On talking about PP

PP - it needs to be in code. It's that Peer thingy. You know, the things that totally sucks but we've all experienced at some point. I mean, seriously, show me a teenager with at least one friend and I'll show you someone who has experienced Peer Pressure. Even as adults, it doesn't go away. It can be easier to stand up it, maybe, but despicably it can continue all through life.

(Doesn't this photo send chivers down your spine? The feeling of peer pressure, of feeling like you can't live up to their standards, or maybe that their values don't align with your own ... urgh ... thanks for the chills, https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/z/unhappy-girl-being-gossiped-school-friends-teenage-76512212.jpg)

In The Boy in the Hoodie, the opening chapters are all about PP and how difficult it can be to stand up to it. The thought of losing your friends, or being seen as someone different, or someone afraid to go along with everyone else, can be worse than the thought of failing a subject. Or landing in detention.

In The Boy in the Hoodie, one of Kat's friends has a nickname for her: Mary. Paige calls Kat "Mary" when she suggests they shouldn't do something, or that something might be unsafe - you know, when she puts voice to the little alarm that goes off when something doesn't feel right. Once again, Kat finds herself having to choose between her friends and doing the wrong thing, or standing alone:

The bottle was pretty much empty by the time it got to me. Only one mouthful left, at best. I toyed with the bottle for a moment, looking at it, rolling it in the palms of my hands. Three sets of eyes watched me. I could see the word forming on Paige's lips: Mary. Her narrowed eyes were telling me to hurry up and drink it. I stared down at the bottle. The first sip, I hadn't known what I was doing. This time, I'd be knowingly drinking alcohol at school.

PP is something we don't always take seriously enough in our teenager's lives. It can be really tough to make the right choice, and to know what the consequences might be. As the choices Kat has to make get more complicated, the less she feels she is able to talk to anyone about them:

Dad shook his head. 'Why are you doing this, Kat? There are going to be some really big consequences for this. If you are covering for Pai-... for any of your friends, you need to say so now. We've always told you to tell the truth, no matter what the consequences might be. You don't always know what is going to happen to the others involved. Telling the truth is always the best option.'

I lowered my head and stifled a sob. 'I can't, Dad.'

'So you're going to stand by everything you have just said to Mr Dean? To me, just now?'

I nodded.

Dad stood up and walked over to Mum. Her face was cold and unresponsive. I was crying so much that my snot and my tears were mixing into one steady stream of wetness that now covered most of my face. No sleeve was long enough for this level of sadness.

The results are that Kat gets herself into situations that she doesn't know how to handle. It's important teenagers have significant people, other adults, in their lives who they can turn to when they can't look to their parents anymore. It can be difficult as parents to parent and keep the relationship at a level where teens feel they can still ask for advice. You need to make room in your teenager's life for other options for them.

If you want to find out more about how Kat deals with the PP she experiences, and the journey it launches her onto, you can buy The Boy in the Hoodie at all good bookstores, ask for it at your local library, or buy it online at places like Booktopia :)

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And finally, I think this photo was taken by my friend, Paige, while we were on a YA trip to NZ. She's the babe in the white tee. All credit to you, gorgeous!

You can connect with Catriona through social media here

On how domestic and violence shouldn't go together

Domestic violence. It’s one of those phrases that sounds as bad as it is; for me anyway. When I hear the word domestic, I think of Dad at home mowing the lawn, or Mum washing up the dishes, or Dad cooking eggs for his kids for lunch on Saturday afternoon. And when I think of violence, well, I think how those two words just shouldn’t go together.

(photo borrowed from: https://www.pexels.com/photo/adult-alone-anxious-black-and-white-568027/)

But unfortunately, they get put together way too often. I was really saddened to have a teen reader tell me that she could really relate to The Boy in the Hoodie, because she had a close friend who’d experienced something similar to what happened in the novel. I guess the thing is, as a YA writer it’s really important to me that my readers can see all sorts of things in themselves in the characters, their experiences, their reactions. But to hear it, to know it really is real for some young people in the world, is really sad. 

