With a little help from my friends...

Oliver, a novella by Mandy Haynes

“Dear God…and Jesus and Mary…” Even though eleven-year-old Olivia is raised Southern Baptist, she likes to cover her bases when asking for a favor. Unlike her brother Oliver, she struggles with keeping her temper in check and staying out of trouble.

But Oliver is different, and in the summer of ’72 he proves to Olivia there’s magic in everything. It’s up to us to see it.

"Mandy Haynes takes me on a memory journey to the last great childhood of the South, a time when bicycles were a magic carpet that could take a child wherever she wanted to go. The joy of this novella is how easily I slip between the pages and live the adventures with Oliver and Olivia. Sibling love. Kindness. Good intentions gone awry and good deeds fraught with danger. This story echos with my past, and the past of many now homeless Southerners. Once you start reading, you won't be able to put it down." Carolyn Haines, USA Today bestseller, is the author of over 80 books in multiple genres

Mandy Haynes spent hours on barstools and riding in vans listening to outrageous tales from some of the best songwriters, musicians, and storytellers in Nashville, Tennessee. She traded a stressful life as a pediatric cardiac sonographer for a happy one and now lives in Fernandina Beach, Florida. She is a contributing writer for Amelia Islander Magazine, Amelia Weddings, and author of two short story collections, Walking the Wrong Way Home, and Sharp as a Serpent’s Tooth Eva and Other Stories. She is also the editor of the anthology, Work in Progress, which features fifty-nine incredibly talented Pulpwood Queen and Timber Guy authors.

Like the characters in her stories, she never misses a chance to jump in a creek to catch crawdads, stand up for the underdog, or the opportunity to try and make someone laugh.

Laughing with John Prine and Morgane Stapleton at The Station Inn

...about to cry with Mike and Janet Henderson who surprised me at my book event at Brown’s Diner in 2020. The best of the best storytellers!

Oliver started as a short story I’d planned on putting in my first collection, but every time I’d try to work on edits it kept getting bigger and bigger and wouldn’t fit in Walking the Wrong Way Home.

I was inspired to write Oliver after meeting so many intelligent, high-functioning kiddos with Down’s and William’s Syndrome when I worked in pediatric cardiology. In the sixteen years I performed cardiac ultrasounds, I lost count of how many of these patients and their families left such big impressions on me. I loved this story so much and spent years listening to the characters. I put Oliver away thinking it might turn into a novel, but when I tried to stretch it out, I lost some of the magic.

A few months ago Robert Gwaltney and I made a pact to hold each other accountable and finish some writing projects. We’d get up at 4:30 in the morning, text each other, and write until we had to get to our jobs. We’d spend a few minutes while Robert was driving talking about what we’d accomplished. I was supposed to be working on my novel With a New Tongue Spoken, but a new collection of short stories kept yapping in my ear.

I worked on those most mornings even though the plan was to work on those once the novel was finished and out making the rounds looking for representation. Then out of the blue - about ten years after the first version was written – Oliver started coming to me in my dreams. Olivia (Oliver’s little sister and narrator of the story) and I compromised and Oliver became a novella.

People ask, how did you publish it in such a short time? It was a combination of luck, great timing, friendship, hard work, and magic that started with Robert’s texts before sunrise.

I want to tell you about the incredible generosity of Carolyn Haines. I was tickled to death when she offered to read Oliver and floored when she asked if I wanted her suggestions. Who wouldn’t want advice from a Harper Lee recipient and incredibly talented author of over eighty novels – a former assistant professor at the University of South Alabama who taught graduate and undergraduate fiction writing classes? I wasn’t surprised when she said Olivia reminded her of herself (she’s a little spitfire who speaks her mind) but I was surprised at how much she liked the first draft. Other than one spot where she pointed out where I got lazy – which I fixed real quick because she was absolutely right – there weren’t any other critiques. She did suggest I add a hint of foreboding to build what was coming (like the great teacher she is) and that suggestion made me look at the story from a completely different angle.

This is what a great editor does – just like Suzanne Hudson did with my first two short story collections, Carolyn did with Oliver. They both made me step away from the role of a writer and think like a reader. I went to bed thinking of Carolyn’s words and woke up the next morning with an idea that turned into one of my favorite scenes. It never would’ve happened without her advice.

Next, I reached out to Claire Fullerton hoping she would have time to give it a read and (fingers crossed) write a blurb because she’s been so supportive of my writing in the past. She took it one step further. Claire took out her red pen and corrected some grammar mistakes and typos my editing software missed.

I still can’t believe how lucky I am. When I thanked Claire, she replied, “My pleasure – it takes a village!”

And Kathy L. Murphy took time from her busy schedule to read it and gave it five diamonds, said Olivia reminds her of Scout… It doesn’t get much better than that!

Y’all, I can’t tell you enough how much I love this “village” of supportive and encouraging authors who make up the Pulpwood Queen and Timber Guy community.

Since I’m an indie published author and I have this weird post self-isolation ritual of making a book cover for every project I’m working on, all of the edits were done, and rewrites approved, there was no reason to put Oliver back in a folder. A project that started ten years ago took three months to finish.

Thanks to a little help from my friends.