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Broken Toys
Title
Broken Toys.
Creator
Eliot, Robin, Pugh, William, Milanes, Cecilia, Nwakanma, Obi, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description
This novel is about a character, Felicity Gourd. She's Cinderella, but she lives in twenty-first century Boston and knows the Cinderella story as well as anyone else. She's also one of a small number of people who are able turn into the creatures represented by their childhood toys. Felicity's toy was a mouse. Her godmother's was, of course, a fairy.Through her godmother, Felicity enters the community of Toys, where she finally finds a home. But the Toys are the only people who stand in the...
Show moreThis novel is about a character, Felicity Gourd. She's Cinderella, but she lives in twenty-first century Boston and knows the Cinderella story as well as anyone else. She's also one of a small number of people who are able turn into the creatures represented by their childhood toys. Felicity's toy was a mouse. Her godmother's was, of course, a fairy.Through her godmother, Felicity enters the community of Toys, where she finally finds a home. But the Toys are the only people who stand in the way of Clarity, a secret organization that wants to place humanity under the rule of a personality-type based master race. The Toys' victory comes at the cost of most of their lives, leaving Felicity to find her own way, with neither stepmother nor fairy godmother.
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Date Issued
2018
Identifier
CFE0006999, ucf:51624
Format
Document (PDF)
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0006999
Hidden Variable
Title
Hidden Variable.
Creator
Harms, Heather, Hubbard, Susan, Rushin, Patrick, Neal, Mary, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description
Hidden Variable is a novel that blends linear storytelling with the novel-in-stories form. It poses questions about the nature of identity as well as the feasibility of personal power, particularly with respect to disorders of the mind.Darla Pierson, the novel's protagonist, is a woman in crisis. She is steeped in self-loathing brought on by the knowledge that she has, in effect, become her dead father(-)a genius with an epic libido, habitually using and discarding people. Her father has...
Show moreHidden Variable is a novel that blends linear storytelling with the novel-in-stories form. It poses questions about the nature of identity as well as the feasibility of personal power, particularly with respect to disorders of the mind.Darla Pierson, the novel's protagonist, is a woman in crisis. She is steeped in self-loathing brought on by the knowledge that she has, in effect, become her dead father(-)a genius with an epic libido, habitually using and discarding people. Her father has another habit that Darla doesn't share: being struck by lightning. After the second strike kills him, Darla makes a conscious attempt to recreate herself. But soon the new Darla sinks into depression, and her act begins to crumble, damaging her and those around her. Throughout the years, she and her family members experience periodic clashes with nature, never fully realizing that sometimes the most powerful, most devastating opponent comes not from without, but within.
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Date Issued
2012
Identifier
CFE0004784, ucf:49774
Format
Document (PDF)
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0004784
The Clockman Movement
Title
The Clockman Movement.
Creator
Martin, Allison, Jones, Anna, Thaxton, Terry, Smith, Anne, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description
As a genre of Neo-Victorian fiction, Steampunk is largely identified by Victorian aesthetics and technology centering on clockwork and steam power. The novel The Clockman Movement seeks to emphasize the (")punk(") in (")steampunk(") by exploring the social concerns of colonialism, including sexism, racism, and classism, while embracing the more fantastic and entertaining aspects of steampunk.Before all other labels(-)Nordlunder, daughter, woman(-)Eve Traugott is a machinist. Or she would be,...
Show moreAs a genre of Neo-Victorian fiction, Steampunk is largely identified by Victorian aesthetics and technology centering on clockwork and steam power. The novel The Clockman Movement seeks to emphasize the (")punk(") in (")steampunk(") by exploring the social concerns of colonialism, including sexism, racism, and classism, while embracing the more fantastic and entertaining aspects of steampunk.Before all other labels(-)Nordlunder, daughter, woman(-)Eve Traugott is a machinist. Or she would be, if one of the machinists in the capital would hire her as an apprentice. She thought it would be simple to find a machinist willing to take a chance on her in Aufziehburg, the mechanical center of the State of Nordlund, but so far the Aufziehburger machinists have been as narrow-minded as the one she left behind in her hometown.Her inheritance dwindling, Eve sets her sights on the clockmen, the State's automaton workers, hoping that studying them might help her learn enough to gain an apprenticeship. When her curiosity draws the unwanted attention of Statesman Bristed and the winders, procuring an apprenticeship becomes the least of Eve's concerns.
