Book Club Read, Book Marketing, Books for boys, Books for Teen Boys, Books for Teens, Books to Read, Cantos Chronicles, CL Walters, Coming of Age, Fiction, fiction - mental health, Independent Author, New Fiction, Swimming Sideways, Teen Books, The Bones of Who We Are, The Ugly Truth, writing process, YA Contemporary, YALit, Young Adult, YA Series Cami Book Club Read, Book Marketing, Books for boys, Books for Teen Boys, Books for Teens, Books to Read, Cantos Chronicles, CL Walters, Coming of Age, Fiction, fiction - mental health, Independent Author, New Fiction, Swimming Sideways, Teen Books, The Bones of Who We Are, The Ugly Truth, writing process, YA Contemporary, YALit, Young Adult, YA Series Cami

Indie Author Marketing: Update No. 5

The new covers are here!

The new covers are here!

The covers to The Cantos Chronicles are out! Swimming Sideways, The Ugly Truth and The Bones of Who We Are look glorious both online and in person, because guess what came in the mail this week!?!? The books. The reveal video is an agenda item for this coming week.

The cover reveals and the book trailer were the biggest agenda items for this fifth week on the Indie Marketing Journey. It was a giant mountain with several switch back hairpin turns, but we made it! Several days removed, I’m happy, hopeful and grateful for the reception of the covers and the trailer reinforcing the efforts I made this month, though gains will remain to be seen.

What else did I work on this week?

  1. My March Newsletter has been written and scheduled. One of my goals with the newsletter is to make it beneficial for people to sign up, so I offer items that only subscribers are provided. This month my subscribers are automatically entered into the next giveaway promotion as well as receive a deleted scene from Swimming Sideways that didn’t make it into the final version. I hope that things like this provide subscribers with the “extra” they are looking for by being subscribers.

  2. After making sure the March blitz is planned and ready, I’m in the process now of planning out the content for this coming month. If the first four weeks was about building the bond between readers and the characters of the books, this second four weeks will be about maintaining the connection, trying to create visibility, and generating excitement.

  3. My social media goals have also shifted some. While I am maintaining my author support system on IG, I am activity working to connect with my target audience. Last week, I wrote about posting to wattpad unsure about the cost-benefit analysis, but I can provide anecdotal evidence that I have had more people reading. Has this translated to people interested in committing to The Cantos Chronicles? I’m not sure yet, but I am hopeful.

Are you enjoying the journey with me? What have you tried? What are you thinking about? Talk to me so I don’t fall asleep at the wheel. Be sure to leave a comment. Oh, and would you turn up that song on the car radio too: “Sunflower” by Post Malone and Swae Lee.

Next Week: Indie Author Marketing Update No. 6


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Book Marketing, Books for boys, Books for Teen Boys, Books for Teens, Books to Read, Cantos Chronicles, CL Walters, Independent Author, New Fiction, Swimming Sideways, The Bones of Who We Are, The Ugly Truth, Young Adult Cami Book Marketing, Books for boys, Books for Teen Boys, Books for Teens, Books to Read, Cantos Chronicles, CL Walters, Independent Author, New Fiction, Swimming Sideways, The Bones of Who We Are, The Ugly Truth, Young Adult Cami

Indie Author Marketing: Update No. 4

Making a quick stop to take in the sights before I continue down the road.

Making a quick stop to take in the sights before I continue down the road.

I’m pulling off the road for a quick pit stop; a quick respite to take in what I’ve accomplished before March Madness Blitz swoops in and speeds this journey up to the Cantos Chronicles release day on March 31, 2020. This isn’t because I’m tired, but more because I’ve made it across that map I bought at that convenience store down the road a ways, marked up with goals and got to them. Now, there’s a space for a short rest before the next leg of the journey.

  • I uploaded an old (really old version) of the first book in The Cantos Chronicles when it was still a paranormal story called Upside Down: A Fallen Novel to Wattpad. There’s a lot of conflicting research out there about offering content on Wattpad. Here was my thinking behind the decision: I want to find readers. Where are readers? Wattpad is a place. Granted, the story in this version is funny. I laughed and cringed and wanted to change it as I went, but that wasn’t really my point in uploading it. I wondered if perhaps I was doing myself a disservice in offering a product of quality that is “less than” what this control freak would normally offer. I decided, however, that this version - and all of its flaws - offers a picture of Abby, Seth and Gabe in a different way. And that’s kind of cool even if it’s cringey.

