Pinterest, Podcasts & Pocky. Oh, We Also Got a New Government!

Canada has a new, Liberal Government! In case you aren't Canadian, let me explain how good it feels to be free of Stephen Harper to you: I feel like I live in Narnia and the White Witch has finally been banished. I feel like Beatrix Kiddo standing over Bill's dead body. And hey - Justin Trudeau isn't too hard on the eyes, either. . .

Okay, enough. Less politics, more pop culture! I'm working on SOSAS & Shadows today (finishing up SOSAS and starting to draft Shadows) so I'll keep this short. You need to watch Scream Queens. I'm watching it. I'm in love with it. I'm also re-watching MTV's Scream (which you'll remember once gave me nightmares) with my parents, and I'm gonna start iZombie sometime soon. I've heard good things about it.

There was talk of Podcasts on Goodreads, and I plugged Sarah Enni's podcast First Draft, which is fantastic. I honestly need more people to listen to this, because it's incredible. Back when I didn't have home internet during the winter I would download episodes of this at the public library and listen to it all day while I was home, so I felt less isolated.

http://firstdraftwithsarahenni.tumblr.com/tagged/podcast

Each episode is an interview with a YA or middle grade author, and they're some cool talks about writing, creating art, and even growing up and embracing yourself. Some of them get surprisingly deep (and funny!) so check them out!

I'm listening to the new Selena Gomez album. Especially the newest single:

And that's about it. I still have 5000 words to write tonight, and a bunch of dishes to do, so that's all for today, but I'll have another post up sometime this week!

The First Day of School: A Summary

So yesterday was my first day of school. I have to admit, I've been anxious about this for weeks. The end of summer was getting closer and I had no idea if I would be back in school daily or on the same program I'd been on last year, which was one where I basically home-schooled myself. I had to meet with the principal yesterday to figure out what would be happening.

I think a lot of people are surprised to find out I'm still in high school, and that always surprises me. It shouldn't, honestly, because I'm too old to still be in high school, so the assumption makes sense - but I'm not used to people taking me seriously enough to not immediately assume I'm an adult imposter. So why am I in high school? I failed two grades, among other things. I don't know how I failed grade one, so don't ask - I don't even know how it was possible, but it happened. In grade six I started skipping school a bunch, and had to repeat the year. I kept skipping after that, but it didn't get me in academic trouble until high school.

Anyway, I'm supposed to graduate this year. And I'm hoping I'll have all of my credits by the end of the first semester, so I won't even have to do this for the entire year - just half. But in order to accomplish that I needed to get on packages - the aforementioned home-schooling program - so I could work at my own pace and earn as many credits as possible.

The day started at 4:30am. I woke up in the dark, sweating, with my heart racing. I'd had another one of those serial killer dreams. I seem to be fixated on this idea this week, and I keep dreaming about it. It's because I watch too much Scream the tv show and eating cold pizza before I go to sleep, but it's giving me thrilling dreams and fantastic ideas, so I'm not complaining. Except for the whole awake at 4am part.

I was nervous as soon as I woke up. If I didn't get packages then I'd be spending the entire year in stuffy public school classrooms, the ones with the pastel painted cement block walls and desks with plastic 'wood finish' veneer. I was also nervous because if I did have to do that, it would be my last time ever being in high school - and if I get packages then that last time has already past. And that makes me sort of sad.

Public school raised me as much as my parents did. The reading corner in Ms. Genge's first grade class, trips to the library down the hall in her third grade class later on. I can remember my first crush - which, surprisingly enough, was on a girl - in Ms. Hachey's fourth grade home room. I remember pumpkin carving in the gym of my first middle school in grade 6, both times around, remember getting sent to the office for snapping at teachers, remember the first time someone told me I was their friend and I really believed them. I can remember ignoring our teacher lecturing us in social studies in the sixth grade so we could talk about Twilight and New Moon, and I can remember how after the longest detention of my life the same teacher who'd given it to me told me she thought I had what it took to be successful.

I remember my home room teacher in the second attempt at sixth grade, Mrs. Holden, lending me books and talking about my interests with me after class while I helped stack chairs - not because she had to, but because she was genuinely interested in talking with her students. I remember a teacher in the seventh grade giving me ten dollars to buy a cd at a school event, and I remember the first teacher who ever snapped at another student for using a gay slur, because one of his classmates could be gay. One of the first people who ever really made me believe I was talented and clever was my ninth grade English teacher, and I can still remember the vice principal of my high school keeping bins of snack bars and pastries and instant ramen just inside the door of his office so kids could grab a snack. I can remember spending music class holed up in the book room across the hall or the empty auditorium upstairs, pretending to learn guitar while we spent the entire hour talking, becoming friends.

This school system has been my home for 13 years now, and it will be that and a half by the end of this semester. It's a lot to say goodbye to, no matter how it ended.

I ended up sandwiched in the principal's office with him and a girl I've been friends with since the second grade, and we both ended up getting packages. So that's it, I sat in a high school classroom for the last time the first semester of the eleventh grade, and now I'm never gonna sit in one again.

I'll never eat lunch in the cafeteria again - or, more realistically, trudge uptown through snow for off-campus takeout - and I'll never spend break between each class gossiping in the chaos of a crowded hallway, or skip a class to go for coffee or hide out in the basement hallway near the pool, where everything smells like chlorine.

