Aurora Dimitre's Books and Rambling

So, I'm in North Dakota. We get snow in North Dakota. Usually, we get at least one big blizzard a year, like, maybe don't leave your house kind of blizzard, and if I'm unlucky, this happens when I'm at home for Christmas break, which is about a twenty minute drive into town, where my job is. It's snowing right now, and my dad, who's in town right now, texted to say that it's bad out there, but I don't know if that's because it really is or because he was lying to me to make me feel better about calling in to work. See--I called in yesterday, too, because this blizzard, like any good blizzard, is a multi-day affair. I'm set on going in tomorrow, come hell or high water (even though it matters least tomorrow, because I was supposed to close the adult department today and yesterday), and the whole thing is supposed to end by noon tomorrow, which is when my shift is, but I felt so bad calling in today. Even though the weather's worse today.

One thing that my father does is that he like, can't be not bored with a job if he has it for too long. Right now he's a high school principal, and he's doing weird things with scheduling just so he doesn't get bored and leave, because now, especially since my parents are financially stable, he's reaching the end of his three-or-four-year 'I'm done now' period. I think this is something that I have inherited. I've been working at the library for just over a year now. I've been going to college at the same place for almost four--graduating this spring. I'm very ready to be done. I'm ready to be done at the library. I don't really crave stability, I don't think. I don't think I'll be able to be a traditionally employed kind of person. I don't know.Maybe this is dumb. Maybe I'll get over myself. But I could see myself moving along every two years or three years or so. The dream is head west, like it's 1875 a

I have one semester of college left. Today I wrote my last final, then finished packing up my car and drove off. It's a half hour drive home. I had Megadeth's "Countdown to Extinction" in my CD player. Last night I drove the other girl in my creative writing night class down to the professor's house for our last meeting and she heard the CD and said it made her think we were doing something more nefarious than just going to the last meeting of memoir, and I remembered that my taste in music is actually a little too hard for people, which is weird cause it's just Megadeth. And now I'm home. I'm sitting on the couch in the sunroom. My dad tore away the wall from the staircase so it's kinda creepy now. The sky looks like layered sherbet, or something, outside; I took a picture for my Instagram. I only have one semester of college left. I don't know what comes next. I don't know at all. I guess next semester I'll start applying for

The highs for the week are all in the thirties and forties. This is completely wild. Like--I can go outside without a real coat (not like I have a real coat, anyway, the closest thing I have is a leather jacket with some padding in it), I can go for walks, my car can start without yelling at me. Like, it's nice. It's really, really nice. I figure we're going to get a real winter at some point. Like the kind of winter I'm used to. Fuckton of snow, an inch or two of ice on all roads, temperature lows in the negative teens instead of the positive. Plus that wind chill (okay, we still have the wind, but it's still damn nice out). But I can go outside now. I can go for walks. My favorite thing, absolute best thing to do, is to go for a walk. I like to walk and listen to music, or podcasts, depending; my headphones I use for music are over-the-ear and they keep my ears warmer when it's cold, so even if I decide to go podcast I might put them on overtop anyway. I

I had my employee evaluation for work today. This wouldn't be worth mentioning, except I figured I should mention that, since I'm graduating, I'm probably not going to be sticking around much later than May. Finals week is next week. After that, I've only got one semester of college left and then I like, gotta be an adult or something. I don't know what I'm doing with my life. Or even with my 'career.' Or 'job after college.' Or 'way to not be homeless/living at home with my parents.' And like, I don't think it's super bad? It's just, people ask me what I'm doing once they clear up that I'm just English and not English Ed and I just get to smile and look vaguely at them and say, "Well, the farthest I have planned ahead is I'm dying my hair on Friday." I mean, I know I'll figure something out. Shit usually works out, I've realized. And if I just keep edging west, eventually I'll be. Somew

So I cut off my hair last night. It's not like my hair was super long, but it's not like I went and had someone who knew what they were doing do it. No, I got back from work (back from an impromptu Hugo's trip, cause ya girl needed powdered soup + wanted fancy pop), dropped my bags, changed into an oversized Guns'n'Roses shirt and Slytherin sweatpants with waistband so stretched you could fit two of me inside, kneeled in front of the mirror slapped on the back of my door, and just started cutting. I think, given the circumstances, it doesn't look too bad.  I mean, given the fact that I do not know how to cut hair, it's not so bad. And to be fair, the bottom half of it was so destroyed from the year and a half I spent bleaching it because, fun fact, hair doesn't like to be scorched with peroxide every two months for a year and a half. It hates it, even if you get to look like Courtney Love and you think that's kind of fun. I'm dying it

I  mentioned them in my post I  made about the music I've been listening to since I broke my Walkman (and, therefore, cannot listen to my Metallica cassettes), since I'd just gotten the CD and was minorly obsessed with "Unfortunates" (which I always have to second-guess the title of--this one is "Unfortunates", and the Metallica song is "Unforgiven", which I associate with the WM3, and "Unfortunates" is ABOUT the WM3, Jason Baldwin shared it on his Instagram ). But I'm not just gonna listen to one song and only one song over and over (even if that's definitely what I did the first couple days I had the CD because A Bitch Has No Self-Control, This Is Why I Need Cassettes You Pretty Much Gotta Listen Straight Through). But I've been listening a lot to the album in general, the one I got, Year of the Crow, which was like seven bucks on Amazon last time I checked, for the physical CD at least, and man--they're good. Since i

Okay, so I know that I'm 21, and I'm not exactly mad about not being more en train to being traditionally published. I'm really not--mad isn't like, the right word for it. But it's something that I think pretty much everyone who aims to be traditionally published feels. It's a sort of, not quite panicky but definitely melancholy feeling. It's writing a million things and socking them away on your hard drive, it's being super confused when anyone compliments your writing. I was one of those 'smart in elementary school' kind of kids. It was not hard to be the smart one in a class of eight, our four, or, I think at our height, around twelve? Thirteen, maybe? My school is, at this point, only doing better than the reservation schools in NoDak. My high school, elementary school, middle school, is in the bottom three per cent. So like, it's not hard to be the smart one in that environment. All that means is you can write a sentence and do your

I broke my Walkman on Tuesday. I just kept accidentally chucking it at the ground. You may be asking, "Aurora, who the fuck listens to cassettes anymore?" to which I answer "Shut up", and something about method writing, but the major consequence of this is that I can't just listen to Master of Puppets, the Black Album, and Ride the Lightning on repeat, because those are albums I only have on cassette. So I'm back to CDs. This is just like that episode of Degrassi where Spinner breaks his Discman and is like "Man, I'm back to cassettes!" which really spurs on his jealousy of Drake's new digital music player (was it an early iPod? I think it was an early iPod), except not, because it's the opposite, and also Spinner had an excuse, because it was like 2003 in that episode. Side note, the dude who played Spinner also played a drug addict who killed himself in juvie in a movie called Dog Pound, which I think is kinda fun. Anyway. Since I

I mean, this isn't like, I'm in a writing slump or anything cause I straight-up just don't believe in writing slumps. There's been times where I really haven't been feeling my project and I sat down and pumped out three pages anyway. Believe me, I'd love to be writing right now. It's just that I'm in research mode--I've got two and a half more books to read. And when I'm done with that, it's not even writing time yet. After that it's 'somehow smash these two first drafts into one first draft' time. And then it's... retyping? I don't even know. I did a weird thing with this project, and for some reason, I've decided that instead of letting it rest like I normally do and like is normally recommended for writing projects, I need to go straight back in. This is a need. I've noticed, though, in not actually writing or working on anything where I actually put words on the page that aren't scribbled notes in margins

Almost Home was hard. Devil's Knot was hard (and infuriating, the amount of times I had to just. put the book down and stare at the ceiling for a while was actually astounding, as were the amount of times I just wrote 'bitch' or 'AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA' in the margins). But somehow, Dark Spell has been the hardest to get through. I'm not saying it's bad because it's not, when I mean the worst one I mean it gives me anxiety. At this point I'm about fifty pages in, and it is rough. I'm finding myself skimming, a little. But it's not like a 'I want this to be over' skim, unless it sort of is--what I mean is, it's more of a 'I don't think my heart can take reading every word' kind of skim. I'm not even in the really bad part yet, this is still pre-trial. This case is kind of emotionally ruining me, to be completely honest, but the prospect of caring about something so much keeps me solidly in. And like, if it starts