  • Using Instagram story, I set a countdown for two marketing materials: the new cover reveals and the book trailer premier. Hopefully those go well. These were shared on every social media site of which I’m a part.

  • Using Canva and iMovie, I created 10 second snippets for the New Cover Reveals to use this week for my social media platforms.

  • I have publicized the Premiere of The Cantos Chronicles Book Trailer on Facebook by creating an event.

  • Along with all of the new marketing materials, I also maintained the creation and implementation of existing and new content for The Cantos Chronicles on Instagram and Facebook.

This week will be all about those new covers and that trailer. Keep an eye out these next three days!

I would love to know, if you’ve been following the journey: What has stood out to you? What captured your attention and made you interested? Please let me a comment below, or check out my story on IG and share your thoughts.

Join me for the book trailer premier on YouTube on February 27, 2020 at 6PM Pacific Standard Time.

Up Next Week: Indie Marketing Update No. 5

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The Bones of Who We Are: A Difficult Story

TBOWWA Quote Card 12.jpg

My father - my rock - passed away in October 2017. I miss him everyday. I didn’t think I would ever find the words to write again. When I tried, all that made it to the page were visceral and painful images of where I was stuck: my cave. About six months later, I was sitting at a traffic light and heard Abby say “I need you to write my story.” The pilot light was relit, and I found my way through a new draft of SWIMMING SIDEWAYS. 

The summer of 2018, with SWIMMING SIDEWAYS and THE UGLY TRUTH drafted, I went home to Oregon for a month to help my mom and sister go through my father’s things. Most of the month was spent broken-hearted, trudging through necessary spaces. I cleaned the garage breathing in my father’s work space and going through each of his tools. This was something my mother wasn’t going to be able to do. My dad and his workshop were symbiotic; he could fix anything, and his workshop reflected this. So, immersion in his workshop, going through each of his toolboxes and trinkets, the jars of things he saved because they’d come in handy one day, cracked me open. Somehow, in the breaking of my heart and the diligent reorganization of his things, I was able to assemble the broken parts of myself back together. It was during this four weeks in Oregon that I began drafting Gabe’s story, and as I stitched myself back together, Gabe’s began to unravel.

I’ve warned readers that Gabe’s story isn’t an easy story to experience, and that is because THE BONES OF WHO WE ARE deals with heavy topics: bullying, depression, identity, loss, grief. Maybe in a way, the loss of my father is reflected in the pain of Gabe. My pain became his, though Gabe’s story was always this, I just couldn’t write it before. The pivotal scene in the book - the reason Gabe is who he is - was written back in 2009, eight years before I lost my father; nine years before I went through his workshop and faced my own undoing. 

Perhaps, I was never going to be equipped to tell Gabe’s story without understanding the complete loss of someone so essential to my own identity. Perhaps, sitting inside my father’s workshop by myself allowed me to grasp loss, life, and grief in a way I never would have without that struggle. As writers our life experiences impact the depth of our knowledge. Virginia Woolf wrote, “Every secret of a writer’s soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind is written large in his works.” So, I suppose by realizing how painful it was to look at my father’s empty steel-toed work boots and be slammed with the awareness of how much I missed him, it forced me to jump into the deep end of loss. When the only thing I could do was climb into bed and bury myself in romance novels because those stories were as much as I could handle to not sink and drown, I found a way to tread water. Perhaps, this trial was the only way I was ever going to be able to empathize with Gabe’s experience. 

THE BONES OF WHO WE ARE isn’t an easy story, but then life, love, loss, grief never are. That is the truth of what it means to be human. We hurt, but there is power in the warmth of hope. That - the hope - is what my father would have loved about Gabe’s story.

NEXT WEEK: A Letter from Gabe to readers

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The Bones of Who We Are: Journey to Gabe

When Gabe became a character in my mind, he started as a fallen angel. There was something magical and beautiful about him in those first drafts of the original paranormal story. He was the blameless sacrifice - the Christ figure - idealized in all his beauty and glory. Then in 2009, I was teaching a class on creativity and in our daily pages, I wrote a heartbreaking scene that I couldn’t shake. I knew without a shadow of a doubt that the character was Gabe as a child, and it shattered the paranormal drafts of the work-in-progress at the time. Nothing already drafted could stand if I used the scene. What the heck was I supposed to do with that, I wondered. 

So the scene sat in my head as an unresolved issue with Gabe’s character. I put the manuscript - two years and nine drafts completed - away (partially because of this unresolved issue, but mostly because a wave of fallen angel stories broke in 2009 and 2010).

In 2015, Seth - the loudest of the three characters - who’d been dragged into hell at the end of the first paranormal story, began nagging me about having left him there. I pulled the story out again. I was teaching Homer’s Odyssey and the Hero’s Journey to my freshman at the time, and decided to plot Seth’s story using Chris Volgler’s work, and suddenly something clicked. The story was there, but I believed it to be a stand alone novel assuming Abby and Gabe were just secondary characters. So, I finished THE UGLY TRUTH in 2016; I was never happy with its ending. My family and friends enjoyed it (or pretended to), but I couldn’t get the nagging feeling out of my head and heart that the ending was all wrong. 

So, it sat for another two years.

Then in March of 2018, I was sitting at a traffic light, waiting, and I heard Abby say in my head, “I need you to finish my story.” In that moment, it dawned on me that all three of them needed their own story. Abby. Seth. Gabe. With Seth’s already done, I went back to the original paranormal manuscript to see if there was anything salvageable for Abby and Gabe. With a ton of cutting, rewriting, and creating new content, Abby’s story, SWIMMING SIDEWAYS, came together, but like Seth’s narrative, I struggled with the ending. I couldn’t figure out how it was supposed to connect until it dawned on me: Abby’s story was first and both she and Seth’s stories were necessary in order to tell Gabe’s. Like finding the last pieces of a puzzle being put into place, I understood the whole story in three parts. The entire series had been moving toward the culmination of Gabe’s narrative all along. 

That quiet, painful scene I wrote back in 2009, suddenly made sense, and served as the cornerstone around which Gabe’s entire story is built. 

The aesthetic I made for Gabe’s story.

The aesthetic I made for Gabe’s story.

Next week: the difficulty of writing Gabe’s story .



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The Bones of Who We Are: Aesthetic

I love Gabe. He’s the moody, brooding hero, and his story explores the why of his emotional journey. But his story needs a trigger warning. He’s dealing with some dark stuff (with support), so in the forward, I’ve provided an escape hatch for readers in case they aren’t in the head space to read it.

As I’ve been writing In The Wait: A Companion to Swimming Sideways and The Ugly Truth, (published to Wattpad or look for a new installment each Wednesday here) I’ve had more clarity about Gabe’s journey which I hope readers will be able to see as well.

I created this aesthetic to provide a visual reflection of Gabe’s story.

The Bones of Who We Are Mood Board

The Bones of Who We Are Mood Board

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YA Author Series - Author Spotlight: Leslie Arambula

Leslie Arambula

LeslieArambula.jpeg

Tell us three things about who you are and why you write . . .

  • I’m a wife, teacher, author, and mother of three.

  • Some of my hobbies include picking up the same toys over and over again, cooking, video games, reading, and avoiding stacks of papers that need to be graded.

  • I write because the people in my head won’t stop telling me their stories, but mostly because I think stories connect us to each other, and I hope that mine will do that for readers as well.

Tell us about the story…

Nobody will tell Gia about her mom, but she is on a mission to learn more about her. The opportunity comes on Gia’s fifteenth birthday, in the form of a surprise package. Little does Gia know that the small box contains a power that will change her fate and the fate of the world.

What are three things you want us to know as we read?

  • This scene happens in the opening chapter of the book.

  • Gia’s mom and Alex’s parents were all killed in the same accident when the girls were just toddlers.

  • Gia has been a victim of bullying for years, and Alex always tries to shield her from it.


Where can we find this story? Where can we find you?

My story is currently unpublished but will be soon!

IG @authorlesliearambula

Twitter @leslie_arambula

Website: lesliearambula.com


FROM . . . Guardian (Working Title)

LeslieArambula2.jpeg

When I woke up the next morning, I was laying on the couch in the living room and the monster movie marathon I had been watching was now an infomercial about slow cookers. I turned it off just as a loud knock on the door startled me out of the lumpy cushions.

When I opened the front door, nobody was there. Looking down, a pile of envelopes were laid on top of a brown package. I scooped them up and deposited them onto the entryway table then went to grab some cereal.

A pang of loneliness thumped in my chest. I thought that my dad would have at least tried to postpone or shorten his current trip for my 15th birthday. I was wrong. 

My mother had only been alive until my third birthday, and then she and Alex’s parents had been in a train wreck on their daily commute to work. Alex’s grandmother, Sofia, moved in with her across the street and had become the only real parent Alex and I had ever really known.

Now, I stayed at my own house but shared a lot meals and time with them when Dad wasn’t home. So pretty much every night. 

The front door handle jiggled from the other room, and someone came in. I could hear rummaging in the pantry. Alex.

She walked into the dining room. She wore cutoffs and a Led Zepplin shirt she’d bought at Goodwill a few months ago. She was munching on a granola bar, and didn’t even wait to swallow it as she said, “Happy birthday! Wait—what are you doing? I thought we were going to the bookstore today.”

“Yeah, but I thought we said at eleven.”

“It is eleven, goofball,” she said.

When I trudged up the stairs, Alex grinned, grabbed up my cereal bowl, and went to pour herself some while she waited. 

When I had showered, I went to my room and found Alex, feet up on my desk, playing Call of Duty and bossing her teammates around. The empty cereal bowl rested on one of my library books. I moved it on top of my Chemistry homework to avoid any milk stains that I’d have to pay for. 

“You guys go around from the west, and I’ll hit them from the East. No, not you, idiot. You’re coming with me. You’ve got the RPG, right?”

A few minutes later, the game cut to the lobby between matches. Alex pumped her fist and pulled off the headset. 

“Impressive,” I said. “I wonder where you learned that strategy.”

“Ha ha,” she countered, “If I can’t be a genius tactician, I might as well rip one off. So, thanks, genius tactician.” 

“Thanks, but you should actually thank the English. It was actually back in 1332—” 

“Are we going or what?”

“Sure,” I rolled my eyes and let her change the topic. 

As we were about to leave, she stopped short. 

 “I saw this on my way in,” she pointed to the small brown package that had come with the mail. “You should open it.” 

I had forgotten all about it. 

“I’m not into dog food samples, but thanks.” 

The typical packages sent here were from companies sending things to my dad in an effort to get his feedback or so he could compare some of the competition’s products. 

“It’s for you, dummy,” she sighed. “It has your name on the top.”

Confused, I picked it up like it was one of the bombs the other team had just seen blown up in their faces. It was a small, square, heavy box. On the outside, it was wrapped in plain brown paper, a little worse for wear, but I was surprised it had made it through the postal system without tearing. On the top, written in a looping scrawl was my name: Giassa Renee Meliar. 

“Weird,” I said. “Nobody uses my whole—”

“Just open it already,” Alex interrupted, bouncing up and down like a bratty toddler.

As my fingers brushed the rough paper, I thought about opening this later, when I was alone. Alex was my best friend, practically my sister and we spent every holiday, birthday, and every day together. But this felt different. This felt private.

Pushing that feeling aside, I began to unwrap it. Beneath the wrapper was a wooden box, a deep red wood that was so slick, it gleamed in the light streaming in from my window. I ran a finger over it. I hesitated. I didn’t want to be disappointed too quickly. Happy Birthday, here’s some premium dog treats!

“What is it?” Alex broke through my thoughts. 

When I cracked open the lid, something small and round caught the light and blinded me for just a moment before I angled the lid all the way open. 

It was a sphere, a glass orb, sitting within a dark blue velvet compartment in the box. My memory flashed: the man that I thought I had hallucinated in the forest. And again in my dream last night. That man had an orb like this. What did it mean?

I reached a hand toward the orb, but stopped myself. Pinned to the inside of the lid was a scrap of paper with four words on it:

For Gia, 

Love Mom




“Do you think—” Alex breathed beside me. 

I jumped. I had forgotten that she was even there. I closed the lid and straightened. 

“She’s dead,” I said. “It’s fake. A sick joke.”

Alex’s face crumpled into something that looked like pity and then jealousy, so I stared out the window instead, sticking my hand in my pockets and fiddling with my keys.

“Are we going?” 

Alex cleared her throat, “Yeah.” She pulled her gaze from the note. 

I left the room first, trying to put as much distance between me and that box as possible. 





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YA Author Series - Author Spotlight: Alison Aldridge

Alison Aldridge

AllyAldridge.jpeg

Tell us three things about who you are and why you write . . .