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Date Issued
2016
Identifier
CFE0006476, ucf:51439
Format
Document (PDF)
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0006476
The Never-Knowns
Title
The Never-Knowns.
Creator
Haskins, Ryan, Marinara, Martha, Poissant, David, Rushin, Patrick, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description
The Never-Knowns is a novel about a high-intensity behavioral group home for adults with severe to profound developmental disabilities, its residents, and the staff who are employed there. Focusing on plural protagonists, no single narrative is ever fully realized or resolved, leaving only a cryptic aggregate of experiences, revelations, and trauma.In a typical suburban neighborhood, much like any of us grew up in or now live, there is a house down the block that no one discusses openly. This...
Show moreThe Never-Knowns is a novel about a high-intensity behavioral group home for adults with severe to profound developmental disabilities, its residents, and the staff who are employed there. Focusing on plural protagonists, no single narrative is ever fully realized or resolved, leaving only a cryptic aggregate of experiences, revelations, and trauma.In a typical suburban neighborhood, much like any of us grew up in or now live, there is a house down the block that no one discusses openly. This house seems like all the rest, well landscaped and tidy. Although three times a day much coming and going of college-aged kids and ne'er-do-wells whispers of something covert, obscure. This house is many things to many people; a workplace, or home, or burden, or profit, or prison.An unfortunate, absurd one-act play echoes infinitely for those kept here. Constance is a thirty-something disabled woman who wakes every morning by sprinting nude in a wondrous fury toward the first person or thing she can destroy. Malcolm is a new staff member who snorts meth and masturbates in his car during shift breaks. Terry is a twenty-five year old deaf mute who believes his clothes dresser is God and always knows exactly how many feet are between him and every other place he'd rather be. Jake is a veteran staff member who has finalized his plans to take all the residents of the house deep into a forest and abandon them.Using disjointed, prolix, and often dissonant approaches to storytelling, The Never-Knowns seeks to convey the perspectives of developmentally disabled individuals who possess few or no language skills, and who are so far detached from their own existence that their understanding and interaction with the world is simultaneously grotesque, beautiful, and confounding.
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Date Issued
2013
Identifier
CFE0004861, ucf:49684
Format
Document (PDF)
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0004861
A Clutch, A Pride, A Murder
Title
A Clutch, A Pride, A Murder.
Creator
Miles, John, Rushin, Patrick, Neal, Mary, Poissant, David, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description
A Clutch, A Pride, A Murder is a linked collection of seven short fiction pieces and one novella that examine a world much like our own, but with the cover revealed(-)a world laid bare, exposed by its desires, its emotions, its beauties, and all its machinations. All of the stories involve, either directly or indirectly, the fictional Ohio city of Milton. Some of the stories take place within this seemingly typical American city, while others only involve characters coming from or in some...
Show moreA Clutch, A Pride, A Murder is a linked collection of seven short fiction pieces and one novella that examine a world much like our own, but with the cover revealed(-)a world laid bare, exposed by its desires, its emotions, its beauties, and all its machinations. All of the stories involve, either directly or indirectly, the fictional Ohio city of Milton. Some of the stories take place within this seemingly typical American city, while others only involve characters coming from or in some cases returning to this unassuming location. Regardless, the events of these stories either in cause or effect all have their roots in Milton.The world at large also plays a part within these pages. While the stories themselves are completely fictitious, many of the peripheral events that happen beyond the principle storylines are pulled from today's real-world headlines: a series of increasingly devastating tornadoes in the American heartland; a mysterious suicide of a wealthy industrialist; the amazing technological feats of a nation's space program; the heinous crimes of a serial kidnapper. These events, each a worthy story in their own right, filter into the events of this collection, much as they do in our world(-)through the media. Television, radio, newspapers, social media all are outlets of information and current events making the stories of others part of our lives as we all live out our own personal adventures. I utilize these true-life events to add scope and breadth to the world of my fictions so that these events might at times inform and offer new perspective on the principle narratives. And while these true-life stories unfold in the backgrounds of their fictitious hosts, the hope is that the reader will be able to have a better sense of the timeline as the events unfold over the days, months, and years that these stories inhabit.Humanity in all its wonder and woe is on full display within this collection. From the journey of idyllic love to tragic romance, and the thin line that turns passion to obsession, we will see all the places theses complex emotions lead: a young botanist travels half-way around the world for a chance to reconnect with a lost love; a young girl's love for her family pushes her to extremes to protect her brother; a man's love for his city challenges his morality; the bond between brothers is put to the test; and a young man's reverence for history, and his love of family leads him down a dark path. How far will someone go to protect themselves? Their loved ones? Or even their way of life? The lengths these characters will go, or in some cases will not go, are central to the stories in this collection. I intend to show those lengths and tell my characters' all too human stories.?