A couple days ago I was watching the second Paradise Lost documentary, 'cause I'd just got the collector's edition and the second one was the only one that's not on Amazon Prime so I haven't seen it before, and even though I've heard it's by far the worst of the three I was pumped. My disc drive's been acting up for the past year or so, because I, admittedly, am not too gentle with my laptop and he is falling apart physically (sorry howard ilu), but I've found that if I either a) slam it shut really hard or b) smack it, it will acknowledge there's something in there. So it broke that night, and then I got to spend a good half hour prying it open. I used my knife for a while, but that wasn't doing anything except getting the outer shell off, because it's too big to get into all the little cracks. Then I did find a sewing kit and used a seam-ripper and I did get my DVD back, but it's safe to say that disc drive is never working again.

WM3, all I've been thinking about, did my NaNo on it, mandatory disclaimer on how I think they're innocent, etc etc etc But I started reading the books yesterday. Before this I'd been watching interviews, I listened to the LPOTL episodes (that's what started it all, thanks a lot Marcus Parks), I watched two of the Paradise Lost documentaries. But I started in on the books yesterday. I've got five of them. Almost Home by Damien Echols, Devil's Knot by Mara Leveritt, Dark Spell by Mara Leveritt, Life After Death by Damien Echols, and, just for fun, High Magck by Damien Echols. That's a whole lotta Damien. When it comes to this case, I have never felt as emotionally connected to Damien as I have the other two. I connected to and felt immense respect for Jason Baldwin, and I felt so hard for Jessie Misskelley. But Damien had always been... Damien. I felt terrible about what he'd been through but it was--well, it was Damien. I saw him as almost a ridicu

So, I finished NaNoWriMo last night. My project was a little weird, to be honest; I mean, it was really two first drafts of the same project? I mean, the first one was an incoherent mess of feelings, and the second one was more structured but had less soul, and it's not a first and a second draft, so I'm calling it version one and version two. And I know it's something that both needs research and needs to be spliced together. But I decided I'd take a day off, because I  needed to rewrite the first chapter of what used to be my favorite project I've ever done, because I feel like the first chapter was the absolute weakest point of that project. So I did that today. It was a day of pop-punk (at least until my Metallica cassettes came in the mail and I did listen to the entirety of Master of Puppets and most of the black album), it was a day back in that main character's head. And even though the two main characters are pretty different, it wasn't difficul

So I watched Devil's Knot tonight. If you've been around the past couple weeks you'll know that I've been deep in WM3 territory lately. Just fucking obsessed with the case. And I've been waiting for this movie. I mean, apart from the fact that It's supremely stupid that I watched it tonight, given that I, at this point, 11:15 PM, still have an essay to write and a long video to watch, among other things, I am. I am glad I watched it. I will say, I only cried once. I mean, tears only came out once. It was at the scene where Reese Witherspoon's character, Pam Hicks, goes to have the teacher correct Stevie's homework and then all the kids go up and hug her. I thought for sure I would cry more than that. But I didn't. Did not mean I did not spend most of the movie hunched over on a desk chair, my knees flat against my chest, bent all fuckin weird, shaking. I mean, there were no tears. Except that one part. So. But I will say. Even as someone who i

So, I didn't think that I didn't like Metallica. I knew the songs when they came on the radio--by the songs, I mean "Enter Sandman",  I knew "Enter Sandman" when it came on the radio--and I didn't mind it. When the idea of a half-sort-of method writing my NaNovel this year popped up in my head, and part of that being listening to a fuckton of Metallica, I was like, sure. I wasn't not looking forward to listening to Metallica (+other bands similar) for a month. I mean, "Enter Sandman" is a pretty sick song. So I'm really liking Metallica. In addition to a weird regression to a lot of things that haunted me during my freshman year grunge phase (thankfully, the full on Cobain obsession is not one of those things), I've been listening to the two Metallica CDs I checked out from my library on repeat. By the two CDs, I mean "Sanitarium", "Orion (Instrumental)", "The Unforgiven", and "Nothing Else Mat