I am a natural redhead.  I drink a lot of tea and feel it can solve most problems.  I am a mum to a son, daughter and two pussy cats.

I write because when I don’t write I feel stressed. It is a release for me.  My imagination never switches off so if I don’t let it go somewhere it gets crowded in my head.  Sometimes, to sleep, I have to jot down ideas otherwise they keep me up all night.

Tell us about the story…

AllyAldridge2.png

Mariah has a magic-meddling mum, and about to discover she’s a storm summoning mermaid that needs to gain control of her emotion-connected powers ready for the impending battle with the powerful, unstoppable death crows!

What are three things you want us to know as we read?

You most likely think you are an ordinary human being but what if one day your ordinary life was turned upside down.  Everything is changing, you feel vulnerable and start crushing on your best friend. Do you peruse that romance knowing it could destroy your friendship or watch in agony as they get closer to someone else.  To make matters worse, imagine your emotions give life to your dormant supernatural abilities and you have no idea how to control them. This is what is starting to happen to Mariah.

Where can we find this story? Where can we find you?

Link Tree:  https://linktr.ee/redfae

Website:  https://allyaldridge.wordpress.com/

Wattpad: @redfae  https://www.wattpad.com/user/redfae

IG:  @redfae https://www.instagram.com/redfae/

Twitter:  @Fae7 https://twitter.com/Fae7

Goodreads:  Alison Aldridge https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/8108229.Alison_Aldridge



From… Jewel of the Sea…

Splinters threatened my skin as my hands grasped the wood and pulled at the panel of cheap fencing to open a triangle at the foot. Once wide enough to fit through, I flattened myself to the ground. Using my elbows and hips I pushed my way past the rich scent of soil that warmed my heart and made me think of my best friend Jace.

Once through on the other side, I dusted the dirt off my knees. Jace's garden looked empty. My shoulder stung.  As I glanced to my left I saw where I'd caught myself on the fence. The scratch left a bright red line and blood smudged across onto my blue vest top. Mum would be mad. I licked my thumb and tried to rub it off.

"Aghhh!" I screamed as my body was shocked in an icy cold shower. I turned around to find Jace standing there with the garden hose in his hand, laughing his head off.

"Jace!" I yelled. We'd spent all summer hanging out, like always.

With a naughty glint in his eye, he lifted the hose and soaked me again.

"Cut that out!" I ran at him to pull the hose out of his hand. He dodged out of my way and ran past me. As I chased after him, round his garden, he kept spraying me over his shoulder. In the beautiful heat of the summer sun, I welcomed the refreshing relief.

Finally, trapping him by the shed, I grabbed the hose. He still wouldn't let go and as we wrestled over it, he kept managing to squirt my face. Using my fingers, I changed the direction of the water and got him back. He made a funny gurgling noise and laughed, shaking the water from his blonde mop of hair.

"That doesn't sound like my plants are getting watered!" Denny yelled from the kitchen window. His mum was younger than mine. She had delicate features and high cheekbones framed by her dark pixie cut.

"Sorry, mum," Jace yelled back. His lip curled on one side as he tried in earnest to appear sincere, "You need to let go so I can continue with my chores."

"No way," I giggled, knowing as soon as I let go, he'd spray me, "We'll just have to do it together."

We then started watering the plants together, both refusing to let go of the hose.

"This is stupid Mariah," His blue eyes twinkled. "It would be much quicker if you just let me do it."

"I know you too well, Jace." I grinned as I argued back. "Why don't you just let me do it?"

"I couldn't shirk my responsibilities like that." Jace countered.

"I really don't mind."  I felt him try to tip the hose up towards me. The water ran up the fence but I managed to stop him. "Cut it out, Jace?"

"Oops!" He said with humour, his eyes alive with merriment.

The afternoon continued with the same upbeat light-heartedness. We sat out in the sun, enjoying ice creams and chilled drinks. Little did I know that it would be one of the last days of carefree fun and games next-door.  It started with Denny arriving at our house without Jace. We always found excuses to hang out together, so it made me feel unsettled that he hadn't come over with her.

She'd come to see mum, but I hovered around the kitchen. Her eyes stared down into a mug of tea, slowly stirring her sugar spoon, her gaze lost in a deep spin of thought.