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Date Issued
2013
Identifier
CFE0005034, ucf:49988
Format
Document (PDF)
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0005034
Toward the Red Shore
Title
Toward the Red Shore.
Creator
Bomhoff, Gary, Rushin, Patrick, Roney, Lisa, Thaxton, Terry, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description
A fictional novel utilizing third person limited narration from the perspective of the primary character, Ilya Kollide, who narrates the story as though it were happening in his head as it occurred, with frequent embellishments. He has come to live near an old mansion on the Trans-Siberian Railroad, named Neimasaurus, to find an antiquated, dusty world of faded aristocracy. Temporarily orphaned at the age sixteen by the recent death of his parents, he has traveled four thousand miles to live...
Show moreA fictional novel utilizing third person limited narration from the perspective of the primary character, Ilya Kollide, who narrates the story as though it were happening in his head as it occurred, with frequent embellishments. He has come to live near an old mansion on the Trans-Siberian Railroad, named Neimasaurus, to find an antiquated, dusty world of faded aristocracy. Temporarily orphaned at the age sixteen by the recent death of his parents, he has traveled four thousand miles to live with his last living relative, an uncle named Demetri, whom he has never met. The year is 1990, only this is not a world where the rule of the Tsar was supplanted by the Soviet Union. Instead, it is a logical exploration of what Russia might resemble, had communism never taken root. While the fantastical may or may not occur, depending upon how the reader chooses to interpret the point of view of the narrator, the setting in and of itself is not meant to be fantastical. Ilya discovers that all the servants who work there are deaf, as is his uncle and his own now deceased parents, whom he carries around in an urn after mixing their ashes together. While working at the great estate of the Neimasaurus family, Ilya discovers a surprising numbers of stories and people who both parallel his own experiences and serve as allegorical warnings toward his future mistakes in life. He becomes obsessed with the idea that he is to blame for his parents' death and sets out on a quest to bring redemption to the wounded inhabitants of the estate, only to discover that not everyone wants to be helped. In fact, they want him dead. They see him as an allegory, just as he sees them. To the young man Shoji Yamano, Ilya represents everything he was, and can no longer be. As such a reflection, he resolves to shatter Ilya like a mirror. The novel charts Ilya's personal growth from a neurotic wreck, incapable of normal interaction with people, to a young man capable of not just self-sacrifice, but an understanding of what it actually means to literally sacrifice himself for the well-being of someone he barely knows. He learns to value time spent with others rather than dwelling within a narcissistic and lonely fantasy world.?
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Date Issued
2013
Identifier
CFE0004976, ucf:49591
Format
Document (PDF)
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0004976
Escape Artist
Title
Escape Artist.
Creator
Mujica, Alejandro, Rushin, Patrick, Bartkevicius, Jocelyn, Neal, Mary, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description
My thesis, Escape Artist, is a composite novel written as a fictitious memoir, similar in style to Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried, that describes my experiences between the years 2001 and 2011. During that time I went through Marine Corps Boot Camp, became a military police officer, patrolled Yuma, AZ, was sent to Iraq for a seven-month tour as a security detail just before the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom, and made it back home four years later. The novel also looks into my...
