor told me the other day that some jerks from school were asking about us.”
“Asking what?” I say.
“You know, whether we’re like a couple or something, the way we’re always together. Some people think we’re gay.”
I start to laugh but it doesn’t come out and I want to sink down and hide but there’s nowhere to hide and all the sounds are obscured and the colors still blurred and this ridiculous heat won’t stop pressing through my skin and it’s beginning again, this sickening feeling that keeps coming up again and I can’t stop it, the way it takes hold and it doesn’t let go – these thoughts about Stick – how they keep coming out, like explosions again, high above the trees in a mass of mixing colors, streaming reds and yellows and blues so bright I see Stick in the dark, his face in the light.
“Maybe we don’t tell anyone I’m sleeping over.”
“I don’t know,” I say. “This.”
He glances to the right and plays with a smile.
“Yeah,” he says. “This is nice.”
I watch his shaggy hair and his eyes, bright blue like the sky – not this sky, with its moonlit grays and clouds so high you can’t see them, not even in the glow of the fireworks, but the afternoon skies with no clouds and no smoke and no buildings, no sounds, just silence through the fields where I played as a kid, all alone but not lonely and lost in the spread of the sky.
“You know, Trevor told me the other day that some jerks from school were asking about us.”
“Asking what?” I say.
“You know, whether we’re like a couple or something, the way we’re always together. Some people think we’re gay.”
I start to laugh but it doesn’t come out and I want to sink down and hide but there’s nowhere to hide and all the sounds are obscured and the colors still blurred and this ridiculous heat won’t stop pressing through my skin and it’s beginning again, this sickening feeling that keeps coming up again and I can’t stop it, the way it takes hold and it doesn’t let go – these thoughts about Stick – how they keep coming out, like explosions again, high above the trees in a mass of mixing colors, streaming reds and yellows and blues so bright I see Stick in the dark, his face in the light.
“Maybe we don’t tell anyone I’m sleeping over.”
THE BEST HARDCORE BAND IN PA
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Who knew living in Pennsylvania could be hardcore?
Jeff knows way more about music than me. I almost forget what I was into before I met him – indie rock I guess, and those mainstream sell-outs like Death Cab or Arcade Fire, but Jeff told me you can’t be listening to anything meaningful if it ends up in a commercial for a minivan. And there’s beauty in hardcore. It infuses you with a sense of something bigger than you, something better, this grandness of emotion eclipsing the rage of the sound that forces you to release all those negative thoughts and disengage, let it all fade, revel in the beauty of the noise and let go. Fuck, I’m high. |
HARDCORE PA is a story about
FALLING HARD Finding your rhythm and ROCKING to the BEAT of YOUR OWN DRUM. |
COMING OCTOBER 2023
LISTEN to the SONG that inspired HARDCORE PA: