Thursday 22 May 2014

A Follow-Up Of The Last Blog I Wrote (The Anxiety One)

This blog will probably be brief because I have a History exam tomorrow and I haven’t revised today and I am panicking. Seriously, I cannot remember anything about Weimar Germany, or Hitler’s Germany, or the Middle East Conflict. Well, I can remember two things: Article 48, and 700,000 Palestinian refugees. That is all. That is why I am screwed. That is why I should be revising and not blogging.

However, I want to write this blog because I want to talk about the last blog I wrote (the one about anxiety). You see, normally when I write a blog, I get maybe ten new page views, and no new comments for about six months. With this blog, I had about 150 new page views, and three comments, making it my most popular blog to date.

When I wrote it, I did not think anybody would read it. My main aim was to write it so there was a chance my friends would see it, which I don’t think they did. I wrote it because I was so frustrated, and I wanted to express that extreme frustration in the only way I could, hence the fact I wrote over two thousand words.

And suddenly I get all these positive comments, and people telling me I’m brave, and it’s kind of overwhelming, because I’m just me. I’m nothing extraordinary; I’m just Eliza, just a girl who writes about the things that she can’t take her mind off. Now there are all these people telling me that I’ve written exactly what they feel, and to me that is the ultimate achievement.

My aim as a writer is to write something that affects people, that reaches deep into the core of their being. And if I have managed to write something which is even a fraction as powerful as that, then I feel as though I am on my way to where I want to be. Writing is who I am, but it often feels like that side of me is kept behind closed doors, because people don’t want to see it. If you mention books to someone at my school, you are most likely to receive one of these reactions: “Duuus raaaeeedin’ maaaehk yehr smart? Maaaybe aaah shuud raaaeed.” Or “buuurrrkks are shit” (the weird vowel placement is to emphasise the accent).

I think the writer side of me is often overlooked by people, because it is the part of me that is often melancholy, and sometimes melodramatic, and it’s the part of me that says crazy things, and writes about murder and cannibalism on a mock exam. Even though this is only one part of my personality, it is a major part, and people pretend it isn’t there, pretend a part of me doesn’t exist so that they can fit me into that damaging prison that is commonly known as “normal”.

The other side of me is my happy side, the girl with the sense of humour, the girl who always makes people laugh. I don’t really show that side of me at school, because how can you shine when people are trying to put out your light? People always ask me why I’m sad, or say that I look like I’ve been crying, even when I’m happy. I don’t even know why that is. Perhaps I just have this sad aura or something.

When I write, I tap into the melancholic side of me, I tap into my “gothic imagination” (my English teacher’s description of me, after she read the short story I wrote for coursework where the woman stabs herself because snakes grow out of her head). There’s a part of me which doesn’t really belong in the real world, a part of me that has this homesickness for a place that doesn’t exist, a world that doesn’t exist. And perhaps that is why I write.
In The Choices We Made (the book I am currently writing) I express this side of me a lot more than I have in my previous books. My main character suffers from anxiety and depression and eating disorders, and because of this she is even more melancholic than I am. She develops many control issues, and becomes a dictator. Or at least, she will when I write more. But I love writing that book, because I can express the darkness within me, the side of me that I don’t like people to see because I don’t want to impose on them with my problems.

Anyway, the blog I wrote two days ago, it was my way of expressing that side of me. None of my friends read it, so my entire reason for writing it turned out to be in vain. However, I am glad I wrote it, because the response has been absolutely amazing.

Since writing that blog, I have taken some steps to make things better for myself. I spoke to my friends about the prom table thing, and they were like “Of course you can sit with us!” so all my anxiety about that turned out to be a waste of energy. And yesterday I spent about two hours alone with one of my friends, and we talked a lot. Even though we didn’t talk much about the things I wrote in that blog, I did bring up the subject. But the best thing about yesterday was that this friend said to me ‘You’re part of our group now’. This almost moved me to tears, because it’s all I ever wanted, being part of a group. And it turned out that we hated loads of the same people, and I got to find out lots of embarrassing stories about people I detest, so I spent an hour laughing hysterically.

Today I spent a bit of time with friends, too, and I am beginning to feel like things are getting better, like I’m forming bonds with my friends. But even so, there are always game changers, always unexpected things that get in the way (or even things that aren’t unexpected, but still get in the way) whether that be friends getting boyfriends, meaning they presumably have less time for friendships, or some other event that alters the course we are set on.

Another occurrence today was my second English Literature exam. It did not go well. I wasn’t in a very good head space when I went into the exam hall, and I tried deep-breathing and everything, but it didn’t help. And then I saw that the question options were both on structure, and I suck at structure, I’m much better at writing about theme, and I’m bad at that too. Analysing poetry is not my strong point. And I felt anxious and nervous, and it just wasn’t good. Life lesson: don’t go into an exam feeling sad.

After the exam I went and cried in the toilets for two minutes.


Speaking of exams, and doing badly in them, I must go and do some last-minute History revision, so I don’t undo the alright grade I probably got from the first paper of the History exam.

Tuesday 20 May 2014

How I Feel Right Now, Anxiety, Friendship, etc.

I never used to think of myself as an anxious person. I always spent a lot of time thinking about things – or over thinking things, but I didn’t really connect it with anxiety until recently, probably around the time I started school.

I’ve always been anxious about any kind of interaction with other people. When I was younger, I was painfully shy. Then when I was about thirteen, I became a bit more…outgoing, if that’s the right word. I was less shy, but still just as anxious. The difference was that I became more eloquent, and I became more able to express my opinions. This resulted in people actually seeing my personality, seeing the real me, and being a bit…daunted by me.

The decision to go to school was perhaps the hardest decision I have ever made. But the key point is that I made it. Nobody told me to make that decision; I made it completely on my own. And I’m glad I did, I honestly am, but it was terrifying. I had thrown myself in at the deep end, without knowing how to swim. For the first week I sort of floated, and then I rapidly began to sink. I don’t think it was really till about January that I began to feel like I was finding my feet.

But even now that I’ve been there for more than eight months, I still feel like an outsider, like an alien. I don’t belong, I don’t fit in.

 I’ve always felt like people didn’t really want to be around me, and that affects how I interact with people. There are girls at school who I would consider myself to be friends with, but I’m always worried that they might not consider themselves to be friends with me.

Every time I go to sit with my friends in the lunch hall I worry that perhaps they don’t want me to sit with them, every time I stand with my friends at break time, I worry perhaps they don’t want to talk to me. And I’m sure that my worries are unfounded, but that doesn’t make them any less of a reality for me. When you believe that you are annoyance to people, it doesn’t matter whether or not you actually are.

I’m sure that if I told my friends that I feel like this, they’d be horrified. But I don’t tell them because I don’t want to seem like I’m complaining, and I know that if I’m miserable all the time no one will be around me. I often feel that when I am myself, people don’t want to be around me, too. I feel that I’m too outspoken, too passionate about obscure things, that I inhabit a world so vividly my own that nobody quite knows how to respond to me.

The reason I was thinking about anxiety today is because my exams started on Friday. My first exam was History, which is the subject that I really want to get a good grade in. History is my second best subject (English is my best) and I want to get an A in it (I’m currently at a B) but I was panicking because a) it’s my first exam, b) I felt like I hadn’t revised enough, and c) who doesn’t stress about exams?

The night before the exam I was practically having panic attacks and whispering repeatedly ‘Oh my god, I’m going to fail, I’m going to fail, I’m going to fail.’ I wanted to talk to someone about it, I wanted someone to reassure me, but I felt that I was imposing upon people by complaining to them about how I felt. In the end I texted my friend, because I couldn’t just keep it all inside, I couldn’t just panic on my own. In the two or so minutes it took her to reply, I felt like “Oh my god, why did I text her? Why would she want to talk to me?” and then she replied and she said she was feeling nervous about the exam too, and that made me feel a bit better.

As luck would have it, the questions on the exam were about things I had revised for, and so I think I did alright (though my History teacher believes that the grade boundaries get higher each year because they don’t want too many people getting good grades, so I might not have done as well as I think I did).

This morning I had my first English exam, and I panicked a bit, but not as much. When I got into the exam hall, I sneaked a look at the questions (which we’re not meant to do until we’re told “You may start”) and I just sighed with relief, because they were the best questions I could have hoped for. The question on The Crucible was about the changes in the character of John Proctor, and given that two of my coursework essays were on him, I know his character inside out, and there were a multitude of things I could write about him. For Of Mice and Men (a book which I absolutely loathe) the question was something I had done in class two weeks ago, and so I knew what to write. Therefore, I have hopefully not failed (though whether or not I fail English Lit also depends on the Analysing Poetry exam on Thursday, which is my Achilles heel in terms of English – okay, I’m not that bad at it, but I’m on an A for everything else in English, but probably a B/C for this).

The lesson I have learnt in terms of anxiety and exams is that they’re not going to be half as bad as I think they are (though I have another History exam on Friday that I could still screw up) and that wasting my time worrying isn’t going to do anything but make me feel worse.

However when it comes to anxiety about people, I think that it runs too deep for me to just get over. No matter how many times I find reassurance that people think I’m an okay person, I still don’t believe people truly want to be friends with me. I then feel like I’m being a drama-queen attention seeker just because I feel that way, and that my entire existence is an annoyance to people.

And because of my anxiety, I find myself deliberately making myself lonelier than I would be, because I remove myself from situations where there is a chance other people might not want me.

And then there are times like today, where I make a big deal out of something that is nothing. So in Biology today, I found out that we have to decide which tables we’re all sitting at at prom – as in, who we’re sitting with. And this made me panic, because what if no one wants to sit with me? What if my friends would rather I wasn’t there? And this thought spiralled in the way such thoughts always do, and I ended up feeling very miserable.

I guess the reason I’m writing a blog about this is because I need to vent. I feel anxious about these things I’ve mentioned, practically every day. There are times when I don’t feel as anxious – half way through my exam this morning I had this moment of complete peace and clarity. Then I realized it wasn’t half way through the exam, it was three quarters of the way through, and I’d barely written anything about Of Mice and Even More Mice (the title I think would suit it so much better) – and there are times when I feel even more exceptionally anxious, and I just dissolve into misery.

There is only one person who can stop me from feeling this way, and that person is myself. Otherwise, I – like John Proctor – will become the instigator of my own demise. (I mean, obviously I’m not going to hang for witchcraft because my name is more precious to me than my life, but you get what I mean. I will bring about my own downfall because I can’t overcome my fatal flaws. I will end up a tragic hero rather than just a hero. Not that I am a hero, but…well, I’m going to stop this line of thought before I compare anything else to The Crucible).

The only way I can fight my anxiety is to take risks, to push myself so far away from my comfort zone that I won’t look behind me, I won’t look back to safety. Because our comfort zones don’t comfort us, they just make us miserable. So I’m going to follow in the footsteps of another tragic hero – Tris Prior – and I’m going to be brave. And to me, bravery isn’t doing something heroic, something that beats the odds and saves the day. To me, bravery isn’t even speaking my mind, because I can do that just fine, even if my heart is in my throat when I do so. It’s the tiny things that are bravery for me, things that are just insignificant nothings to most people, things they wouldn’t even think were scary. To me, bravery is asking my friend if she wants to meet up outside of school, because asking her that means I am going far away from my comfort zone. Even though I know she won’t say no, I’m scared every time, scared that perhaps she’s changed her mind about wanting to be friends with me.

And perhaps it’s our fears that define us; perhaps it’s our nightmares that make us who we are. And maybe that is morbid, maybe it is terrible, that our lives are dictated by that which we fear. But what is fear other than extreme vulnerability? Vulnerability is what makes us human, it’s what makes us who we are, and vulnerability teaches us our greatest lessons. But we can not learn unless we take risks, and ultimately, we must pick our battles. Real life isn’t like Divergent; we can’t put all our fears into a simulation and face them all at once. We have to find the thing that means the most to us, and we have to fight for it wholeheartedly, because some things are worth fighting for. And for me, the thing I am prepared to fight for is friendship, because I’ve read enough books to know that even the bravest among us can’t face life alone.

But we can’t just focus on the things that terrify us; we must also focus on what makes us happy. Sadly, in my case, the things that make me happy are also the things that make me sad; my greatest desire is my greatest fear. All I want is to have strong, solid friendships, because I am at my happiest when surrounded by other people, but that is also where I am at my most vulnerable.

I sometimes find it hard to think of even a moment when I was truly happy without feeling out of my depth. However, I have found a picture of one of those times. This is me with Boris, one of the guinea pigs that my school’s Science Department owns. I think you can see by my face just how happy I am. Animals are so much easier than humans...




And lastly: to my friends, if you are reading this (which I’m 98% sure you’re not). All this…school, friendship, everything…it’s new to me. I don’t know what I’m doing; I don’t know where I begin. It’s like I’ve left the world I know and been dropped onto another planet. I’m scared out of my mind because I feel like I’m going to screw everything up. And I can’t do this on my own, I just can’t. I don’t know how to be anyone else, so the only person I can be is myself. And I feel inadequate a lot of the time, and I feel like I’m not really worth anything, and that you’ve all been best friends since you were eleven and that I’m just this imposter that doesn’t fit in anywhere. And perhaps I don’t. But if I do, and if you do genuinely want me around, let me know. Because it’s horrible to feel so out of place all the time. People always ask me why I’m sad even when I’m happy, as if I look sad all the time, and perhaps I do. But see past that, please. See past my façade, past all the walls I’ve built up around myself. Because I’m okay sometimes, I’m an okay person, and I’m not half as weird as I sometimes act. And the only reason I seem like I’m holding back is because I don’t want to impose on you. 

Friday 9 May 2014

The Choices We Made, Katerina Kamanev (My Latest Main Character), And A Description Of A Book I Haven't Even Finished Writing Yet.

In August last year, I started writing a book called The Choices We Made. It is now May, and it has been nine months and I still haven’t finished writing it. I could have written three books in that time, had I not been in school. But alas, preparing for GCSEs is time-consuming (as is spending hours on Facebook).

Normally, when I begin writing a book, I have no idea where the story will go; I just write and hope for the best. This approach worked with CONSEQUENCE. I started writing, and the characters and storylines followed. When I began writing, all I had was Persephone, Greece, pomegranates, and some kind of depiction of Hades. Yeah, it’s rather miraculous that CONSEQUENCE actually ended up as something even vaguely resembling a novel.

With AMEND, it was different because it ran on from CONSQUENCE (with a thirteen-year gap). The same storylines were there, giving me the foundations I needed, so all I really had to do was form the character of Melinoe.

TRANSCEND was rather interesting in terms of method, because my ideas changed a lot from what they originally were. You see, by this point, I was beginning to run out of interesting storylines. Then I had this dream that gave me an idea so insane that I had to use it. Then I got another really insane idea. And suddenly I had solved my problems.

It was different with The Choices We Made, because I actually planned before I started writing (shocking, right?). I got this notebook, and wrote this long list of everything to think about when creating a world, and then I created the world of my book. I had designed most of the world by the time I started writing The Choices We Made, and this made the setting a lot stronger, and left me free to just write.

Writing The Choices We Made is a different experience to writing CONSEQUENCE or any other of my books. In my trilogy, a lot of my characters are impulsive, a fuse just waiting to be lit… But Katerina, the main character in The Choices We Made, is entirely different. There’s this complexity to her emotions that I haven’t really written before, and I think it makes this book far more mature than my previous works.

Katerina is in control of her emotions in a way that would be impossible for, say, Phoenix, but this is damaging for those around her. Katerina isn’t heading in a good direction… she has so many issues around control, and around the lack of control she has over herself. A lot of her personality has stemmed from her history of eating disorders, depression, and self-harm. As a result of this, she is constantly in fear of not being able to take command of herself, not being able to take responsibility for her own life.