Domestic violence affects more than just the person at the receiving end of the fist. It hurts the children, the wider family, the friends. It hurts our communities. It hurts our society. It segregates and isolates, it creates wounds which turn into scars, it makes people hide and it makes people change. When a child is the victim of domestic violence, whether directly or indirectly, it messes up their minds. And sometimes, it’s not until they become teenagers that the impact is fully realised. 

​It can help to know that. Teenagers often need counselling to make sense of things that happened to them in their younger years, even if they received counselling for it at the time. That’s because teenagers start to see things from a new perspective, and analyse things on a deeper level. So be prepared, and help them to prepare. Because being a teenager is difficult enough as it is. 

The Boy in the Hoodie, and his mother, were victims of domestic violence. His Mum continued in the abusive relationship, even after her partner was freed from prison. I saw this powerful Ted Talk by a woman who was in an abusive marriage. If you'd like to get a better understanding of the how and why of domestic violence, I encourage you to watch it:

Shine a light on it.

Photo: This is my hubby and me at our school swimming carnival. He's the "Larry" that The Boy in the Hoodie is dedicated to. He's a great guy, and an awesome dad and husband. He's also an amazing school teacher, and I love getting work at the same school as him even though I hardly ever get to see him there.

You can connect with Catriona through social media here

On keeping YA novels real

I read a blog recently about writing YA books, and what the age group, are looking for in their books. I found it interesting, but I’m not convinced one aspect of it is correct. I’d love your input if you’re keen to express an opinion. 

Jane, the blog’s author, gave a list of lessons she had learned from writing YA. The first was that YA readers what these kept real. This, I totally agree with. While writing The Boy in the Hoodie, one of the biggest compliments one of my teen beta writers gave me was how real the (caution: minor spoiler alert!) kissing scene was. The characters in the scene are a little awkward and it ends up being pretty confusing for them both, but especially for Kat who was caught unaware by the whole thing. 

(Image borrowed from: http://www.freeimages.com/)

But what Jane argues, is the characters need to speak, and what she meant was swear, like teens do. I question this. I hang around teenagers a lot, both in my house, at work, at Youth Group on Friday nights, so it’s not as if I don’t know they speak like that. But do we have to have it in print? 

Some very successful YA novels of late have had little to no swearing. The Hunger Games. Divergent. The Maze Runner had its own ‘language’ in terms of cussing and stuff, but nothing we recognise in today’s language. The Sky So Heavy was awesome until about 3/4 of the way into the book when the book became over-run by it. Personally, I don’t like it. I can choose to ignore swearing if I hear it around me (and admittedly, I’m sure the teens around me tone it down just for my sake) but it’s so much harder to ignore in novels. It’s like it forces my brain to think, to internally say, the word. And I’m not like that. And I don’t think all teens these days are like that either. Some may be, but I don’t think it’s required, and I don’t think teens expect it in their novels.

Am I wrong? 

You can read the article at the link here

P.S. I'd love to know what your opinion is, cause seriously if I've got this wrong, I'd like to know. :)

Photo: my daughter and I being too cool for school at the beach in Hervey Bay. I swear she doesn't swear. Unless she's swearing on how cool her mother is. ;)

Inspiring quote of the day: The "heart of the matter" is a matter of the heart.  Whatever you see and hear consistently over time (good or bad) will enter your heart and put your life on autopilot. --Pastor Sam Adeyemi, Nigeria

If you want to connect with Catriona on social media, you can do so here

On the next stage in the game

Have you heard of a writing community even called NaNoWriMo? It is an acronym for National Novel Writing Month, an annual event where writers from all over the world join in an online community and spend a month writing 50,000 words. In order to 'win' NaNo, you have to write 50,000 in the month of November, which equates to around about 1,660 words a day.

Sounds a bit crazy, don't you think?

Well, I won't lie to you. It IS crazy. It's nuts. It's insane. And, I'm doing it. Again.

Why, I hear you say?

Well, back in November 2015 I signed up to do NaNo for the first time. I hooked in with a couple of amazing writers through the forums, and I wrote The Boy in the Hoodie. I went into NaNo having already written about 7,000 words of the novel, so I had a good feel for the story, my writing voice, and for where I wanted the story to go. And by the end of the month, I'd completed a 60,000word manuscript.

