Valerie Speaks her Mind.

Woooooah, two posts in one day? Yes. But this one is a real post and the other isn't even a paragraph. So it's all good.

Here is a snippet from my novel for NaNo :D

“Oh. My. God.”

Yes! He thought. She would admit her love for him, and that Andrew was just okay. He would be her boyfriend. 

“I cannot believe you Alex! Really? Now?”

Okay, this wasn’t how he’d expected it. “I spent the past two years waiting for you to man up and ask me out!” she shouted.

“But… You’re all about empowerment. I thought you would…”

“I knew you liked me! You just didn’t have any guts! You never have!”

“Valerie…”

“No! You missed your god damn chance. I gave you every opportunity, and you only muster up the courage when I’m already with someone else!” 

“I just wanted to wait until the right time.”

“And the right time is now?!” She breathed a deep sigh. “Look, Alex. I moved on. I decided that I’m too strong to sit around pining after a child who refuses to be anything else. Now Andrew is here, and I like him. I really really like him, and he likes me. I deserve this okay? I’m not going to ditch someone who appreciates me, and I appreciate, just because you decided jealousy was the right motivator for honesty.”

Yep. Valerie is awesome. I'm going to go a write a crying Alex. Bye!

P.S: Have you checked out Pickle And Potato? Because you should. 

P.P.S You know you're best friends when you're deciding to make a large block of text in Times New Roman, and you catch yourself thinking, "This is Potato's favorite font!"

Excited for NaNo

(Partially writing so you know that i still exist)

NaNoWriMo is coming up and I am HUMONGOUSLY excited.

This year I'm writing a mystery story within a mystery story. This will be my first year writing from a single character perspective, and (unless you count Nate Blackwall, and really, who does?) my first time writing a male character in first person. Oh yeah, it's a really complicated plot too.

This might be a travesty. But it could also be glorious. Anyways, I thought I would give you a brief introduction to my characters (sorry no pictures, my scanner hates me):

Alex Cohen

Our hero. A sixteen year old boy who is really into detective novels and mysteries. He's a member of several online mystery forums. His favorite series is about a Private Eye named Jack Flint, and his sidekick Arthur Johnson. He thinks Arthur Johnson is kind of stupid. He has always wanted to investigate something, but he doesn't want anyone to have to die first. His best friend is Valerie Sun, and he's had a thing for her since fifth grade. She knows this.

Valerie Sun

If Alex Cohen is quirky, Val Sun is downright weird. Her hobbies include playing the violin, keeping a  top secret daily journal for the best eight years that she allows herself one sentence to describe each day,  and drawing dead people. Yes. She enjoys watching the news and drawing people who died. This hobby disturbs her friends, of which she has four. She could have more friends if she wanted, but she finds most people uninteresting. She is completely aware of Cohen's little crush on her, and she thinks he would make a great boyfriend, but she spends a lot of time denying this to herself.

Jessica Barret

Known to her online friends as "irene_addled16," Jessica is pretty shy. Her most prized possession is a striped scarf in Ravenclaw colors that she got signed by Evanna Lynch at a convention. She really enjoys speculating about TV shows online. She feels braver on the internet, anonymous. She's really funny when when you get to know her. One of her closest online friends is "jflintfan." They met once at a Baltimore meetup at the Washington Monument (not the big one in DC, the littler one in Baltimore. Duh.) She learned that his name is Alex, and that they lived on opposite ends of the city. She collects fossilized shark teeth.

Lilith Sun

Valerie's younger sister. She finds her sister's hobbies strange to say the least. They usually get on pretty well, unless Lilith's had a bad day, or Val has one of her kooky friends over. She's fourteen, and in a punk band called Gray Night with Symon Cohen and Lani Walsh. She's not overly fond of Lani, and thinks she can't play the guitar for beans, but she puts up with her because she's Symon's girlfriend and Symon is an awesome singer. Lilith is proud to be the only punk rock cellist in her school. She dyed her hair black for her fourteenth birthday, and ended up really annoyed that it wasn't much darker than her natural hair color. She gets really happy when someone notices her jet black hair, but she doesn't show it externally.

So these are just a few, but needless to say, they're pretty important :)

Travelers Through Worlds

So, I've recently noticed a recurring theme throughout my more recent stories, and I find the differences and similarities fascinating. I kind of wonder what it says about me, but all of these stories involve a relatively average teenaged girl, travelling to a different world, and discovering something.

Some of you will (hopefully) recognize The Old House, and it's every-girl protagonist Sara Kelly, so I figured we may as well start there and work in reverse chronological order.
I'll give you some stuff about the character, a brief description of the other world, and a paragraph or two about the character's experience there.

*

The Old House 

The Character: Sara Elissabeth Kelly, age 15

The Other World: A totally different steampunk world where some people have clocks for faces, and crime is rampant.