Normally, when I post on here, it's in the morning. It's the first thing on my to-do list of the day. It's what I do before my first class of the day. But NaNoWriMo started today.  I have done none of my work for the day. None of it. And I've got a lot. The only thing that's crossed off is 'writing', because holy hell have I reached the 1667 for the day, I'm almost at 5k already. I'm pumped for this year's project, because I had the luck to fall in love with an idea two weeks before NaNo started and so now that's my life. I'm almost method-writing it.  See, me, wandering around a college campus in a black band t-shirt, listening to "Master of Puppets" on my Discman.  So I'm getting no sleep this month. I can tell I'm going to get no sleep this month. Everything is going to be this project. Is this healthy? No. Probably not. Okay, the sleep-deprivation is definitely unhealthy. My life being this one project

So I'm a true crime fan. This is nothing new; I think half of my posts this summer were about the Last Podcast on the Left, a horror/true crime podcast. And as someone who likes true crime, I do like learning about a lot of cases, a lot of atrocities, a lot of terrible shit that happened. It's a kind of morbid fascination, and let me tell you, a little creepy to pull out this info at the supper table, but, eh. But only a couple of cases have really gotten to me. I mean, all of them have gotten to me in the sense that I am horrified by them, but I'm talking, did further research on my own, watched documentaries, maybe wrote something based on it? Basically they (and i'm not saying this is healthy, it probably isn't) consume me for a little bit. Especially if I end up writing something either based on it or inspired by it. The first case that did this was Columbine. This one actually got me before I started listening to LPOTL (their Columbine episode isn't act

So, I've been pretty set on doing a sequel to an already existing project for NaNo. That's what I figured I'd be doing. And it might still be what I'm doing. I mean, I don't know--for the past four years of NaNo, I've just kind of waited until I woke up on November 1st and decided then. I haven't 'created' the novel until the first, even if I had a rough idea of what I was going to do and what I was excited for. Last month, there was an idea that captured me and I was like, hm, maybe I'll do that instead of this companion/sequel. But I talked to one of my critique partners and she talked me down and it was fine. But then I got another idea just a few days ago, based on some stuff I've been listening to podcasts about/watching documentaries about/being temped to purchase books about, and it's honestly a lot to put it off. I feel like next year will be the year of true crime-y first drafts, because I've got about three ideas sitting

November's next week already, I guess, and that means it's time for NaNoWriMo . I've been doing NaNo for years, this will be my seventh, and I would never even consider missing my one non-guilty first draft of the year. It's maybe dumb to feel guilty about writing first drafts, but if left unchecked, I will spew out a million thirty thousand word tiny little novel-like beasts, so a little bit of guilt is probably good here, because without it I would never rewrite or revise anything. This year's NaNo, for me, is a companion/sequel to something I wrote a couple of years ago and is probably the best thing I've ever written. There is no demand for this sequel; the first book hasn't been agented or anything (I'm even taking a break on querying because I think the first chapter needs to be rewritten, and I'll look at it again post-NaNo), but I like to have at least a first draft of every book that could possibly come out of a story written as soon as

So, I've been rewatching American Horror Story (as you probably know from the sheer amount I was talking about Tate Langdon a while ago), and last night I watched episode eleven of Asylum. Spoilers for Asylum ahead, I guess. Episode eleven is the one with the really tense, really boss escape of Lana Winters, and the scene where she slaps the tape up against the window of the taxi and gives Thredson the finger. It's that episode. It's where she kills him. It's "I'm tough, but I'm no cookie." I cheered like, every single time. Yep, me, alone in my dorm room, just full of so much love for Lana Winters. I used to call Asylum my favorite season (now I know and have accepted that it is Murder House ), and a big part of that was Lana. She is the most badass heroine that the series has. She's ruthlesss and single-minded and stubborn. But she's not really an anti-hero; at least, not until the end, maybe. She's human. But she is so boss. She doe

When I was in elementary school, one of my favorite series to check out from the library was the Mary-Kate and Ashley Two of a Kind books. They followed Mary-Kate and Ashley in like, middle school style time, and they quickly moved into a boarding school setting, and they were so fun. I now work at the library that I went to as a kid, and we recently withdrew all of our Two of a Kind books. I mean, fair. They are very, very early-2000s, and Mary-Kate and Ashley aren't exactly as big of a deal as they were when those books were coming out. But I was blacking out barcodes and stamping the WITHDRAWN stamp and I decided to take a couple home with me. Just the ones that I picked up and was shot back into the past with; just the ones that I could remember vividly. So I picked three. And then a couple days later, I found a couple books I wanted in the book sale room, and I grabbed three more. Now it wasn't anything to do with whether I remembered them or not, it was just the fir