I then spent the next three years editing and revising it. But the bulk of it, the guts, was written in that one month.

So, I'm going in for round two. I've prepared in a similar way, having already written about 8,000 words, though much of the contributing word count are notes about what I want to have happen in various chapters. There are a few fully-written scenes. And there are a couple of key chapters written to really help me get a feel for the characters. I also have fun things lying around my desk, like printed pages of the Australian Curriculum, for authentic connections for those in Year 10 in Australia, and pictures like this:

(Thanks, http://slideplayer.com/6324087/21/images/41/DNA+and+Chromosomes+Eukaryotic+Chromosome+Structure+Chromosome.jpg, you're making this revisiting Year 10 Science business a little easier for me!)

I haven't named the novel yet, but I'm calling it GRACELAND, which is the name of my main character. Jack is causing her some issues in Science. If you're interested, here's a little bit of what I've written so far:

I open my laptop and then sit back to allow the serenity to wash over me. Although the library isn’t a place I’ve visited very often, I’m comfortable in the spacious, colourful room. A few walls are lined with books, the multitude of binders lined up in random colours and sizes without any obvious system. A large poster on the wall shows some students breaking through the library wall about to enter into a new world behind it, with space ships and strange animals watching for them to enter. It reminds me of when I was a little girl and Grandpa, Dad’s dad, read me The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. I must have only been about five, but I remember they were visiting because of the problems with Jesse after he was born. After Grandpa would read it to me, he would talk about how there really is another world within this world that we can escape to. They never visited again after that time. He’d had such a kind voice; it was a shame he hadn’t been able to pass his kindness on to my father.

I place my head in my hands for a moment and try to calm my growing stress levels. There’s no escaping to Narnia anymore; such worlds don’t exist. Just this one, with its rules and demands and hard work and hurt and people who worked more against you than for you. Like now. Surely this assignment for Science is a case of the blind leading the blind. I’m struggling to even understand the topic. I’m not able to help Jack any more than he can help me. Latisha’s no better; she said she’d answer the questions with her tutor and email them to Jack, but whether she’s remembered to, I don’t know. And if Joel would take his headphones out for more than a few seconds at a time, then I’d have some idea of where he’s up to. It’s hopeless. 

The automatic doors open and close and Jack walks into the library. He stands still for a moment, like he’s taking in his surroundings, before heading over to me.

‘Hey,’ I say. 

‘Has Cooper gone home?’

I nod. 

‘Are you sure?’ Jack’s eyes flitter around the room.

I lower my laptop screen. ‘Yes. I watched him until he was in his mum’s car.’

Jack fidgets with his hands. ‘Did you see them drive away?’

‘Yes.’

‘All the way out of the car park?’

‘Jack.’

‘Yes?’

‘Cooper has gone home. It’s okay.’

Jack nods and sits in the chair opposite me.

‘Don’t you think it would be easier if you sat beside me?’

He looks nervously around the room again, before moving around and sitting beside me.

He puts his head down on the table.

‘Didn’t you bring your laptop?’

Jack looks up in surprise, making momentary eye contact with me. ‘You didn’t say to.’

‘If we’re studying, if we’re working on the evidence of learning portfolios, don’t you reckon you’d need your laptop?’

Jack looks confused. ‘Yes. But no. You didn’t say to bring it.’

I sigh. ‘Well, we can just do everything on mine, I guess.’ I fully open my laptop again.

Jack pulls out a notebook from his pocket and starts scribbling something down. 

‘So, where do we start?’ I type in my password and a blank document appears on the screen Jack keeps his head down. ‘Maybe we could put together what everyone has done, and then we can see what everyone still needs to do.’

Jack looks up. ‘Did Latisha send you her stuff?’

‘No,’ I say. ‘She told me she was going to send it to you. Didn’t you get it?’

Jack shrugs. ‘I haven’t looked at my emails today.’

‘What? All day? You haven’t checked your emails all day?’

Jack shakes his head, his eyes plastered to the orange table. I can see he’s fidgeting with his hands beneath it. I refresh my email inbox for the hundredth time that day, but there’s no email from Latisha.

