Aurora Dimitre's Books and Rambling

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...