Linda Carroll Made Me Cry

In the best possible way

The Trailer Park Rules on the shelf of my local Barnes & Noble. (Photo by Michelle Teheux)

If you read Linda Carroll on Medium or here on Substack, where she writes, Hello, Writer, you know what a storyteller she is, and that’s why I cried big blubbery tears when I read what she wrote about my book.

The Trailer Park Rules is the first novel I’ve published under my real name. I don’t need the validation of others to know it’s a pretty good book – no, that’s a lie. I do need the validation. 

I understood from the beginning that I was unlikely to sell millions of copies or make much money from this book. A person can dream, but I’ve been a writer all my life and I know expecting to make money by telling stories is about as realistic as expecting to get rich by singing songs or painting pictures. (The big exception is writing about how to make money writing – now that’s lucrative!)  

So if you write a book, you’re better off if you’re willing to settle for personal satisfaction and a bit of external validation instead of money.

The money works out for a handful of writers, but the ones who make the most are not necessarily the most talented. Most good novels are lost in a sea of other books, both good and bad. You don’t have to be happy about this, but you do have to accept it. 

I’ve written a lot

For 30 years I worked in newspapers, writing news and feature stories and editorials and columns. I later worked at an ad agency and wrote print ads and video scripts and radio and TV ads and digital advertising copy and taglines and everything else you can write. Then I published 21 genre novels under pen names. 

And then I started writing on Medium and Substack. And then I decided to write The Trailer Park Rules.

You know, if you read me at all, that I care about things like working class issues, systemic poverty and income inequality. You’ve probably picked up on my passionate arguments that our supposed meritocracy is a lie. Our system exploits the poor for the profit of the wealthy, and this enrages me. 

I may have lost some of you in that paragraph. If you’re still reading, let me tell you that my novel doesn’t hammer any of those nails at all. It just tells the story of some people living in a trailer park. The characters are made up, but they’re very much like real people who are living real lives.

Most people live in bubbles. They know people who are in their bubble, and they make assumptions about others based on that

I grew up in a trailer, though not in a trailer park

But my journalism career connected me with everyone from homeless people to the wealthy and powerful. That’ll pop your bubbles.

If you’ve always lived fairly comfortably, you might not know any good, intelligent, hard-working people who are crushed by student loans but couldn’t finish their degrees for reasons beyond their control, but you’ll ache for the dilemma faced by Jimmy and Janiece Jackson.

You might not have ever met people like Darren, an imperfect man whose back injury plunged him into poverty but who most people assume is faking it. You can’t admire Darren, but he does not deserve what happens to him.

You won’t be surprised by Angel. She’s exactly who you think of when you think about an irresponsible welfare mother. But you’ll meet her daughter, and if what happens to Maya doesn’t shock you to the core, then I have failed and should never write another word.

I doubt you know any sugar babies personally

So get to know Kaitlin. I started off seeing her as one kind of person, but she really surprised me by the end. I think her redemption started when I learned a little bit about her backstory – it’s really just one quick throwaway line that tells you everything you need to know about how she got onto the wrong path. 

I say I “learned” about her backstory because even though I made all these people up, they sure feel real to me. I like to invent a world and characters, breathe them into life, and then sit back and see what they do. For me, writing a story is an awful lot like watching a movie, except if I stop typing, the movie stops rolling. The only way to find out what happens is to put in the time at the keyboard.

Sure, I edit and revise, but during the initial writing process, I don’t feel like I’m really doing the creating at all. It’s like putting your fingers on a ouija board’s planchette and feeling like some unseen force is doing the writing even though it’s really all you.

Linda calls Nancy, the trailer park manager, “so utterly unlikeable it’s a delight.” I feel sorry for Nancy. I think we’ve all known a Nancy at some point – she has an inflated sense of her own importance and has no idea how everyone else regards her. 

Shirley is an unlikely trailer park resident. She lived comfortably most of her life and had plenty of assumptions about the poor – before she joined them. To her credit, she finds a way to be happy in her new circumstances.

Jonesy, frankly, is my favorite

Come on – he’s a reporter working his ass off for shit wages thanks to a hedge fund ruining the newspaper where he works. I’ve lived that life. He’s me, if I were a single guy living in a trailer instead of a married woman living in a house. His one remaining dream that keeps him alive is his novel. Same here. 

And if this one doesn’t make money, well, I’ll just have to keep writing. If any of my novels do make money, I’ll have the time to write even more of them, which will mean I’ll be able to spend time every day with my fingers on the keyboard, watching the story create itself. 

That in itself is almost reward enough. A little validation from the occasional reader who gets what I’ve done is even better.

Linda got what I was trying to do with this novel

She took “walk a mile in my shoes” and made a novel out of it. Makes you stop and look at the lives of people living in poverty. Maybe even make you think twice before you yap about what poor people are doing wrong.

Thank you, Linda. It feels so good to know I accomplished what I wanted to with this story. But I really did cry when I read your review.

About Michelle Teheux

I’m a writer in central Illinois. If you like my work, subscribe to me on Medium or Substack. My new book is The Trailer Park Rules.