It was the best of times…it was the worst of times.
No, actually, it was just the worst of times. When the COVID-19 pandemic first plagued our world last spring and brought with it overwhelming feelings of fear and uncertainty, we all had to dust off things we never thought we’d have to.
We had to dust off nest eggs when jobs were lost, ingenuity when times were tough, patience when the walls closed in on us, and inner peace when there seemed to be only turmoil surrounding around us.
For Dustin Lynn, it proved to be the perfect time for him to dust off something he had that many did not at the time.
Because Dustin had a dream. And his dream had a 15-year-old reality just sitting there on a shelf waiting for him.
When he was just 23 years old, Dustin tackled one of his huge life goals.
“I started writing when I was 12 years old, and when I was 16, I knew I wanted to be a writer professionally,” he says.
“And I knew if there was a chance for me to have stature as a writer, I would have to have something major—a major piece of work, whether it was a novel or a big book of short stories, or I won some award.”
“I looked at my favorite writers, and they were all novelists, and I knew that was my target,” he says.
“I needed to write a novel.”
And so, at 23 years old, Dustin wrote. While he was also attending school at West Kentucky Technical College, Dustin devoted his life to his craft.
“I would wake up and write for a few hours, have coffee, go to school, have more coffee, write for a few hours, and go to sleep,” he says.
“The internet was still fairly young, so I didn’t have a lot of resources online. I would have to go to the public library to make sure I had all my ducks in a row as far as historical facts,” he says.
“The novel and school just basically consumed me. I didn’t do anything else. I just completely focused on the book.”
When he finished, Dustin had created The Façade of our Lady, a work of fiction he used to ruminate on many different issues that affect people in rural areas, like his hometown of Paducah.
“I was trying to express my concern over certain things that were happening to the area around me and things that were happening to people that I knew. I used this story partially to express it,” Dustin says.
Issues like The Imminent Domain Act, environmental impacts of big businesses, and interpersonal struggles all spring forth in The Façade of our Lady in intertwining stories featuring characters Helen and Nigel. In the story, Helen, a reclusive philanthropist fights to keep her family’s bankrupted vineyard while other parties loom over the prospect of the lucrative property. As she struggles, she also assists one of her tenants, Nigel, as he finds himself in his own struggle against a legal system that seems stacked against both.
Writing the novel took its toll on Dustin. When it was finished, he did something surprising.
“It took me eight months, and I was writing eight hours a day, four days a week,” he says.
“When I was done with the first draft, I was just done with it. In a sense, I was almost fed up.”
“So, I left it on the shelf.”
Dustin pursued another career that he was passionate about, rekindled a romance with an old flame, and the pair had twins and started their lives together. Everything was going well for Dustin.
Until 2020.
“I was doing my dream job, and I made good money,” Dustin says.
“Then I had the rug pulled out from underneath me.”
When the pandemic hit, he found himself without a job and without income to support his family. He needed a plan.
So, he dusted off The Façade of our Lady and wondered if the book might be ready to live its life out in the world.
He started to work again, using beta readers to workshop and help revise the book. And, of course, he used his now nearly 40-year-old perspective to color the work.
“To be honest, I’m glad that I waited to publish it,” Dustin says.
“After 15 years, looking at that book, I really had a fresh set of eyes.”
When he was finished, this time he sought publication immediately, choosing Kindle Direct Publishing to self-publish the manuscript.
“The publication of my novel gave me a sense of accomplishment,” Dustin says.
In its first year, Façade is drawing some high praise from readers. Sold exclusively through Amazon, the book has a 79% 5-star rating and reviews that include:
The novel is captivating and introduces a depth of understanding of small communities, self-interests of the characters, and revelations by the people in the story of who they are and how they got there.
This was such a refreshing read that I couldn’t put the book down once I started.
I’m definitely glad I took a chance on this new novelist. Hoping this is the first of many works from him!
Ladies and Gentlemen: We Have a New Great American Author
Dustin says he is happy that Façade is receiving positive praise, and he hopes to receive even more input from readers to help hone his writing in the future.
“I appreciate the positive reviews and, although I savor them, I also want to know what I could have included, deleted, or changed to improve the novel,” he says.
Once Dustin had realized his dream of being a published novelist, he recalled yet another dream from his early twenties.
“When I was writing The Façade of our Lady, I wanted to make sure that I was emulating the absolute best writers, the ones that were publicly and critically considered the best writers, so I was reading books that won the Pulitzer Prize,” Dustin says.
“I started reading those books so I could get an idea of what I needed to do and how I needed to write. Once I was done, I thought it would be really cool if I could, since I was emulating those writers, if I could also try to compete for the Pulitzer like they did.”
On May 4th, Dustin will learn if his debut novel will go down in the halls of literary history with those authors he admires.
In the meantime, he’s not resting on his laurels. He’s back to writing full-time. And he has many irons in the proverbial fire, including a collection of short stories of the macabre and a trilogy set with supernatural themes.
And if 2020 and its effects have taken a great deal from Dustin, they’ve also given him the answer to one of his longest dreams.
“Being a young writer, I wanted to write not THE great American novel, but something that would be on bookshelves, and libraries, and bookstores and maybe talked about in classrooms.”
“And now I have done that.”
An excerpt from The Façade of our Lady by Dustin Lynn:
They turned around and to Eichner’s horror aimed their shotguns in his direction. They split up and circled the sacks. Pressured by the weight of the grain, Eichner tried with all his strength to push the heavy sacks but nothing budged.
Outside, the two agents revering from their freight train jump bean chasing it, calling to their team. One of them aimed his shotgun at the sky and pulled the trigger, in the chance that gunfire might gain their attention. The buckshot decelerated and curved in midflight, suddenly yanked up into the black sky. They dropped their guns, laid facedown and covered their heads. The agent that fired his shotgun began to hyperventilate. He pulled off his ski mask. The other one, laying five feet away in a small puddle of mud water, looked up at the radio tower. It swayed from wind pressure. A subterranean cloak of bats burst out from beneath the tower and flew into the dark forest. Shingles off the tower peeled off and flapped in the wind like notebook paper. In a crackling explosion the tower splintered apart and boiled into the sky. The agents crawled to the ditch beside the railroad.
The freight train strained against the suction of the tornado. It reduced speed first, then the wheels stopped rolling and the long chain of freight cars slid backwards. Metallic pops sounded like gunfire. The train groaned from the stress. Bolts popped from their holes, whizzed through the air and stabbed into trees with the power of a nail gun. The last freight car, weighed with Eichner and eight agents, tilted first, then without vacillation it derailed, causing a domino effect down the entire length of the train. The freight cars toppled over and slammed into the edge of the forest. Trees uprooted, the wreck dug ruts deep enough to contain three feet of water. The tornado bypassed the farm by ten acres and moved west. For a moment there was a settling of the boondocks artery followed by silence long enough that animals decided it was safe to come out.
You can purchase your copy of The Façade of our Lady on Amazon.