I'm strangely sad about it. And I'm excited, too, because now I can focus on work and graduating and writing. It's just odd to leave such a big chunk of my life behind. It helped me become who I was and learn a lot about the world, and it's sort of melancholy to watch it all slip away, even if I'm elated at the thought of a new chapter starting. And a new chapter is starting. Because I'm free by the end of this year. I can move wherever I want. I can do whatever I want. I can pursue my career without having to sacrifice time to school or other commitments that are forced on me. I'm, y'know, an adult.

And hey, the rest of the day was pretty good, too: I spent a lot of it sitting in the grass at the public park smoking with friends, but I also spent some time at an old playground called Rainbow Park that I love, and I got to hang out with some people I haven't seen in months because of life getting in the way.

So yeah, I don't know. It was wild, and nostalgic, and I'm a bit torn up about the fact that it's the last first day of my high school years. I'm a bit sad that it's my last first day with the friends I've been with since elementary school.

I'm set to spent an entire semester sitting around in my pajamas, mainlining coffees, writing, and squeezing in episodes of America's Next Top Model in-between bouts of obsessive school work. So I have a lot to do, and I'm gonna go get started, but I just needed to observe this strange sequence called time for a minute.

Gimme Them Gold Coins

Today's - post title from Off To The Races by Lana Del Rey*

So, I'm working on a bunch of new stuff right now, and I don't want to say too much about it because it's all in the early stages, but the two things I can talk about are Blood of Midnight and Shadows.

Blood of Midnight is the first novel in a duology about vampires, called the Evernight Falling Duet, and right now I'm working on the first rounds of edits. It's tough, because I have to add in not just several new scenes but several new chapters, and there's a good chunk near the end of the novel that needs to be rewritten entirely as well.

Shadows is a New Adult novella, and it's the first in a series about witches called Charmers living in Seattle. It's dark and gritty and I'm just drafting it right now, but I love it.

The problem is, my brother has been coming home a lot lately, and since his room is right below mine I can't stay up all night or I'll keep him awake, and he needs to sleep so he can get up for work. But I work best at night. So as a compromise, I've been coming down to the basement every night to work for a few hours. It's really dingy and dismal and cold down here - it's all concrete floors and walls, and a half-finished wood stove (the stove is installed and works, but the stone wall behind it isn't finished. there's a couch and three tables from my brothers old apartment, and my dad's drumset under a big clear tarp. The dogs live down here, so they're hanging out with me as well, and there's a bunch of random stuff around, along with the recycling bins and a bunch of shelves full of spray paint and tools.

Some of my favourite weird things down here include:

• A painting my uncle did years ago of an eye, which has real dragonfly corpses glued to the canvas.
• An old black and gold locker from a closed down school.
• A giant transparent drape for Halloween that has pictures of grim reapers embossed on it and takes up an entire wall.
• An antique red siren light that no longer works, and isn't (hopefully) attached to an alarm/siren system anymore.
• A porcelain statue of a female cherub with a pearl strung flower crown on, holding a bouquet.
• A cardboard cutout taller than me from when The Avengers was in theatres.
• A giant green plastic chalice that says 'lucky' in big rhinestone letters on the side.

So yeah, it's a big haven of weird mismatched things that somehow works. We've got stuff from my Grandma's apartment we took after she died, boxes of my aunts stuff that she has no room for at her place, boxes of stuff from my brother's apartment, old art my uncle left here, junk my dad has collected...

I've been writing about 2000 words a night, which isn't as much as I'd like, but I got drunk at my brother's birthday party last week, fell over, and really hurt my wrist, so that's all I can take without the pain getting too bad/annoying. And you know, I think I might quit drinking. I used to self medicate with alcohol before I was even legally old enough to drink, but it always just makes my depression worse in the days after. I  lose interest in the things I care about and get stuck in that state of pure, all-consuming apathy where you just can't bring yourself to feel anything or care about anything. I used to smoke a lot of weed too, but it actually made me feel good and relaxed, and it never affected me that way alcohol does, so yeah, I think I'll probably stop drinking.

The past few weeks have been pretty wild. My best friend and my cousin came out. My friend was here for like two weeks, and my cousin was only out for two days, but we all had fun. We walked down to the river and spent a couple hours swimming, and then we all sat down and worked on some outlining for a collaboration novel we might do. We spent days on days filling ourselves up with fried steak and rice and grilled cheese and just eating a bunch of comfort foods and coffee. We ended up watching Scooby Doo zombie island, which we all know is the best Scooby Doo film ever made...right? We also watched a lot of Bojack Horseman, which is half incredible and half heartbreaking.

Anyway, I've been spending the last week thinking about nothing but Scream the TV show and rewatching the episodes to try and figure out who the killer is, but mostly I'm just sad they killed off Riley. That said, I can see how it was necessary considering she was the only character anyone liked enough for her death to have an emotional impact. I think either Brooke or one of the guys will die next, but who knows - maybe it could be reporter chick instead.

I also just finished reading my ARC of Crystal Kingdom by Amanda Hocking, and I really can't believe the Kanin Chronicles is already over. I cried like three separate times while reading this book, guys. I feel personally victimized by Amanda Hocking.

So yeah, all in all, that's what I've been up to. Trying to enjoy my summer and getting way too caught up in pop culture. I got paid my royalties from Amazon recently, so I ordered Zoe Marriott's Name of the Blade trilogy, and I'm thinking I might go into the city tomorrow for some Chinese food and book shopping in the morning.

I'm gonna have some news about new stories and releases in the near future so keep checking back for new posts if that interests you! I have a new project coming up after Shadows that I'm really excited about, but it's still in the early stages right now so I can't say too much yet!

-Oliver