Show moreMy thesis, Escape Artist, is a composite novel written as a fictitious memoir, similar in style to Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried, that describes my experiences between the years 2001 and 2011. During that time I went through Marine Corps Boot Camp, became a military police officer, patrolled Yuma, AZ, was sent to Iraq for a seven-month tour as a security detail just before the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom, and made it back home four years later. The novel also looks into my struggles with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder symptoms, how they affected the people around me, and what I've been trying to do to remedy them (or ignore them).
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Date Issued
2012
Identifier
CFE0004788, ucf:49732
Format
Document (PDF)
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0004788
FRAT STAR
Title
FRAT STAR.
Creator
Holic, Nathan, Leiby, Jeanne, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description
This thesis, a social novel in the tradition of Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities and Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, is all at once an attentive first-person study of a twenty-something man close to his cracking point in his first post-college job, a detailed exposé of national fraternities, and the sweeping panoramic view of an entire generation of over-programmed college students searching for direction. Frat Star follows a fragile college...
Show moreThis thesis, a social novel in the tradition of Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities and Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, is all at once an attentive first-person study of a twenty-something man close to his cracking point in his first post-college job, a detailed exposé of national fraternities, and the sweeping panoramic view of an entire generation of over-programmed college students searching for direction. Frat Star follows a fragile college graduate named Charles Washington, who takes a position as an "Educational Consultant" with a national fraternity in his first semester after graduation. For sixteen straight weeks, he drives across the country, from college to college and fraternity house to fraternity house, meeting with alumni and students, and living on frat house couches and in seedy off-exit hotels. As he travels, the pressure mounts for Charles to convince his family and friends back home that this is a "Real Job" and that his work actually matters to the business world, but at each new fraternity house he visits, his yearning for the old college atmosphere grows--the beer, the parties, the girls!--threatening to send him into a frightening tailspin. How can he be a professional when the temptations of youth still seem so attractive? And before Charles can sort out what is happening in his own life, he finds himself stuck in a vicious tug-of-war between students, alumni, administrators, and the national fraternity, when he must deal with one particularly abrasive undergraduate fraternity and the aftermath of its disastrous decisions. Spanning thousands of miles, from Florida to California, from Illinois to New Mexico, this thesis takes us inside fraternity houses, into their attics and their basements, behind the scenes of their rituals and ceremonies, inside their parties, inside their heads, giving us a view not only of the power of the national fraternity, but the disconnect between alumnus and student, between Baby Boomer and Generation X and Millennial. Incorporating research as varied as the generational studies of Howe and Strauss, and Alexandra Robbins' psychological study of the "Quarterlife Crisis," Frat Star stretches across the country, stretches across genre, stretches from text to illustration, but is ultimately the human story of a young man's longing for morality, independence, and purpose in a world he simply has not been prepared to understand.
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Date Issued
2007
Identifier
CFE0001587, ucf:47491
Format
Document (PDF)
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0001587
A LONGER SPOON: A NOVEL
Title
A LONGER SPOON: A NOVEL.
Creator
MacDonald, Elizabeth, Hubbard, Susan, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description
The intent of this thesis is to create a novel-length narrative based around a premise conceived in a workshop setting. The novel, while containing elements of fantasy, will be character-driven and feature psychological character development as its primary goal. Lawrence Caligny, a young cook newly instated at a castle, is coerced by his mother, an infamous witch named Mallory, to concoct a sleeping potion for the country's crown prince, beckoning comparison to the "Sleeping Beauty" fairy...
Show moreThe intent of this thesis is to create a novel-length narrative based around a premise conceived in a workshop setting. The novel, while containing elements of fantasy, will be character-driven and feature psychological character development as its primary goal. Lawrence Caligny, a young cook newly instated at a castle, is coerced by his mother, an infamous witch named Mallory, to concoct a sleeping potion for the country's crown prince, beckoning comparison to the "Sleeping Beauty" fairy tale. As Lawrence prepares for his opportunity, he unwittingly befriends the prince and his sister and stumbles across an assassination plot. Being thoroughly inept at witchcraft himself, Lawrence fails to put the prince to sleep when he gets the chance, knocking out the entirety of the castle inhabitants and staff instead. The story concludes with the revival of those in the castle and Lawrence being fired from his (ignominious) position in the kitchens, but otherwise pardoned in acknowledgement of his help in stopping the assassination.
