I, Amalynne, have had an interesting few months. Chaos and creativity have taken me from East to West Coast, to the highest point in my life and the lowest, and somehow, I'm left feeling miraculous, successful and more empowered than ever. I know vagaries don't do anything for you, but I just had to get that out... because I've been gone and I'm back... and I hope for a while.

Today is my first day off in a long, long time. I woke up last night, bolt upright, and had a panic attack about all the things I want to do in this life, while my ass is still firm, while I still get taken for a high school student, while I still use too much profanity, while I still think 40 sounds old, while college is still a pleasant echo away, while Lulu Lemon is still too expensive... though I did buy a pair of pants from them--regrettably. I made a lot of concessions this year, some big, some small. I bought a mac when I'd vowed for years not to, committed to an apartment even closer to the beach, took on more clients even though I was starting to resent them, got a trainer, and actually started going to the doctors. Big girl, this has been a big year and it's only April. 

I was also diagnosed with Lupus.

I didn't realize what kind of changes this would mean for my life, most of which I cringe at, but are for the best. More conscious of my human frailty, I've started taking my health more seriously and this is just another thing I must sigh about... adulthood is so obnoxiously serious. Fuck it. Really. I'm in a stage in which I'm rebelling against my adulthood and finding myself regrettably converted--in those banal, financial areas of life. I'm still not the person you want teaching in a public school or in a government position, or even corporate, because I am fabulously free of filter and if my clients don't like it, they can just as easily find a digital marketer with the same kind of specialized portfolio and bend-over-backwards-until-your'e-happy commitment (sarcasm). This is the beauty of self-employment and the beauty of the hustle. I think of one of my favorite TedTalks, Rethinking Unpopular, by branding genius, Erika Napoletano. If you have an ample 20 minutes I recommend watching it, but if you don't Erika is merely arguing that in order to stick to your target market, your key customers, you have to be true to yourself, you have to be unpopular. You can't meet the demand of the entire market, you can't be everything to everyone. In fact, if you're small, if you're a little guy, you should be niche, you should be specialized, perfect for some, unpopular to others. My personality plays into this a lot. I believe in a reader's digest approach to life, tasks, and interactions with clients--except of course when I'm venting on my own blog. I'm a fabulous hypocrite sometimes.

Feel however you may, but I'm not suited to deal with bullshit and I've tried corporate, laughed in its face and surprised myself by conquering on my own in the last two years. Everyone is different and I don't feel the need to explain it to my peers to seek their approval anymore. I used to try to say that I had issues with corporate ethics, that you were just a number, that opportunities for advancement in this economy are meager... but that's not really the truth, as far as I was concerned. 

I hated being told what to do by people that I didn't respect. I hated making decisions I knew were wrong because someone with a higher pay-grade told me to.

I hated it so much I used to come home and cry. I wasn't going to tell my old college friends this, and I don't need to. I don't need to, because the hustle is enough for me now, the next job and the next, the game of planning, the game of landing that bigger, better job. I used to wait tables and there was something addicting about that kind of hustle. Freelancing is a different kind of hustle, it's a lot less of one job description and all lot more of many, it's being a writer, a consultant, a teacher, an artist, a programer, a researcher, all in the areas of marketing for small business...bigger businesses, even bigger business, and ultimately big business. 

But... I, in all this discovery, find myself void of the time needed to follow my first passion, and that is writing. Today I've taken about thirty minute to shower you with my feelings because I just.really.need.to. Camping out at my absolute favorite coffee shop in my little beachside community, JC Beans, I sit with my headphones wedged in snuggly, listening to the chill, steely beats of Tame Impala, ready to fix what need be fixed, edit what need be edited, so I don't put my dreams on hold any longer--or send my publisher over the edge with impatience. [Now that was a run-on sentence!!]