So, a little bit of a disclaimer here: I don't have any real experience with either, just opinions about what I want with my writing. I've never self-published anything. I've never had anything traditionally published. I have nothing but vague ideas. I've always wanted traditional publishing. That's always been my goal with my writing, was to be traditionally published. I write novels, and pretty typical novels; there's nothing wacky or out of the ordinary with them. There are a couple of my things that I think would work well with traditional publishing. But lately I've been thinking. See, I've got this one project. It's massive. It is my baby. It's the first thing I ever really completed (at least first-draft-wise), and the first book (in the series, because this bitch is a series) has gone through god-knows-how-many-drafts (the current word document for it is titled: Draft Nine or Some Shit Like That). I've written at least a second

So, I'm coming up on graduation next semester, and I'm graduating with a minor in French. The way that I got this minor is... kind of on accident. When I was in eighth grade, my best friend at the time was asking if she could take French for her foreign language. I went to the tiniest school in the world, so it had to be over ITV, but we managed to gather enough people for a French class. I just kind of... kept taking French. Then college came around and I just kind of... Kept taking French. My French professor wants me to postpone graduation a semester, go to France next semester, and then graduate with a French major in addition to the English major. When she was talking about it last Thursday, I kind of wanted to do it. And part of me does... see the good part of it? Maybe I want to. But I don't know if I really want to. I don't know if I want to postpone graduation. I don't know if I actually want to. Also, I don't speak French. I do not speak French

It's weird trying to get into sports at a later age, especially when you're not into any sports at all is because you don't come from a sports family. I feel like it'd be different if you were from a sports family and didn't care and then later cared, because then at least you'd have a base. My family does not give a shit about any sports. None of them. Barely even high school sports that my brother plays (this might be because for the last three years, his basketball career has been reclining gently on the bench, hands folded on his lap). But I've discovered I like hockey. I like hockey a lot. Thanks, my-college-getting-a-hockey-team-sophomore-year. So I've been trying to get into NHL stuff too, and it's... weird to try and figure out what teams you like and what you're into and also figuring out the sport, I had to learn how the sport works because my prior knowledge to two years ago was 'whatever was in the movie Youngblood, and I spen

tl;dr: sucks So like, I'm pretty new to Tinder, but I  have my stories to share in comparison to one of my friends, who lives in a major US city that is not North Dakota, let alone rural North Dakota. She's talking about how she's hooked up with a few people and it's been cool and I'm sitting here like "all of my matches are at least forty miles away, except for that one kid who I think is the kid I complimented on his Vegas Golden Knights shirt the other day???" But I am pretty new. It's only been a few days. And it's been cool talking to people, even if they live sixty or a hundred miles away; if nothing else this shit'll make me feel less awkward about talking to dudes online? I guess? I mean, I'm not gonna delete my account. This is my second go-around, and the first time I deleted my account as soon as I got a match because I was like "nope," but now I've not only matched but had a couple of brief conversations and

I am slightly addicted to caffeine. I don't have that much a day--consistently, I'll have a cup of coffee in the morning. Sometimes I'll go and have a latte or something as well. And sometimes I fuck up and have a RockStar. I was doing pretty good for a while. I really dig the Pure Zero Punched ones, because they barely even taste like energy drinks (that energy drink taste is why I can't do Monster; I'll stick to RockStar, thank you very much, they're even advertised by one of my favorite bands). Caffeine doesn't really affect me all that much, like, it takes a lot for it to do more than get rid of the caffeine headache, and it takes a lot for me to get jittery. Like, I'm talking three cups of coffee, an energy drink, and maybe a couple of caffeinated chocolate bars a lot. But I was doing good on staying away from them. And then I discovered Pure Zero Watermelon. See, I can keep myself away from pop because, you know, I don't want to waste 2