A recurring theme in the 27,900ish words I’ve written so far is Katerina’s fear of ‘the emptiness’, and her feeling of ‘standing on the edge of an abyss’. Throughout the book, she is subconsciously searching for something that can fill that emptiness, but when she does find it – or, to be more accurate, him – she soon discovers that even that isn’t enough, and constantly denies herself the chance to heal.

Katerina falls in love with Ansel, who is the supposedly-dead son of the Kamea (king) who was executed seventeen years before the book begins. But when Katerina finds herself working for the Djator (president/dictator) who plans to have Ansel killed, she must make the choice of where her loyalties lie.

Katerina is deeply in love with Ansel, but she does not believe that it is love; she will not even admit to herself how she feels. At one point, it says ‘I never loved him, but the feelings I felt were much stronger than love.’ And at another point she believes that the two of them have been possessed by the Gods, and that her feelings are ethereal, otherworldly, and not something as simple as love. By thinking of him like this, she turns him into an addiction, a drug, a thing she can’t allow herself to have.

Even at this point, Katerina is still on Ansel’s side, still fighting for his safety, but as the book goes on, her humanity and compassion slowly begins to ebb away, replaced by coldness and selfishness. When Katerina finds out a shocking family secret, her fear and anxiety boils over, and she can’t cope any more, her last remnants of strength are gone, and she has been cut down to the very core.

Katerina ends up on a rooftop, ready to jump, and it’s the Djator who talks her out of it, the Djator who saves her from herself, and consequently, she switches sides. Her feelings for Ansel don’t change, but her loyalties do. The Djator can give something Katerina has never had: power. And as a result of this, she becomes the worst version of herself, eventually becoming a dictator and alienating herself from the people she cares about.

In The Choices We Made, I have used religion and politics and culture to create a world for my characters that is more true to reality than, say, the world of CONSEQUENCE. As humans, we are made up of more than just ourselves – we are made up of the world we live in, too, and this is a fact that I sometimes overlook when creating “realistic” characters. Using means such as religion, I can put Katerina in a position that is a closer mirror to reality than the lives of characters in my other books.
Katerina has religious beliefs, she has political beliefs, she has been influenced by the culture she grew up in, and she has her own opinions as well as this. Katerina has a conscience, she knows the difference between good and bad, and she makes her decisions in spite of this, because at the end of the day, she is a person, and people often make the wrong choices.

I think that perhaps the reason I have taken so long to write this book – other than school getting in the way – is that The Choices We Made and I are both maturing, and we grow together. The older and wiser I get, the better the book gets. When I started writing this book, I was not in a good space, and it was my therapy. But then I felt like I could only write it when I was really miserable – which made the first chapters really dark and powerful – and so when I was happy again I didn’t really write much.


But I started writing again, and I began to see that the bleak nature of the book wasn’t really all that interconnected with my own feelings of bleakness, and that the two had just happened to compliment each other. The truth is, the reason I love The Choices We Made so much is because it is bleak, and it is desolate and dark and somewhat hopeless, but overall, it is just like all my other books: a story about the things that make us human, and things that eventually come to break us. And perhaps the overall message is not so bleak after all…perhaps the overall message is that no matter how broken we are, there is something in the world that will make us care enough that we can put ourselves back together.

Friday 2 May 2014

Random Procrastinations, Persephone, Some Cool Links To Some Cool Things, And The Random Excuses For Why I Haven't Written In A While.

I have been meaning to write a blog for ages. I especially meant to write one on April 14th or 15th because they were the two year anniversaries of when I got the idea for CONSEQUENCE, and when I started writing CONSEQUENCE, respectively.

There are various excuses for why I didn’t write: I have to revise for my GCSEs which are two weeks away, I had homework to do, I needed to watch season one of Game of Thrones for the fifth time, I had to catch up on reading. The reality is this: *thinking* Ooooh look at this pretty picture of Ansel Elgort*! Facebook! Tumblr! Twitter! Travel blogs! Game of Thrones! John Green books! Shailene Woodley and Theo James should get together*! Emilia Clarke is pretty! I should reread Divergent! Game of Thrones memes! (And the list goes on).

