Thirty Chapter Titles (With Quotes)

Today marks one month until the release of Whalers. I first want to thank everyone for their support leading up to the release of the book. I’ve had some really dedicated beta-readers, lots of shares on social media, and a many people express how anxious they are for its release. I thank you all for the help you’ve provided.

To celebrate just one month until release, today I decided to do something special, and give anyone reading this blog a slight sneak preview of the text. Just below, I will unveil the chapter titles of all THIRTY chapters, as well as provide my favorite sentence from that given chapter.

Before I begin, if you have not watched the book trailer for the novel, make sure to click the link to check it out.

WHALERS: A NOVEL

Chapter 1: The Last Gasp of Fall

Because this isn’t a story about tying things up in a neat little bow. It’s about unraveling that bow, one knot at a time, and discovering what’s left after everything falls apart.

Chapter 2: If I Had a Time Machine

Whether we’re scrutinizing how tall the neighbor’s grass has grown or the fact that the White male wants to teach Hemingway, we judge each other constantly. It’s why I couldn’t stop obsessing about what other people were thinking about me.

Chapter 3: Festa!

I thought about telling her to go home, to go somewhere a lot safer than the feast, but she didn’t see me, so I did what most teachers do when they see a former student out in public. I turned my face away and pretended I didn’t see her.

Chapter 4: Unable to Connect

Everyone has a boss. Sarah was mine. Matthews was hers. Sheila and Michelle were his. The ladder continues to climb until you reach the superintendent, and if you keep climbing, eventually you reach God.

Chapter 5: Ernest Hemingway’s “Cat in the Rain”

Each night, Janelle glanced at the empty beer bottles on the living room table, grabbed each one by the neck, and dumped them into the recycling container.

Chapter 6: Open House

Some lived far enough that there was no point in driving home only to turn around and make the trip back. So they stayed in their classrooms from 7:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. in the middle of the work week. I’m surprised the Geneva Convention did not outlaw that.

Chapter 7: The Bathroom Sink

That’s life. Sometimes it comes in the form of a bathroom sink. Maybe one day, when Heather looks back on her life, she will recognize that as a momentous day of growth. One can only hope.

Chapter 8: John Grisham’s The Innocent Man

All that being said, when the police showed up at my door at three a.m. the night after Open House, the first person I thought of was Ron Williamson.

Chapter 9: Charter Schools

The Board of Education signs off by saying, “Apologies to the public schools. We know you have thousands of kids you service, and your projectors don’t work, but there are ninety-five kids who still believe in birds, and something needs to be done about that.”

Chapter 10: Virgil

He told me his name was Jason, but could call him Jay, Coach C, Mr. C, or JC, whichever I preferred. He told me he was my co-teacher for sixth grade English. I’d never met anyone with so many nicknames before.

Chapter 11: Interrogation

It was the epitome of irony. The English teacher, the purveyor of books and poetry, sitting silently, unable to find the words to make her stay.

Chapter 12: Divorce

Maybe that’s why they liked Karl more than me. He called, and I just thought about calling.

Chapter 13: Reputation Ruiners

I could tell you about the math teacher who was cheating on her husband with one of the custodians, but I don’t feel like getting into it. My point is, these things stuck to you. That’s just the way it was.

Chapter 14: Alex Turner’s Tranquility Based Hotel & Casino

But what if I, too, evolved? Did I have it in me to record an album on piano? Could I ditch the denim jacket for leather or trim the beard into a goatee?

Chapter 15: Ducks on the Pond

But the ducks were gone, the pond’s surface empty and frozen in time. I envied them, their ability to leave this place behind without looking back.

Chapter 16: Burner Accounts

My Twitter algorithm usually gave me news on sports and pop culture, while my TikTok mostly featured women shaking their asses to snippets of popular music. I’m sorry if that’s weird. I’m just trying to be honest here.

Chapter 17: Ms. Melissa Hendricks

Maybe that’s something the charter schools had over us. If anyone acted that way at Karl’s school, they would have been sent packing in a heartbeat.

Chapter 18: The Pink Ladies

You can’t get that anywhere else. The King’s Inn was a space where the rules of the real world strictly did not apply. It’s no wonder their advertisements online called it “a magical place”.

Chapter 19: How to Live Forever

People say that to live forever is impossible, but every time I read The Stranger or listen to Nirvana’s Nevermind, I am reminded that Camus and Cobain, though long dead, feel more alive in their works than I did in the flesh.

Chapter 20: Vince Gilligan’s Breaking Bad

He turned his Zoom name to “Benis,” and when the teacher tried to challenge him on it, he got his mother to send an email that said all his friends call him “Ben is” and he didn’t realize anyone would see that as an inappropriate word.

Chapter 21: Date Night

I wished I had ordered the piccata as well, but there’s something strange about going out to dinner and ordering the same thing as your partner. I’d rather eat something I didn’t enjoy as much than feel like the waitress was judging us.

Chapter 22: Tayshaun Prince

The three of us lounged out on the couch and did what men do when they get drunk. We yelled at each other about early 2000’s NBA basketball.

Chapter 23: Yann Martel’s Life of Pi

I think sometimes there is no truth, just a gray, murky middle ground somewhere in between where all of us are living, desperately searching for the black or the white.

Chapter 24: St. Dominic’s

That’s all I feel comfortable sharing in this book, to be honest. Mr. Buckley suspended Angel and the other student for three days. They were back in class the following week.

Chapter 25: Revision History

The room was in complete disarray, with abandoned jackets and notebooks strewn across the space. Broken pencils crunched underneath my feet. Desks were scattered haphazardly all over the room, not a single chair was flipped onto the desks, and candy wrappers littered the floor.

Chapter 26: Felix Gardner

Everything I’m about to share is stitched together from fragments—stories I’ve heard, assumptions I’ve made. I can’t say what’s true and what’s just noise, so don’t hold me accountable for anything, please.

Chapter 27: Three Meetings

“Anyway…Yeah, I’m going to try. I think that’s all I can do at this point. So that’s why I’m here. Thank you for listening to me. It really means a lot, being listened to.”

Chapter 28: A Letter

PS: This is Katherine. I hope you don’t mind, but I borrowed the Ernest Hemingway short stories book off your desk and have been reading them during lunch. I get why you like him so much now.

Chapter 29: Table for Five

From the pond in the park where I longed for ducks, to the Acushnet River, to Watuppa Pond in Westport — everything became ice in December. But not the ocean. The ocean never froze.

Chapter 30: Kendrick Lamar’s Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers

I think that’s what is so powerful about art. It truly doesn’t matter what other people think of it or how much money it makes; creation, in itself, is therapy.

Whalers releases in ONE MONTH. Tuesday, February 18th. Can’t wait for you all to read it.

Love you guys.