I've already talked about how high fantasy isn't really my deal , so it might come as a bit of a surprise that my current focus writing-wise is the second draft of a fantasy novel. And I'm talking, European-style (mostly), princesses, swordfighting, medieval kind of fantasy. The kind of fantasy that I pretty much don't like. This is something that I wrote the first draft of way back when, in 2014. Four years this bitch has been sitting on my hard drive. It's a trilogy, I guess; I've written first drafts for books two and three, too. It was the second separate project I ever wrote, and even now, I do really like the characters and the plot. But dear God, writing this shit is like pulling teeth. This is pretty much an experiment in, Aurora should not write fantasy, because at this point I'm finishing it to finish it, because I hate leaving stuff unfinished (I don't want to talk about the first draft I started right before last spring semester ended, to

They're tearing down the public swimming pool I used to go to as a kid. Nobody really seems to be as sad about this as I am; everyone I mention it to is like, oh, yeah, they've been wanting to do that, I heard it was kind of gross, I heard they found rats in the locker rooms, it's been closed all summer because they were going to start at the beginning of summer. Which--fair. All three of those things are true. The locker rooms were disgusting. I wouldn't be surprised if there were rats. The pool was the epitome of an old public pool, the kind that you'd see in a movie about a run-down town with a run-down pool. Everything was blue, the paint chipping off of the walls and the floor cracked concrete. The pool area itself was split into three: a wading pool for kids, a longer pool that ran from about three feet to five feet, and a twelve-foot diving pool. There was a tube slide that went into the middle pool. There was a snack shack attached to the locker rooms wh

I am scared to read the sequel to Beartown . I've already written a post about Beartown (see here ), but long story short, I loved it. It is the best book I've read this year, and I am currently on record for convincing three of my coworkers to check it out, one of whom has finished and loved it and is also scared to pick up the sequel. It's not that I think Us Against You is going to be bad. I know it'll be good. I've picked it up from the 'New' section and flipped through it, catching glimpses and tearing up and promptly putting it back. I have my own copy, a beautiful silky purple hardcover and I'm scared of what the book will do to do me. One of my coworkers, the one that's finished it, started the sequel and had to put it back because Beartown made both of us sob and neither of us are ready for round two yet. Because Us Against You is going to be Beartown, round two, worse, better, I'll die, basically. I also now own my own copy of B

I'm currently rewatching the first season of American Horror Story. It's my favorite season of something that is probably my favorite TV show, but this time, at least once during the episode, I've had to take to Twitter wondering how in the hell nobody recognized Tate Langdon. Tate is pretty much this universe's version of Columbine. There's only one of him, sure, but the showrunners took a lot of little things from Columbine, down to the main massacre being the library, the trenchcoat, "Do you believe in God?" (which... is an urban myth, but, eh, common Columbine mythos). Still, today, Columbine is one of the most infamous school shootings that's ever happened, though there have been deadlier ones since. So let's talk about Violet. Violet doesn't realize until the ghosts of some of the children he murdered literally show up and tell her to look it up--speaking of, though I'm sure a lot of people my age (because that's about how old

Original Poem Bold is screamed, Italics is Elongated Melodic Scream-y Whatever , Example of The Music Hatred and vengeance, my eternal por tion, Scarce can endure delay of execution, Wait, with impatient readiness, wait to seize my Soul in a moment. Damned below Judas: more abhorred than he was, Who for a few pence sold his holy master. Twice betrayed Jesus me, the, last, delinquent, Man disavows, and deity disowns me: Hell might afford my miseries a shelter; Hell keeps her ever-hungry mouths all Bolted against me. Hatred and vengeance,  my eternal por tion, Scarce can endure delay of execution, Wait, with impatient readiness, wait to seize my Soul in a moment. Hard lot! encompassed with a thousand dangers; Weary, faint, trembling with a thousand terrors, I'm called, if vanquished, to receive a sentence Worse than Abiram's. Him the vindictive rod of angry justice Sent quick and howling to the centre headlong; I, fed with judgment, in a fleshy tomb

I'm sure this won't be the last time I talk about this; hell, I've been rambling on Twitter since I started my rewatch that I find it incredibly strange that nobody realized who Tate was, or even mentioned, "huh, that's weird, that name is... hm...", especially given how high the body count was. True, there were five library kids, but the plaque in the library lists a whole lot more. But that's not really what I wanted to talk about today. I've beat that horse to death on Twitter, first mentioning that it was kind of weird that Violet didn't realize (especially given her interests of the macabre), and then realizing, oh wait, holy shit, it's weird that her father didn't realize anything was up. I go into that all on Twitter , but what I really wanted to talk about today was how pissed I am that I still really, really like Tate. This is also something I've mentioned on Twitter. How much I hate that, every time I rewatch the first sea