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Date Issued
2014
Identifier
CFH0004611, ucf:45322
Format
Document (PDF)
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFH0004611
Stuffmobile
Title
Stuffmobile.
Creator
Greenberg, Ted, Rushin, Patrick, Hubbard, Susan, Neal, Mary, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description
The leitmotif of Stuffmobile, a modern day Florida-based novella, is that of relational healing: a son with his father, ex-lovers with one another, and, even more challenging perhaps, a son making peace with his dead mother. New beginnings are explored, both as resurrection of long dead feelings and as starting afresh after loss. A husband finds distraction in a covert project after his wife's death, so much so that his preoccupied isolation worries his two adult children. The son comes to...
Show moreThe leitmotif of Stuffmobile, a modern day Florida-based novella, is that of relational healing: a son with his father, ex-lovers with one another, and, even more challenging perhaps, a son making peace with his dead mother. New beginnings are explored, both as resurrection of long dead feelings and as starting afresh after loss. A husband finds distraction in a covert project after his wife's death, so much so that his preoccupied isolation worries his two adult children. The son comes to investigate, and his malfunctioning car leads to the beginnings of reconciliation. The characters here struggle to understand and be understood, to avoid hurting others and avoid being hurt, all while searching for respect and love: just another normal day of the human experience.
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Date Issued
2012
Identifier
CFE0004189, ucf:49001
Format
Document (PDF)
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0004189
CUBAN JAM SESSIONS IN MINIATURE: A NOVEL IN TRACKS
Title
CUBAN JAM SESSIONS IN MINIATURE: A NOVEL IN TRACKS.
Creator
Rincon, Diego, Rushin, Pat, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description
This is the collection of a novel, Cuban Jam Sessions in Miniature: A Novel in Tracks, and an embedded short story, "Shred Me Like the Cheese You Use to Make Buñuelos." The novel tells the story of Palomino Mondragón, a Colombian mercenary who has arrived in New York after losing his leg to a mortar in Korea. Reclusive, obsessive and passionate, Palomino has reinvented himself as a mambo musician and has fallen in love with Etiwanda, a dancer at the nightclub in which he plays-...
Show moreThis is the collection of a novel, Cuban Jam Sessions in Miniature: A Novel in Tracks, and an embedded short story, "Shred Me Like the Cheese You Use to Make Buñuelos." The novel tells the story of Palomino Mondragón, a Colombian mercenary who has arrived in New York after losing his leg to a mortar in Korea. Reclusive, obsessive and passionate, Palomino has reinvented himself as a mambo musician and has fallen in love with Etiwanda, a dancer at the nightclub in which he plays--but he cannot bring himself to declare his love to her. His life changes when he is deported from the United States at the height of the Cuban Missile crisis without having declared his love. Through the thirty years chronicled in the novel, Palomino does all possible in his quest to return to the United States to find Etiwanda despite the fact that he knows she has grown to be a fantasy, an obsession of his imagination. Palomino's quest takes him to the United States and back three times, as he becomes more and more desperate, as he becomes involved with drug traffickers and for-hire murderers like Polo Norte, as he loses track of what it means to feel alive. Palomino is trapped in a tug-of-war between his rational desire for a normal existence and his irrational but inescapable longing for Etiwanda. In the end, his desperation to get to Etiwanda brings the underworld of Polo Norte to her doorstep. "Shred Me Like the Cheese You Use to Make Buñuelos" tells the story of Polo Norte, Palomino's antagonist, on his last day on earth, as he is followed by a writer who has agreed to watch him commit suicide. Together, the stories explore the history and nature of the Colombian Diaspora in the United States, and the violent circumstances surrounding the relationship between both countries and the migrants stuck in the middle of it.
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Date Issued
2009
Identifier
CFE0002627, ucf:48202
Format
Document (PDF)
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0002627