‘Okay.’ I sigh again. ‘Well, what about you? Did you finish writing all the answers up from last week?’

‘No,’ Jack says. 

‘Okay. What are up to? Did you at least finish to the end of question seven?

‘No.’

  ‘Well where are you up to? How many did you do?’

‘None, I guess.’

‘None at all?’ I say, finding it difficult to keep the frustration out of my voice. ‘Didn’t you answer some during class?’

Jack looks up to the ceiling and seems to be holding his breath. 

‘Man.’ My heart thumps in my chest and I grip the edge of the table. I put my head on the edge of the keyboard. The computer starts making a funny noise. 

‘Your head is on the space bar,’ Jack says. ‘That’s why the computer is making that noise.’

I lift my head to nod. The noise stops.

‘Why do you have your head down like that?’ Jack’s hands go still. ‘Are you okay?’

I raise my head. ‘I need to pass this subject. I need to do well on this assignment.’

Jack nods. ‘I know. You told me already.’

‘So, you’re not helping, Jack. You have to work with the group. You have to answer the questions the teacher sets. You have to check your emails. You have to come to school and go to class and you have to do the work!’

Jack frowns. ‘I’ve answered the questions.’

I hold my breath. ‘What do you mean? You just said you hadn’t.’

‘I read the questions and I answered them. But I didn’t write the answers down.’

‘Well, why not?’

Jack shrugs.  ‘Okay, well, how about we write down your answers now.’

Jack briefly makes eye contact again. ‘Okay.’

‘If you had your laptop here, you could look up the answers as I type,’ I mumble, as I open the document with the questions in it.

‘I don’t need to look them up,’ Jack says. ‘I know the answers.’

I frown. ‘Really? Okay. Well, let’s start with the first question: what is DNA?’

Jack looks straight ahead, as though he’s reading something from a screen in the back of his mind. ‘DNA is the carrier of genetic information in the human body. It is what makes someone who they are, or something what it is. DNA is in pretty much in every living thing.’

‘Hang on,’ I say, typing madly on my keyboard. ‘Not so fast.’

‘But to be specific, DNA is an acronym for Deoxyribonucleic acid.’ 

I pause typing and look at Jack. 

‘What?’ Jack looks briefly at me as I stare at him in shock. ‘Do you want me to spell it for you?’

‘Okay. Sure. Just until it comes up in the predictive text.’

‘D.e.o.x.y.r.i.—‘ Jack looks at the computer screen. 

‘It hasn’t come up yet, I don’t think. Are any of these words it?’

Jack leans in closer to the screen. ‘No. B, o, Capital N, u.c.l.e.i.c. And then acid.’

I nod, then shake my head. What the heck was going on? ‘Did you, like, memorise Wikipedia or something?’ 

‘I’m interested in Biology. Especially Biology. I like all Science.’

‘I can see that,’ I say. ‘But you don’t do well on, like, tests and stuff, do you?’

He shakes his head. ‘How do you know that?’

I swallow hard, clasping my hands and resting them on the table in front of the laptop. ‘A friend may have hacked into the school computer system to look you and Latisha up for me.’ I look at Jack. ‘I know you got a D for Science on your last report.’

Jack tucks his chin down into his chest. ‘That was not a nice thing to do. That was an invasion of my privacy.’

‘I didn’t really know you, then. Sorry.’

Jack nods. I can see him frowning under his fringe. ‘Just because you didn’t know me doesn’t make it right. Even if you don’t know someone, you shouldn’t do things like that to them. It’s unfair. You should ask people to tell you, not steal their information.’

‘You’re right, Jack. I’m sorry.’

Jack nods again. He looks from the table to the ceiling and back to the table again. His breathing has gone weird.  ‘Jack, I really am sorry. Do you forgive me?’

Jack closes his eyes for a moment. ‘Yes, I will forgive you. But I hope you won’t do anything like that again.’

I smile. ‘Okay, I promise. I can see it hurt you that I did it. I really am sorry.’