ALSO! I've noticed lately that my oldest of old fan fiction, The Ever Secret Diary of Sirius Black, has been getting some serious action on Wattpad. This year marked the ten year anniversary of this very old, very beloved fan fiction and it is STILL, to this day, getting so much love. I want to thank my loyal fan-ficianados over the years for your readership, you are tirelessly fabulous! Also, I have been writing some new fan fiction for my current obsession, The Raven Cycle, by the talented Maggie Stiefvater. I'll be posting it to my tumblr eventually or any of the appropriate fan fiction mediums out there today. Tumblr and Wattpad kind of seem the hubs for that sort  of thing. 

So, with that long-winded update, I shall leave you with my current, lumbering obsession: 

Every time I stay up late the night before I get strange ideas, staring up at the ceiling, unable to sleep. This is when I usually argue with characters, but last night I was a God. Only in the sense that I made another fictional life. His name is Thomas Gables and he's everything Southern and everything dead. 

His world is based off an idea that I had years ago, so I decided to resurrect it, not unlike Thomas himself. I have a knack for writing really rotten people and he's no exception. Anyway, hopefully I won't just let this project mold over like Star Born (for which I reserve a special place in my heart --also a side of myself that is more cavalier/inappropriate). I've posted the prologue, a bit of LIVING Thomas before being dead and all, to my wattpad account, which you can check out here or by clicking the homemade image to the left. 

Be warned, as it was a late night project, it's bound to be offensive, so I've rated it MATURE for things like light innuendo and general asinine behavior.  

Also, on the beta read front set for 9/2, it's all coming together, peeps. Look for an email this Labor Day weekend! 

<3 Ama

Below is another Photoshop fiddle...

I'd like to talk about the usefulness of walks...

I take them often. When I can't sleep, when I can't think, when I'm restless, when I'm stuck... to feel like I'm moving, and with every step answers come. While we might not all live in areas fit for midnight walks, I do like them, but don't forget your pepper spray.

Allianora likes her walks, like her maker. She is a lass after my own heart ;)


**Excerpt from The Company - copyright Amalynne O.**


The City Walk:

Allianora was still groggy that afternoon as she slouched over her easel. She usually enjoyed art lessons out on the beach, the instructor was dismissive, and her fellow amateurs refreshingly silent as they slaved methodically over their canvases, but after last night's discoveries, Allianora's mind would not let her find solace. The sun was at an unmerciful position as it dipped into the horizon, it's golden light painting the waves with ribbons of blinding brightness. Her canvas looked nothing like the Midas-coated afternoon, it was, instead, a tornado of blotchy blues, like the rampage of a dream, sea and sky meeting in confusion. She hoped the instructor wouldn't come by to comment on the mess with his usual “interesting...” He already cast her funny looks for using her front skirt pockets to store her softened collection of smeary pastels, her little yellow dress streaked with the battle scars of a clumsy artist.

A yawn escaped her lips as she rubbed her bleary eyes, the creamy blue from her fingers smearing on her cheek. The exhaustion she felt went straight to her heart. She wanted to sleep, but she hadn't been able to. She'd turned herself off after Demon had left, turned out the lights to her chamber, slipped under her covers, and stared at the ceiling until daylight swelled about her room. She didn't move until noon, grumblings, soft grumblings had started to grow in her chest, a wounded monster sniffling to itself inside her.

She didn't even know how to feel, she needed time, she needed answers... she needed to take a walk... Allianora didn't even bother to remove her canvas and easel, she liked the idea of its enigmatic abandonment, pulling out the ribbon that held her messy braid in place and releasing it to the wind as she picked up her shoes and trudged, unnoticed, off the beach.


Allianora had never walked the streets so late, though she had always fantasized about crossing gently arching bridges at midnight and gazing into the canals to see the moons reflected in the rushing water. Her stroll this evening was more thoughtfully mournful than ever as she passed the rows of white townhouses off Temple Square, spindly gray trees coated in violet flowers lining the walk, their buds breaking off and taken away into the night by a lover breeze. Such a maddeningly perfect sham, all of it, the white wash, the sparkling windows, the facades worn at the surface. No doubt there was a hell behind these doors, families that hated each other as much as Allianora's own. Hate... no, it wasn't hate, Allianora stopped in the middle of the street between the houses, not hate, but betrayal.

