We went quite a while around here without finding any local authors, but now it seems like we discover one every few weeks.
Our latest discovery in this field is Concord native Troy Patoine, who has written two books, the latest being Nalapazoo.
The book was released in August, but we only learned of it last week when Patoine reached out to us, wondering whether we might be interested in writing something about it.
Of course, we were.
Patoine has spent his whole life living in either Concord or Bow, and he writes in his spare time – he has a day job with the phone company and also has several duties with the Freemasons, so the writing is squeezed in whenever he has the chance.
“Right around the time (my first book) Red Moon came out (in 2007), I thought of it but I kind of put it aside because I do have a day job – between work, family and the Freemasons, it’s basically a hobby,” Patoine said of finding time to write Nalapazoo.
He gets his ideas for his stories through the things he experiences in his daily life, and sometimes it’s hard for him to concentrate on one thing because so many story ideas come to him so frequently.
“Unfortunately, these stories fill my head all the time and I have to kind of shut my brain off sometimes,” he said.
We know how that feels.
So how did he come up with the plot of Nalapazoo, which follows a young girl trying to cope with the loss of her mother through talking to an imaginary friend (or is it really imaginary?)?
“I was sitting in my cubicle,” Patoine said, “and the ladies around me were talking about their kids and their imaginary friends, and I had one as a kid, too.”
At the time, Patoine was working on the other three books meant to complement Red Moon (Red Moon was released as Part 3 of a four-part series, though none of the others exist yet), but once he got this imaginary friend idea in his head, he had to drop those other projects and start this new one.
We’ve mentioned that Patoine has a job, a family and a position within the Freemasons, so you may wonder how he ever found any time at all to sit down and write a 177-page book.
Remember that monthslong FairPoint strike that stretched from 2014 into 2015? Patoine was among those workers, and he put his time to good use by writing Nalapazoo, a story which he had in his mind for years but didn’t have the chance to write until the strike.
Now the book is for sale on Amazon – you won’t see it in stores anywhere, so make sure you look for it online. Paperbacks can be had for $13.99, hardcovers for $26.99 and Kindle versions for $3.99 (or free with the Kindle app).