Yesterday, I went to a wedding reception with a friend from work. The reception was about two hours away from our town, and her GPS took us down these curvy gravel roads that didn't seem to be labeled with any sort of real rhyme or reason; normally, when it comes to gravel roads in North Dakota, you can gauge where you are by the numbers, but once those roads start curving around lakes and abandoned farmsteads, you start getting completely fucked. So we were about an hour late, because we got totally lost. If there's one thing I truly love in North Dakota, it's the landscape. I might want to get out of here as fast as I can, but I do love the physical state itself. I love being able to see for miles. I love shitty back dirt roads. I love all of the abandoned farmsteads and one-room schoolhouses and barns. I love the skyline, especially when it's a setting sun (or a rising one, for that matter). Getting lost on the way to this wedding reception was not the worst thin

I've been reading the first book in the Wheel of Time series lately--not entirely by choice, I happen to own the first three books (I don't know how--gift, maybe?) and my random number generator landed on it, and even though I don't really like fantasy and am not really extremely psyched about it, I'm not hating it as much as I thought I would. I thought that I'd be dragging my way through it, violently hating every page, violently hating the writing and the stupid clogged-up sentences. But it's like... it's fine? It's pretty much the same as every other fantasy series. And maybe this is just the perspective of someone who doesn't like fantasy, but to me, these books are no worse and no better than, say, a Brandon Sanderson book. I know Sanderson gets a lot of love (which I don't really agree with--sure, Mistborn was fun, I guess), and Robert Jordan gets a lot of hate, but they are exactly the same. My expectation going in was that I was going

Yesterday, I started off my senior year of college. I don't really have all that many classes left to take--mostly a couple of generals, plus a few French classes so that my minor can scrape through. I finished all of my major classes last semester. My history minor is done. I never actually declared a creative writing minor, but I'll graduate with one, so that's pretty cool. For my senior year, I'm living in a dorm that's full of mostly sophomores. This is because this dorm has single rooms, and that appealed to me, even though that does mean that I have to go back to communal bathrooms, which, let me tell you, a little bit to get used to after two years of not having to deal with it. But I don't mind. This is the first time I've had my own room since before my little sister was born, so like... twelve, thirteen years. And it is very nice, let me tell you. I've slept in it for three days and I really like having my own room. Mostly because I get up at

Normally, my first drafts are glorified outlines. They're somewhere around twenty thousand words of fun scenes strung together with plot points in ALL CAPS BECAUSE I DONT HAVE TIME TO FIGURE THIS OUT NOW, normally with the end JUST  BUNCH OF ALL CAPS THINGS ENDING WITH THE END. This time around, with my current first draft, though, it's different. Granted, I'm only at about 22k right now. But I've still got like, two murders (okay, one attempted) thought up, and I have no real intention of skipping over the in-betweens. I know how it's going to end, but I don't know how it's going to get there. I don't know why it's happening yet. I know what's happening, but I went from my original idea of why to, as I put it in a tweet, 'slow-burn reverse children of the corn?' Is it religious? Is it cult-y? Oh shit, it might be cult-y. Just fixed it, it's a cult. Either way, though, this first draft is giving me ideas back to how I used to wr

I was listening to The Last Podcast on the Left's  Dennis Nilsen episodes the other day, and they mentioned that he'd written this massive autobiography while in prison (Nilsen has since fucked off to death). The autobiography is, as of this point in time, unpublished, but it got me thinking. Carl Panzram, Minnesotan serial killer/arsonist/yacht thief/general terror of the early 20th century, also wrote an autobiography. Panzram's is published and it's something I've kind of lusted over for a while but keep just not buying. Panzram's, unlike what has been released of Nilsen's, is supposed to be surprisingly free of boastful exaggerations or falsified information. On another level, a man who was not a serial killer, Charles Manson had his book. Again, Manson's is supposed to be a little iffy on how true it actually is. Most of these people (again, apart from Panzram, because the dude gave zero fucks) exaggerate or make themselves out to be less implic