Want a Teaser?

I'm kind of in a blogging slump, if you haven't noticed. I have a few post ideas, but they all kind of require actual work put into them, and as I prefer to blog by the seat of my pants, I don't like having to plan things. I'd say I'm lazy, but I prefer to call it carefree, spontaneous, or any other synonyms for "lazy" that have pleasanter connotations.

So, while I cannot yet offer you a well-written, well-thought-out blog post yet (although I will soon be writing a review for the amazing book I'm reading right now)... would you like a Teaser Tuesday?

Yes?

Okay. This is from my WIP, The King of Growing Up (hooray for finally titling it!). Here we join our main character, Hunter, and his love interest, Taylor, on the night before Taylor leaves for L.A. I hope you enjoy it!

*

I eat a bag of chips for dinner with Assassin’s Creed on pause. Dad’s still in the garage, Mom’s still being cranky couch bitch, so I figure there’s no official meal tonight. I have no problem with a Dorito dinner. Unfortunately I look like a total slob when Taylor walks in.

He pauses in the doorway, taking in the sight of me in my boxers, slumped in a beanbag chair with a bag of chips. And then he sees the bouquet of red roses on the floor next to me.

“Uh, what’s up?”

I swallow my mouthful, put the controller down, and motion him closer. Taylor closes the door and sits down next to me, still looking confused.

“What are the flowers for?”

“I got them for you. Because I love you and I don’t want you to go.”

Taylor closes his eyes. “We’ve been over this, Hunter. I’m leaving tomorrow. You can’t pull this shit now.”

“I know that, I know I can’t make you stay. But...”

What the fuck am I trying to say? While I’m stumbling over my words, making half-starts on sentences I don’t know how to finish, Taylor pulls rose petals between his fingers. One of them falls off the flower and he rubs it against his lips.

“I’m going,” he says softly. “If you can accept that, we can have a really nice time tonight. If you can’t...”

I swallow. “I know you’re going. But... is this the end?”

He doesn’t answer right away. Damn it. Fuck.

Blog Award!

I've received a blog award!

From Margo! Go check out her blog :)

Thanks!

Graduations, Proms, and Summers, Oh My!

We're coming up on that time of year again, the year of endings and new beginnings. Graduation. Although I graduated high school two years ago, I still feel really nostalgic around this time.

Graduating was hard for me, all of it. Not just having to move on, make new plans, and become a grown-up (something I'm still decades away from, I'm pretty sure), the whole ordeal of graduation itself was hard. The stress of having to cross the stage in a stupid-looking robe with the entire town staring at me, being forced to spend almost a whole weekend with classmates I didn't even really like that much, and my actual prom night -- ugh.

My graduation ceremonies went like this.

-- on the Friday evening, we had the walk-across-the-stage ceremony

-- After that, a mocktail party.

-- After mocktails, casino night (not actual gambling, we had fake money, but still, boring as hell)

-- Saturday afternoon, another mocktail-type party

-- Saturday night, prom

When I say "prom," I mean that we rented out the local university (really swanky building), had a fancy dinner, then we played Wii on a giant screen, had a Velco obstacle course, mechanical bull, karaoke, photo booths, Tarot card readers, and just generally ran around all crazy -- in our fancy dresses and tuxes.

Sounds fun, but point I was so burnt out. I'm the kind of person that can have fun with a group of people for an hour or two, but I really need alone-time to recharge, and I just didn't get that the whole weekend. As a result I was completely miserable and spent most of "prom" by myself in the gardens outside or on the balcony, staring out across the valley at my small town and wishing I was somewhere else.

*emo alert*

And of course, after grad weekend there were after-parties and house parties for another month, since our grad stuff is held at the end of May and school is out near the end of June!

Anyway, I'm now writing a book where a graduation is the opening setting, and I'm aware that my prom/grad experience was probably pretty atypical. So I'm asking you: what was your high school grad like? Did you have the typical American prom, or did your school do something a bit different? If you read about a prom like mine in a YA book, would it ring true to you, or would it be hard to relate to?

Tell me your stories!

What a Day!

Friday the 13th was not kind to me.

First off, Blogger was doing stupid things all day. There was the Blogger Apocalypse yesterday, and today the Google Reader kept re-posting blog entries that had been posted days ago. I'd get all excited to see a certain blogger had written a new post, then I'd realize that it was the same one from last week. I was about ready to punch something.

But my bad luck carried over from yesterday. I had a surgery on my left big toe (I have chronic ingrown toenails, I periodically have to have nails removed and parts of my nail bed scraped away... eugh!), and my pain meds just decided to stop working. I was up all night long, sleeping in short two-minute bursts before being awoken again by the pain. It only hurt when I was lying down, somehow, so I spend most of the night pacing around my house since it barely hurt at all when I was standing. No painkillers worked, and I took a lot of them. Probably too many.

I was able to take a short nap a bit later, but I'm basically running on no sleep and my body won't let the painkillers work. In short, this has been the worst day ever.

But... I managed to do some writing! :D Am I a complete freak for enjoying these horribly painful sick days because I can distract myself by torturing some characters, instead?

I hope your Friday the 13th was a heck of a lot better than mine!

My WIP and ways it likes to torture me

Sorry my blogging has been kind of sporadic lately. Other things have been taking up my time and, to be honest, I'm not really sure what to blog about. I have a few ideas for posts but they all require time to put together, and I like blogging when it's spontaneous and doesn't need a lot of HTML and pictures and fiddling around with formatting. I prefer to just... type things.

Anyway, so one of the things that's been keeping me busy is this WIP of mine. Stupid thing. When I say that, though, I say it out of love. *cough*

I've been working on it since last summer. I still can't believe that. Sure, it went on a hiatus during NaNoWriMo, and another hiatus when I needed to focus on my revision of FAKE, but it's still the longest I've ever spent on a first draft. I'm almost at 65,000 words, which is longer than FAKE, but it's nowhere near done. It's just so complicated. There's the main plot, but there are all sorts of subplots as well. The story is about Hunter and the girl who becomes his ex-girlfriend, Hunter and his boyfriend, Hunter and his parents, Hunter and his relationship with his peers, Hunter finding his place in the world, Hunter trying to get out of his small town. There are just so many facets of the story, it's becoming kind of a monster. I love it so much, though, and I really believe in it, so I HAVE to keep on truckin'.

Revisions are going to be a pain, though. But aren't they always? ;)

Follow Friday (7)

Hello! I haven't done a Follow Friday in a good while, and I feel like it today! Follow Friday is hosted by Parajunkee's View. The question this week is:

Circle time! Time to share. What character in a book would you most like to be, what character in a book would you most like to date?

My answer:

Oooohhh... I think the character I'd most like to be is Hermione from (duh) Harry Potter. I would love to be that studious, but I'm just not! All throughout this past term at school, whenever I really had to buckle down and work, I'd tell myself "Be like Hermione!" to the point where I wanted to get a WWHD? tattoo on my hand! Alas, at least right now, I'm really not cut out to be the super academic type.

As for the character I'd like to date... gotta say Etienne St. Clair from Anna and the French Kiss. He's just soooo dreamy and funny and he sounds like a complete blast to be around. I'm still going on about this book months after reading it! If you haven't, you're really missing out -- on a great read AND a very cute boy!