Everything she thought she'd known about her brother had been challenged. She'd only known about him what she'd read, and deeper than anger was fear. A cold, bile-like feeling curdled up in her stomach at the thought of the tabloids ever pinning him right.

She'd ambled into a marketplace, street vendors since packed away, their carts and storefronts boarded up for the night. The trolleys had stopped running here for the day, she reads the signs fleetingly before she was halted by a glossy advertisement in the trolley stop hutch. In a light green suit, velor and perfectly tailored, lounged a dreamier version of her  brother, Langdon, than reality would ever permit. He sold himself more in the advert than he did the suit, the words “Hotel Marxame, Couture and Fitting House,” splashed regally below his perfect pose, the hazel green eyes vapid, the very thing he wanted the world to see.

Her mouth contorted as she started to swear at him, pummeling her palm hard against the billboard. She was so seething she was about to scream, what an idiot, how long did he think he could hide his black market secrets...? The night was starting to get chilly as she glared at him, thrusting her hands in her pockets to feel the remains of her melted pastels. She removed one broken red stick, rolling it in her fingers deviously as she looked up the advert...*

What would you do if you were Alli? I'd draw a uni-brow on the billboard.

It's Saturday and I forgot to Word Ninja so you're going to get some retarded poetry.

Burn, burn, burn. Broken so fine, bitterly bitter. Black, steamed, roasted, toasted. Charcoal waves, volcanic, hissing out our ears. I've chosen to love you, despite your ugliness, your pig face painted pretty by cream and sugar. Looking into your tar-like depths I face the lie of our shallow love. How you've used me and I you, selfishly, wantonly for you caffeine. Let us remain in this union of bitter convenience.
Yes. This was about coffee.

This is why I get stared at weirdly at poetry readings, because I can't take myself seriously. Pffft. Hope ya'll are alright. 

Press play for a Happy Saturday!! 

It is time for Word Ninja. I call this "Crushed," it is flamboyantly melodramatic and I like to imagine Helen Mirren reading it. That is all.

I was crushed. The membrane breaking to the outside world and exposing the things I was afraid of, a soul that was blood red and rich with the memories of a long lost sun. I'd been bathed in the mother light on the fence of here and there. I was glorious, voluptuous, full figured in all my blushing beauty, and I never thought once in my privileged life that this day would come. What am I to you now but an spell of sanguine desire? You pluck me up like nothing, fresh from the hands of another. You only take me to dinner to flaunt before your friends, a show of snobbery where there is no love affair... you don't languish over me with your senses. I had always hoped my life would be worth more than a compliment to a cheap meal and an even cheaper man. I should be ashamed, but I feel nothing, not since the moment I was crushed and blended with the masses of faceless others, blended into an elixir of salacious indulgence. I was born in fields of green, I spoke the language of butterflies, and now I glare back from my crystal basin, fearful of a bristled mouth and the after taste of hot pocket. Lord only knows the backwash I've seen.


End Scene.


*Notes about Word Ninja: A deliciously awesome writing exercise that requires you inject a personality into any inanimate object around you, and write a piece about it in 500 words or less.* 

I invite my readers to Word Ninja with me. What's around you and what kind of personality would you give your object? If you haven't guessed, today's specimen is an over-emotional glass of wine. Cheerio my good ninjas!

-Ama

Lately I've been working on a lot of edits... over a span of a great many things. One thing I've discovered about myself--if this isn't too completely revealing--I hate romance, the kind where you run off into the sunset, and hold hands, and embrace the futility that is a "happy ending." Not that I'm not a romantic--very far from it--but I'm a tragic romantic, I love me some love/hate. While I'd never want it for my own life, I gush over the twisted beauty of flawed characters and difficult feelings. One dimensional love affairs bore me, and if you cut to the chase in the first book or the first five minutes I'm annoyed. String me along, make me guess, make me hate you, but don't settle affairs before I can open my laptop to pummel you on Goodreads or Rotten Tomatoes. After this recent pondering, I thought I'd share all the reasons love/hate is great--to me. If you like fluffy clouds and unicorn romances, that's coo' I don't judge (at least not out loud).