"Are you going to drink that or spit out what's on your mind?" Mum asked.

Denny sighed, "I was hoping you already knew."

Mum isn't like ordinary mums. She is that woman with dark flowing hair who tells fortunes at spiritual fairs.

I stood up on my tiptoes to reach the cake tin and helped myself to one of the buttercream cupcakes; a product of mum and Denny's Sparkle Cake home bakery business.

"Don't make me dig out my crystal ball..." Mum threatened Denny. Her tone made me think I'd been caught with my sugary delight. For a moment I paused, wincing as I waited for 'don't spoil your dinner' or 'stop eating our profits' but she was too focussed on Denny to notice me.

Denny took a deep breath like she was conjuring up the courage to speak. With an awkward smile on her face, she said, "Dave and I have found somewhere to live together, a home of our own." But her blue eyes shone, brimming with tears.

"That's great news." Mum cheered.

"But..."

"What is it, Denny?"

"We’ll no longer be neighbors and it's all the way over on the other side of town. I feel so conflicted. It's perfect but I'm gonna miss you guys."

Her words were like the icy shower from the hose but without the warm relief of the sun or uplifting sound of Jace's laughter.

"You can't!" I snapped. Jace was my life! I needed him close! I needed him next door! I no longer wanted the bun, it was too sweet and I cast it aside on the counter.

"The cakes?" Denny gasped realizing what I'd done.

Mum threw me a disapproving look, "Mariah, go get the washing off the line!"

I stormed out the kitchen through the back door of our small terrace house, slamming it shut behind me. Without bothering to unpeg the clothes from the line, I began pulling them free and dumping them into the laundry basket. This haphazard manner completed the task too fast and I wasn't ready to go back inside.

I snuck over to the fence looking for the loose panel and pulled... but it wouldn't move. Then, I saw the evil glint of a new nail, hammered in to keep the plank in place; Keeping me out. I kicked at it, hurting my foot.

I sank onto the grass, my back pressed against the fence.  As I gazed up towards Jace's bedroom window my heart felt like a rock, unpleasant and heavy in my chest. I was consumed by a sinking feeling as I realised he really was going and there was nothing I could do about it.  

Then, to make matters worse, the sky beautiful blue sky darkened.  Heavy rapid rain soaked through my t-shirt as I raced inside. I didn't stop in the kitchen with mum and Gwyn, I carried on up to my room.  I dropped onto my bed, laying on my back, staring out the window at the raging storm that felt as if it spoke to my soul, mirroring my anger.



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YA Author Series Launch: CL Walters

Over the next seven weeks, this blog will feature seven different authors who write Young Adult Stories.

Each Monday in April (and into May), a new author (published and unpublished) will be featured along with a 500-1000 words selection of her work (sorry, guys - no men submitted! What the heck!?!? Your assignment is to go read any or all of these authors: Marcus Zusak, Jeff Zentner and John Green).

Today, I will launch the format using my own work so you’ll get a sense of what to look for in the coming weeks. I hope this series is beneficial for you as readers (maybe you’ll find your next favorite author in the coming weeks), as well as for the author as a growth opportunity to share their voices.

FEEDBACK WANTED!

Be sure to provide the guest authors some CONSTRUCTIVE FEEDBACK! Either in the comments section or in some capacity on their social media platforms. As writers - constructive feedback fuels us.

Drum roll please . . .

CL Walters

8FC7F9B7-9AD6-4739-93D8-E4268FE3C750.jpg

Tell us three things about who you are and why you write . . . I write because I can’t not write (please forgive the double negative). When I don’t, I turn into a bitch and that isn’t healthy for my family or my marriage. Writing is like breathing, so without it, I’m not living. Second, I adore stories - reading them, studying them, writing them - it all blends together. Finally, I write stories which I categorize as “young adult” but I hope they are just human stories that anyone at any age can enjoy.

Tell us about the story we’re going to read (your elevator pitch). . . Gabe is faced with a choice between life and death; the question is, what will he discover about himself to help him make the decision.

What are three things you want us to know as we read? This story is the third act of a trilogy. The first two books explore Abby’s and Seth’s stories in Swimming Sideways and The Ugly Truth. Gabe’s story The Bones of Who We Are has been challenging to write but not only because of the writing, but because of the content which swirls around bullying, victimization and depression.