In other words, I am an expert in the art of Extreme Procrastination. However (Oooh, I’m using connectives! My English teachers should be so proud!) I told myself I would write today, because it’s Persephone’s birthday. Or, at least, in 292 years it shall be. Tomorrow it’s 309 years till she marries the Tsar. It’s sad that I took the time to work that out. I did it in Biology this morning and wrote the number on my hand to remember it. The other things written on my hand right now are “Blog about Persephone”, “Egypt zombies” (book idea, don’t ask), “S. exam F change to H.” (Science exam Foundation, change to Higher), and, my personal favourite “Hide body in sewer”.

Yet when I went on the computer, I didn’t instantly start writing this. I didn’t even sign in to blogger (or click on blogger; I never bother signing out.) Instead, I started looking at all these interesting websites (http://www.readjunk.com/articles/pickuplines/game-of-thrones-pick-up-lines/ http://news.distractify.com/people/complex-humans/?v=1  http://onthenews.net/article/29-of-the-most-awkward-family-photos-ever/13), and then I went on twitter, and on my school’s twitter page I saw the link for these video things. My school has this TV show thing called Sounds of the Beacon that is shown on screens around school, and I have a book review show on there. I hadn’t really watched it properly at school, so when I saw the link I got distracted by watching them. ( http://vimeo.com/93615306 I come into it after about 12 seconds)

And I’m getting distracted by writing about stuff that distracted me. Typical Eliza moment…

I can’t actually remember the last time I wrote a blog, but I believe it was in February or March. I procrastinate too much, that is why I haven’t written, but I think I’m just going to blame it on my GCSEs. School makes it difficult to find time to read, let alone write, so my books and blogs have been neglected lately. However, I only have six weeks left till my exams are over, and then the 2.5 months of boredom before Sixth Form begin. 2.5 MONTHS! I get bored during a weekend, how am I going to go that long without school? I’ll go insane.

To be fair, school drives me almost as insane as Not Being at School does, but at school I have loads of teachers who adore me, so that stops me being insane. (Even my maths teacher, who wasn’t very keen on me at first, now thinks I’m brilliant, because I’ve gone from an F grade to a B grade in less than eight months. I think I have superpowers.) In terms of the whole Liking School thing, I think that just proves that I am as much of a weirdo as people say I am. (The downside of school: there are a large number of people who think that I am a total freak, and they love pointing it out to me. I’ve reported nine people for bullying in the last few months, but that’s a subject for another blog).
I should probably write about Persephone now, given the fact that she was what I had intended to write this blog about, because it’s 292 years before her birthday. (Implying she would actually be “born”, because, robot, ya know? Not to mention the whole She’s Fictional thing…)

My problem is that, as a result of 7.5 months of English lessons, I can no longer write anything about books without turning it into an English Lit essay. If you see the words “simile”, “Metaphor” “vivid imagery” “onomatopoeia” or “sibilance” in the rest of this blog, you will know that my soul has been taken over by exam practice. If you just see “metaphor” my soul will only have been taken over by The Fault in Our Stars.


So Persephone was the first character I came up with for CONSEQUENCE. She was tall and skinny, with green eyes and long, mousy-brown hair. Then my sister said that I should have a redhead main character because no books seem to have any these days, and suddenly Persephone changed appearance, and current Persephone formed. She now is meant to look like Molly Quinn (she plays Alexis in Castle).

Persephone’s personality changed when her appearance changed. Original Persephone was kind of feisty, whereas current Persephone is more…laid back (or kind of dazed, to be honest.) My greatest regret about Persephone (other than, you know, killing her and all that) is that I never recognized her true potential as a character until it was too late. I only saw the surface of her, I never went deep enough, I never saw the core of who she is. Looking back retrospectively at my books, I don’t know if I understood any of my characters until about half way through TRANSCEND.

The character I came closest to understanding was Phoenix, because she shares many personality traits with me, and so it was easier to get into the Phoenix mindset. However, Phoenix and I are not totally alike (I’m less violent, for example), and there were still elements of her that eluded me.