Below is a fabulous musical accompaniment for the subject: 

Love/Hate Pairings that have inspired my fiction (Fan fiction readers, you know what I mean on this front):

Wuthering Heights (Heathcliff and Cathy): my all time favorite novel got me hooked on love/hate when I was about thirteen. I borrowed the book from the library and never returned it, covetously hiding it under my bed until I needed the gut wrenching prose of Bronte. I've never seen a movie rendition that rocks my world though... "Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long as I am living. You said I killed you--haunt me then." Heathcliff, you have a thing for melodrama, but it works for you. 

Pride and Prejudice (Darcy and Lizzy): The ice cube and the stinging flame, Darcy and Lizzy meet each other with imagined detachment and Austen puts us through a journey of deception until, of course, this love/hate couple finally prevail. I quite like Darcy and Lizzy although they have been overdone in almost every sense possible. “She is tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me.” Oh Darcy, your denial is wrenching.   

Star Wars (Han and Leia): "I love you" --"I know." Need I say more, it doesn't get any more boss than that.

Inuyasha (Inuyasha and Kagome): I'm a geek, I'm a geek, and hulu gave me such are terrible excuse to revisit all my favorite episodes. Inuyasha's faked indifference and Kagome's denial, it just works so well. I fangirl over this show and its on the pathetic side. "Osuwari!!" 

Ranma 1/2 (Ranma and Akane): Basically the same story-line as Inuyasha but less angsty and completely hilarious. The voice actor for Ranma and Inuyasha is actually the same. It's an adorable show. "Akane, you are so uncute!!" 

Beauty and the Beast: Robbie Beson essentially playing the same domineering role as in Ice Castles but furrier. And yes the beast does transform into a bit of a beefcake Prince Adam, but honestly, would you complain if you were Belle--er yeah, didn't think so. "Flower, chocolates, promises you don't intend to keep," the usual. 

Any more love/hate shippers that rock your socks?? Share 'em!

Sometimes we just need to be ourselves... Ahem, let me correct that! ALL THE TIME WE NEED TO BE OURSELVES...within reason. If you're a baby eater you should probably keep that on the down low. The preservation of self extends into so many areas, but how do you preserve yourself in your writing? I was pondering this question earlier in the week. With commissioned writing projects, sometimes it can be hard to remember my own voice. To keep it real, I play a game I like to call Word Ninja. I pick the most immediate inanimate object in sight, inject it with a personality, and write a five hundred word story about it. Lets' see if you can pick up on the item of choice, enjoy!

Life needs side projects to keep us sane. Pool-side yesterday afternoon with a little rum and orange juice a new idea walloped me in the head. New ideas can be dangerous--and distracting, but I've been fairly diligent in my greater projects as of late, so I felt I had earned a detour. I love writing in the heads of teenage boys, they're always richly amusing to me, and my current detour is no exception. So, without further ado, I give you my pool-side scribblings, a politically incorrect, and painfully honest first person account of God, or we can just call him John:

**This is a first draft, un-edited, you will see errors that are to be fixed when I feel so inclined**

On Earth a Star-burst is a chewy, plastic covered sweet injected with artificial tropical flavor... where I'm from it's something entirely different, it's birth. I was born in a star, you see, or I was the star or the star was me—or, I could go on forever trying to explain it to you, but it's not like you're going to understand anyway. The best way to explain it is to say that I was born from a bursting brightness hovering in the sky that extinguished the moment my eyes opened to the blackness of space. They say I'd been developing for eons, turning and churning, a meager spec that grew at a pace so slow even other stars went black before I was done doing my thing. They say I'm a miracle, the savior of the galaxy, the star born to act as god for a millennium and then some, but I'm not so sure about that. They say I'm god, but all I want to be is... me. I know what you're thinking, "Great, another pea-brain with an identity crisis," but where I'm from you're not allowed that luxury. Funny to think of it as a luxury, I bet, but choice is. I want the choice to be young and human—as I would look if the worlds didn't already know that I am the Star Born.