Interesting Fact: Sara is the only one of my "travelers" without a love interest. ALthough, throughout the whole story, she is helping to rescue Lydia's fiance.

My favorite excerpt:

She gestured at Sara’s beat up lime green high tops which her best friends had all signed at the end of year nine instead of her year book. Katy’s signature was the biggest. She had written it with a big black sharpie, covering half of Sara’s left shoe. She wished that she had tucked her phone into Katy’s clothes before they left, but it was still in the pockets of Sara’s carefully ripped jeans at Katy’s house. 

It probably wouldn’t work anyway, she thought.  She still had no freakin’ idea where she even was, beyond room 17 at Rennal’s Inn and Tavern. She was being dressed like a doll by criminals, in a strange inn filled with clock-people and murderers behind a magical door. That’s it! She thought angrily, I’m going home, grumpy old lady or not!

Searching For Solace

The Character: Solace Estragón, age 16

The Other World: Several different chemical induced "lucid dreams" created by the character herself in a sci-fi hospital.

Interesting Fact: Originally, I had imagined Solace as Indian (as you can kind of see on the cover I made), although as I was writing, she sort of became Hispanic, and a scene about her mom's Mexican hot chocolate is one of my favorites in this travesty of a NaNoWriMo. I guess sometimes characters write themselves.

My favorite excerpt:

“That’s the most elegant Architect Haze I’ve ever seen,” whispered Coles, full of awe. “She’s made herself God.”

And she was, swirling and turning, gliding along, making her own world. Every movement, mirrored by new life springing up behind her, in a dance of creation.

Suddenly, she stopped moving, she stood still with her arms reached over her head. Noah and Coles thought the screen had frozen. After a few seconds, a low buzzing noise started up, and a slow smile crept onto Solace’s face. 

The buzzing grew louder, and they saw that it was coming from a fleet of approaching helicopters. Solace sat down, still smiling, and the helicopters opened fire.

The helicopters fired relentlessly, it looked like chaos, but Solace knew better.

They shot down the first tree Solace had made, until it was a flaming pile of timber, and then moved onto to the one directly next to it.

The bombs rained down, copying Solace’s dance exactly, horribly following every twist and turn she had made. 

Her garden was a beautiful maze, of swirls and bends, and the helicopters set every blade of grass on fire in the exact order they had been created. 

It wasn’t chaos. It was order at it’s finest.

The Boy With Violet Eyes

The Character: Adelie Rennal, age 14

The Other World: A mirror image of her own world, although the people who inhabit it are very different than in her world.

Interesting Fact: You may recognize Adelie from The Old House (although Sara's excerpt up there doesn't have her in it, she is a main character there as well. I created her for my first NaNo, in which she is a boring, meek, mary sue with pretty much no redeeming value except her faith. when I started The Old House, I "recycled" her, so she could have some redemption for the utter mouse she is here.

My favorite excerpt:

I sigh and look out the window to the place where I saw the boy two days ago, and at the setting sun, and he appears.

He doesn't walk to the spot, he literally materializes before my eyes.

I shakily add to my diary:

The Boy with the violet eyes stands in the alley. I watch him through my bedroom window, and he is eternal. He looks my age, but his amaranthine eyes tell another story all together. He looks a thousand times wiser than Aunt Luelle and her verses from the Book of Creation, and I, Adelie Rennal of Ceruli City, Ceruli will meet him tonight.

I shut my book and stuff it in the waistband of my bloomers under my nightgown. I run to the window. He’s still there.

I throw open the window and climb out onto the apple tree, and promptly fall out trying to climb down.

December

The last month of the year. Wow.
I can't believe it's crept up on me like this.

It's getting colder, the grass is finally green from all the rain we've been having, and I'm learning something new about the universe:

Acceptance is not admission of defeat.

I didn't finish my book, and I'm okay with that. I'm ridiculously proud of myself, actually. How many people even challenge themselves to do this? More over, how many people give up?

I'm so proud that I wrote half a book in a month. It's pretty amazing when you think about it; I wrote 10244 words. and they were pretty good words too.

I'm pleased as punch.

I also learned another thing to accept. 

That boy I like? (Let's call him Jake)

He's not ready for anything more than friendship, and I need to accept that.

If I stand around waiting for him to grow up, I'll miss out on a thousand other boys, who are just as amazing.

That's not fair to me. 

So you know what? I am ready to keep Jake as my best friend, and maybe someday, he'll want me as more than that. 

But if I'm already taken, than Jake will have to deal.

Because I got the phone number of a boy in my karate class.

I Must Leave You (For a time)

i'm writing a novel this month, so i doubt that i'll post very often.
I apologize, and will leave you in the capable hands of the virtual fish gadget, and the beatles, because blackbird is stuck in my head:

Lady Elisabeth