Petaluma Native Returns to Promote New Novel

Some people seem to have writing in their DNA.

Kathleen Alcott, whose late father David Alcott was a longtime Argus Courier reporter, is only 23 years old, but has already penned a novel about love, family and growing up currently on the Copperfield’s best-seller list.

It’s called “Dangers of Proximal Alphabets” and is a story about three children who have adventures in a small town that bears a striking resemblance to Petaluma, talk and walk in their sleep and struggle to fill a void created by single-parent households.

On Friday, Alcott, who graduated from Petaluma High School, attended Chapman University and now lives in New York City, will discuss her book at a debut dinner at Risibi.

“I was influenced by a feeling you get when you get to a certain age and realize that the rest of your life is for you to choose,” Alcott says when asked what inspired her novel. “And it can be a big responsibility to decide who you’re going to care about you and who you’re going to let care about you.”

Alcott says she was intrigued by writing from the perspective of children—two boys and a girl—who have nighttime conversations and at first focused on developing her characters. Then she put the story away and only returned to it much later and delved into the writing.

“The characters’ adulthood is weighted by memories of their childhood and how they came to be the people that they are today,” she says. “They’re weighted by their creation myths and are trying to decide how they will live as adult people in the lives they have chosen for themselves.”

“Dangers of Proximal Alphabets” has received mixed reviews, with some praising the novel for its strong writing style and clever word usage and others disparaging it for a lack of plot, calling it “all flash and no substance.”

“Clever phrasing and surprising word choices do not a novel make,” wrote one reviewer on Amazon.com. “How does a reader evaluate a novel that has nothing to say when the nothing is said beautifully?”

The Debut Dinner series was launched this fall as an effort to connect local readers with up-and-coming writers.

“Hundreds of new novelists and their debut novels come out each publishing season,” says Vicki DeArmon, a spokeswoman for the bookstore. “Copperfield's staff did a lot of reading to determine our top three for the season.”

Besides Alcott, featured writers include Amanda Coplin, author of “The Orchardist” and Scott Hutchins, author of “A Working Theory of Love” who will discuss his novel at Santa Rosa’s Bistro 29 on November 12. Tickets for Copperfield’s Debut Dinners are $65 and include a five-course dinner and a copy of the book. They can be purchased at all Copperfield’s locations or online at copperfieldsbooks.com.