Maybe that's why I'm here, the pressure was just too much to handle, the people that know me making a big damn deal about this god-ship savior crap. Earth is detached, a mess of religion and people who'd rather see themselves as god than kowtow to some meandering Star Born... so, it's perfect. They think like do, doubt like I do, see nothing in the stars like I do, and most of them, the ones that look my age, with crooked smiles and raging hormones, they want to pave their own way, write their own lives. And that's why I'm here—for now—to live like I want, to forget that I'm god.

I chose the name John because apparently its common (my real name is something complicated and uncharacteristically pretentious). It's so common approximately thirty-five percent of male Caucasians in the western hemisphere are named John—see that's a bullshit stat, but I bet for a second you believed it. Point is, for the last five hundred years I've been anything but common, and you wouldn't believe the effort to took being holy, omnipotent, and prayer-answering. It's all biological, I don't have super powers, I'm not super-human, I'm just a different kind, the kind that rages about developing in a ball of fire and gas for millions of years until I'm baked just right... that's how I've reasoned it, anyway. I could read your mind, or change your fate, or make it rain thongs, but it takes a hella strain on my faculties. Like I said, being god takes effort and then the expectation, don't even get me started. More people bitch about you than love you... and people swear in your name—though that, I don't mind. Earth isn't too different, but like I said, it offers me anonymity and I figure I'm young and impetuous and deserve a rebellious stage. See, I knew this would happen, I'm trying to validate my escape. I guess I don't need to, I guess I should just tell you that I live in Bakersfield, California, and it's a shit place and it's great.

I chose it because it's as bland and nowheresy as you can get without being surrounded by extreme poverty, and there's nothing to do but drink and bang and tow trucks. It's perfect. I look nineteen, I think. I've passed for twenty-one, and I rarely pay for drinks. I'm uncommon striking, apparently. I like it better than home (Star-burst central) and the banality of the whole thing is down right refreshing. I did have a loft in Paris where I masqueraded as publishing heir, but it felt too god-like. So, I sought out simplicity, and Bakersfield cried out to me like a cheap sleaze. Like I said, it's perfect.

I live in my own apartment for the sake of my “super-human” quirks, and have taken a liking to thing called Hot Pockets. You can make any kind of argument you want about nature of the stuff, but I've eaten at Michelin star get-ups and there's really no damn difference at the end of the day. The ten years I spent in Paris eating gluttonous portions of haute cuisine and rich crème fresh should have made anyone else egregiously obese, but contrary to numerous experiments I have done on myself, I am immune.

Today I toss a pizza flavored Hot Pocket in the microwave and bask in the echoing loneliness of the studio apartment, the walls cracking with avocado green paint from the seventies, the shag carpet golden orange and stained beyond repair—it's better than home, all of it. No one's pleading in my ear, no appearances, no “miracles” or painstaking efforts against the galactic elements, just me, Friday's paycheck, and a Hot Pocket rotating around in thrift store microwave. Even the ominous whine the machine makes is a welcome sound, the flawed nature of the thing beautiful.

The mail is still in a pile by the front door, the college acceptance letters are there. I figured I'd try that out too, who knows how long I'll be here. Unlike God—the real god, whoever the hell he is, I can't change myself, I can't age, I can't alter my form or face. I'm me, probably with the same face forever, at least that's what I'd guess. It's not like there's anyone to tell me. Daddy issues aside, I'm chancing college. In ten years I've only made love, not friends, and I figure, I can risk it for four years, study philosophy or something just as beautifully banal and boring as Bakersfield.* 


It has the same tone as The Ever Secret Diary of Sirius Black and the same sort of laissez faire verbal diarrhea that's easy to write and humorous to run through... eh, it's a welcome break to a world of seriousness. I've written more, maybe if time permits I will share it.


Happy Friday All!

-Ama