Jack nods and looks up at me for the briefest of moments. If I’d blinked, I’d have missed it. ‘I mean what I say when I say things. I forgive you. You don’t need to apologise again once I have forgiven you.’

I chuckle. ‘Okay. Well, let’s keep going, then. What about the next question: Why do scientists call DNA a blueprint for someone’s characteristics?’

A little spark explodes in Jack’s eyes. ‘That’s a funny question that one, because they do call it a blueprint, and it sort of is but not just for someone, but for practically everything; it’s what tells flowers that they should open and close with the sun, and to have different shades of purple. It tells a seed that it should start growing upwards once the conditions are right.’

My fingers dance across the keyboard in an ungraceful flurry of activity. ‘Okay, but what about for people?’ 

‘Well, calling DNA a blueprint is kind of like an analogy because blueprints are what they use to build buildings, and DNA is what our bodies use to know the way it’s supposed to build everything about us. So it tells the body it is supposed to have two arms and two legs and green eyes, but it also tells your body to make it so you feel it when I put my hand on your arm.’ Jack’s hand lands softly on my arm, sending strange impulses all the way down to my hand and up into my shoulder. I look down at his hand, still resting on my arm, and look at Jack.

  ‘Jack,’ I say. His eyes meet with mine for a moment, but he then looks to the side, as though he’s looking at my cheek, or perhaps my ear. ‘You have your hand on my arm.’ 

Jack looks down, as though he isn’t aware he’s doing it. ‘I was making a point.’

‘Yeah, but your hand is still on my arm.’

Jack nods. ‘It is.’

I smile. ‘Jack, what do you think it means when a boy puts his hand on a girl’s arm?’

He frowns. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, some people would think that means he likes her. That he’s, kind of flirting, with her.’ Jack’s face bursts into a dark shade of red. He immediately withdraws his hand and begins rubbing his hands together under the table. 

‘Jack, can you look at me?’

Jack shakes his head.

‘Why not?’

‘I have trouble looking at your face.’

‘Why?’

‘Well, I have trouble looking at anyone in the eyes because it sends my brain crazy with thinking of a thousand million things at once and I can’t concentrate on anything that’s being said to me.’ ‘And with me?’

Jack pauses, his eyes darting around the room. ‘I have trouble looking at you in your whole face, not just your eyes.’

‘Why?’

He looks up at the ceiling, his eyes fixated in one place. ‘Because,’ his eyes are darting around again, ‘when I look at your face all I can think about is how soft your skin looks and how you have such little ears and how pretty your eyes are and that makes me think about how it’s amazing that you even have green eyes because your mum doesn’t have green eyes and neither does your sister but I don’t know about your dad, but he must have blue eyes because green eyes are recessive to brown eyes which your mum has, but green eyes can be dominant over blue eyes and so your dad must have blue eyes so the recessive gene could come out in you.’

I laugh.  ‘My dad does have blue eyes.’

Jack begins rocking back and forth, nodding. ‘I thought he must have.’

The large clock on the library wall clicks over to 4:30pm. ‘Geeze, look at the time.’ I close my laptop. ‘It’s time to go. My sister will be here any minute.’

Jack nods. ‘I am going to walk home because I only live two blocks that way.’ He points out the window and down the road. Jack stands up and begins walking toward the library door. I rush to keep up with him. As I fall into step with him, I say, ‘It looks like it might rain.’

‘I hope it doesn’t. My laptop might get wet.’

‘What do you mean, your laptop?’ I ask.

‘My laptop is in my school bag. My school bag isn’t waterproof, so my laptop might get wet.’

‘Jack, where is your schoolbag now?’

Jack looks at me as though I’m crazy. ‘It’s just outside the library. You’re not allowed to bring your school bag into the library.’

I hope you enjoyed that little sneak peak :)

What do you think of my characters, Grace and Jack, so far?

Photo credit goes to me again. This is one of my favourite writing places: my backyard. And this is one of my favourite mugs, given to me by my middle daughter, and today it is sporting a complimentary sloth's butt filled with tea leaves. Cute-as, don't you think?

If you want to connect with Catriona on social media, you can do so here. And if you leave a comment here or on my FB page, I'll let you know where I got my sloth from. ;)