Where can we find this story? Where can we find you (IG, Twitter, FB, website). The Bones of Who We Are is slated to be published this coming October (2019). In the meantime, you can catch up with Swimming Sideways and The Ugly Truth which are on Amazon (Kindle and Print). I can be found on IG (@cl.walters) and Twitter (@peeledandcored), my website (www.clwalters.net) and FB (CLWalters).

From… The Bones of Who We Are:

(YA Contemporary - Language Warning…)

I hate walking through the Quad. It’s a necessity twice a day unless I want to take the long way around the outside of the school. The deciding factor is always which one has the potential for more problems. Outside, I run the risk of an actual fight. In the Quad, I run the risk of mocking, maybe shit thrown at me, or something else to make me feel less than human. The first one means physical harm. The second one emotional and mental, but I can usually block it out with my headphones.

When I turn the corner from the stairwell into the opening of the Quad, it’s full. This time of the school day - lunch - it usually is. People are either in the cafeteria or there, especially as the weather turns rainy and cold. They sit on or around a myriad of red and black tables, congregate by the vending machines in red and black metal cages, and flirt with someone they crush on moving like honey bees from table to table. Some industrious students use the space to study, but not very often at lunch. It’s a space with very little adult supervision. This is for several reasons. First, the school office is across the way which adults must assume is a deterrent for teen bullshit (it isn’t) and, second, it’s lunch time. Teachers are either in the cafeteria, eating lunch with their work friends, or in their classrooms making space for those industrious students needing a place to escape the teen bullshit in the Quad.

I hesitate for a moment, consider walking around the outside or cutting through the offices, but then am annoyed for even thinking about it. I have every right to walk through the Quad. I shouldn’t have to feel worried to do it. But then that’s the problem of positivity, of allowing in layers of hope. It crumbles without a proper foundation, and just like I’d told Doc it would happen, the mouth of the escape route collapses burying me inside. It was, after all, only a matter of time.

I’m halfway across the space when I’m yanked backward. I keep my feet, but my hoodie cuts into my throat choking me. I rock backward and then forward.

Laughter.

“What the fuck!” I turn.

Tommy Pilner, his hands raised in mock surrender and smiling like he’s just caught a mouse, says, “Yo. Daniels. You don’t have to go all HAM, dude.”

I’ve known Tommy since coming to Cantos and he’s always been the same; he loves the Freak Challenge. He’s taken full advantage of the fact I don’t throw hands. Seth used to say his dad described Tommy as a younger version of his old man. I think: aren’t we all, which doesn’t bode well for any of us. “Fuck off,” I tell him, and turn away.

He grabs my hood again, but this time pulls with so much force I’m yanked off my feet. I slam against the floor on my back.

Laughter.

“Jesus, Daniels. What the fuck? You really should be more careful. You could get hurt.” Tommy laughs looking at his friends. “You all see him slip?”

They are laughing.

I’m on my feet.

Here’s another thing about hope - besides the risk of losing it - it begins to warm the cold and melt away the perceptions of what you’ve come to think you deserve into something more golden. You look outside the clear window, feel that sunshine, and think: Yeah. I could go out there and play. When the storm comes in, you remember what that sun felt like, and you want the fucking sun.

So, maybe I wouldn’t have a few weeks ago, but I take a step toward Tommy.

His smile falters.

The Bones of Who We Are… Coming October 2019

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Books to Read, Coming of Age, Fiction, music and writing, The hero's journey, Young Adult Cami Books to Read, Coming of Age, Fiction, music and writing, The hero's journey, Young Adult Cami

The Ugly Truth: Cover Reveal and Playlist

It’s here! The follow up to Abbys story in Swimming Sideways with Seth’s story in The Ugly Truth.

The Spotify Playlist for The Ugly Truth:

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  1. I Was Wrong (Robin Schulz Remix) - A R I Z O N A

  2. Heartbeat - Haux

  3. Forever Lost - God is an Astronaut

  4. Always - Tyson Motsenbocker

  5. Ayahuasca - Vancouver Sleep Clinic

  6. On the Train Ride Home - The Paper Kites

  7. Mass (Re-Imagined) - Phoria

  8. Body - SMYL

  9. All Time Low - Jon Bellion

  10. You Deserve Better - James Arthur

  11. Luna - Ebb & Flod

  12. Cold Desert - Kings of Leon

  13. Waves - Dean Lewis

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