I'm going to have to buy this book. I graduated from CCS as well.
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CCS grad to publish novel
By JONATHAN HEWSON
Staff Writer
Budding author and former Cooperstown Central School graduate Eugena Pilek plans to release her first novel, "Cooperstown," this July.
It is a work of social satire, playing on quirky, small-town drama, Pilek said. The novel, fittingly, is structured into innings instead of chapters, and is set between the 1950s and the 1970s.
The story is about a psychologist who moves to Cooperstown from a larger city. The book follows him as he and his family attempt to adapt to its small-town culture. Pilek said the psychologist's personal struggles "parallel the plight of the town."
The characters in the book are all fictional, but the issues they deal with and the backdrop are not. Pilek makes reference to many well-known landmarks, including Doubleday Field and the statue of James Fenimore Cooper.
The story deals largely with commercialism, Pilek said, asking, "When is it too much."
"When I lived there, things were a little more subtle," Pilek said. "Now, it is like a mini-amusement park in itself."
Pilek, 34, said she always knew she wanted to write this book, which actually evolved from a short story about herself. Writing in her spare time, she said the book took her four years to complete.
"[Releasing a book] is very surreal," Pilek said. "It is a process that goes on and on-like waiting for a baby."
Pilek said, with her first book, she is "throwing her work out to the world." But that is not holding her back. She said she has already begun working on a second novel, but is not ready to release any details on it.
During the day, Pilek works in New York City as a books editor for US Weekly magazine and as a book reviewer for the Media Mix section of the Washington Post.
Pilek, a CCS graduate in 1988, went on to Wheaton College in Norton, Mass., where she graduated with a degree in English. She later traveled and lived abroad in Edinburgh, Prague and Taiwan.
While abroad, she met her fiance whom she plans to marry this summer in Cooperstown.
Pilek has dedicated her first novel to her high school English teacher, Nick Alicino, who passed away last year. He had a profound impact on her writing, she said.
* * *
CCS grad to publish novel
By JONATHAN HEWSON
Staff Writer
Budding author and former Cooperstown Central School graduate Eugena Pilek plans to release her first novel, "Cooperstown," this July.
It is a work of social satire, playing on quirky, small-town drama, Pilek said. The novel, fittingly, is structured into innings instead of chapters, and is set between the 1950s and the 1970s.
The story is about a psychologist who moves to Cooperstown from a larger city. The book follows him as he and his family attempt to adapt to its small-town culture. Pilek said the psychologist's personal struggles "parallel the plight of the town."
The characters in the book are all fictional, but the issues they deal with and the backdrop are not. Pilek makes reference to many well-known landmarks, including Doubleday Field and the statue of James Fenimore Cooper.
The story deals largely with commercialism, Pilek said, asking, "When is it too much."
"When I lived there, things were a little more subtle," Pilek said. "Now, it is like a mini-amusement park in itself."
Pilek, 34, said she always knew she wanted to write this book, which actually evolved from a short story about herself. Writing in her spare time, she said the book took her four years to complete.
"[Releasing a book] is very surreal," Pilek said. "It is a process that goes on and on-like waiting for a baby."
Pilek said, with her first book, she is "throwing her work out to the world." But that is not holding her back. She said she has already begun working on a second novel, but is not ready to release any details on it.
During the day, Pilek works in New York City as a books editor for US Weekly magazine and as a book reviewer for the Media Mix section of the Washington Post.
Pilek, a CCS graduate in 1988, went on to Wheaton College in Norton, Mass., where she graduated with a degree in English. She later traveled and lived abroad in Edinburgh, Prague and Taiwan.
While abroad, she met her fiance whom she plans to marry this summer in Cooperstown.
Pilek has dedicated her first novel to her high school English teacher, Nick Alicino, who passed away last year. He had a profound impact on her writing, she said.
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