When a recently divorced man heads to a summerlong pottery camp to recenter his life, he finds out escaping into his art doesn’t mean healing is on the horizon. GETTING CENTERED is an 88,600-word contemporary rom-com that will appeal to lovers of smart, character-driven stories like Linda Holmes’s BACK AFTER THIS, male-narrated stories like Dolly Aldterton’s GOOD MATERIAL, and anyone who binged The Great Pottery Throwdown and decided to give pottery class a try. I also think my manuscript will be a perfect fit for your list based on your desire for banter-filled rom-coms and well-drawn characters.
Declan Kelly is stuck. Pushing forty, reeling from a bruising divorce, recently unemployed, and technically homeless, decisions about his future are pressing in on him—but that’s tomorrow’s problem. Today, he’s headed to the Wayland Center for Arts and Life, a famed artists’ haven, where he’ll try to rediscover his purpose at a summerlong pottery camp after winning a prestigious scholarship.
Between painful memories of his failed marriage, clay that refuses to cooperate, and a lack of hot job leads, Declan’s summer is off to a wobbly start. But he slowly finds his center with two fellow artists: McManus, young and gender fluid, and Siobhan, a feisty teacher and the soon-to-be object of his affections. At long last, Declan is getting back on track.
Declan’s artistic progress isn’t impressing his emotionally distant father, however, who is refusing him a recent inheritance unless Declan immediately takes an unappealing job at a canning factor in his hometown. Declan doesn’t give leaving Wayland an ounce of thought until a quick series of setbacks knock him to the ground: the news of his unexpectedly paltry divorce settlement, the loss of a solid job prospect, and a disastrous kiln opening. His new confidence shattered and his options dwindling, Declan is pushed toward what he once thought impossible—letting his crippling self-doubt push him into his father’s manipulative orbit and abandoning both his artistic ambitions and deepening relationships with Siobhan and McManus.
Sean Driscoll, author 