The error in my understanding of Persephone was that I viewed her as basic, and never considered that she went deeper than the surface. Phoenix is like a tornado, and Persephone is a spring breeze; it’s only natural that I saw Phoenix as the complex one…

It was only when writing TRANSCEND that I began to explore the true motivations of all my characters. Persephone’s main motivation is to protect the people she loves. This is a pretty basic goal, but Persephone is basic, but not, however, because she has no depth.

Persephone’s main goals and emotions are simple because she, despite appearance, is not human. She looks like a human, and she is pretty much a human in every sense, and this makes it easy to forget that, in Phoenix’s words, she is ‘Basically, a robot.’
Persephone is designed; she is the Tsar’s experiment. Let’s not forget to mention that the Tsar was a child prodigy who created a fully functioning “human” when he was eight years old. (My storylines aren’t exactly credible, are they?)

Persephone is the person Haden wanted her to be, and then some. *Exclusive information not previously revealed on my blog or in my books* A few months prior to the Tsar’s creation of Persephone, his mother died. Haden’s siblings were much older than he was, and his father was generally absent, so the only person who really cared for him was his mother. Haden created Persephone to fill the emptiness in his life, but he soon realized that a small baby was worthless to him because she was way too young to fill his mother’s place, so he sent her to live with his brother and sister at the vineyard in Greece, hence Persephone’s place of residence at the beginning of the novel.

When creating Persephone, Haden gave her some of the personality traits he associated with his mother – who’s called Rhea, by the way, as in mother of Hades, Zeus, and Poseidon in Greek mythology – and these traits were loyalty, stubbornness, trust, and a deep caring for family. The connection to his mother is one of the reasons why Haden is so obsessed with Persephone (not in a Freudian way, just in a He Misses His Dead Mother way), however this changed once he actually married Persephone. Before their wedding, Haden’s view of Persephone is *mostly* platonic. But when she kisses him on their wedding night, his view of her changes, and he sees her in a different light.

There are three main reasons why he changes his opinion of her – a) he now sees her in a more sexual light, which is a contrast to the extreme innocence that Persephone exhibits at the beginning of the book, b) I can’t go into details for spoiler reasons to do with the epilogue of TRANSCEND, but the Tsar isn’t really into the idea of marrying Persephone/being married to Persephone, because he’s kind of torn between two very different things, and he hasn’t quite twigged that he isn’t one or the other, but rather both, and c) by kissing him, Persephone is breaking away from the skeleton of traits that her personality is built upon. She is becoming bolder, braver, more than just this robot that he created. By kissing Haden, Persephone is showing how truly human she has become, and this terrifies the Tsar, and it surprises him, but also it excites him, because he has created a freaking miracle of nature and oh my gosh it’s kissing him without him designing it to. Hence the fact that he pushes her away – he’s totally freaked out by the whole thing.

I’m kind of fascinated by the dynamic between Persephone and Haden at the beginning of CONSEQUENCE, and I really wish I had written more about it, because it’s so forming for both of their characters, and I think it has a significant effect on the way the books ends.

On a completely different subject, happy birthday to the beautiful amazing gorgeous Emilia Clarke, who plays Daenerys Targaryen on Game of Thrones; she is 27 years old today. Isn’t she pretty? I spent ten minutes scrolling through my Facebook newsfeed trying to find a picture of her before I remembered I had loads of them saved on my laptop. (Speaking of Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Amend/448189008611171?ref=hl  https://www.facebook.com/pages/Consequence/280153012094930?ref=hl https://www.facebook.com/pages/Eliza-Serena-Robinson-Author/455752114469506?ref=hl)
(Facial expressions I can actually relate to ^)


Speaking of birthdays, my beautiful cat William turns eight tomorrow. I searched all over my computer for a picture of him, but I couldn’t find one, so I looked through my old Facebook pictures for one. These are some of the beauties I found during this search: 
 (How I feel at school ^)
 (Me when I was six, in Italy, holding a baby goat that was about 2 hours old)
 (You really should. It's generally inappropriate ^)

 (I once had navy blue hair, one of the many things I am unable to live down)



This is me and William when we were fourteen and six: