On the time I lost my friends at High School

Okay, so I said I'd tell you. This won't be easy. Or pretty. But if you've read The Boy in the Hoodie, you'll see where I got the idea for what went down between Kat and Paige in Chapter 8.

I had issues as a teenager, so let's just get that out of the way first. I had terribly low self-esteem and desperately wanted everyone to like me. Clearly, I also had no idea how to go about this. I was soapy-obsessed (Neighbours, Home and Away, and I read this series of books called Sweet Valley High - if you know the series there's no need to say anything more) and I think this was where I learned how you get and treat your friends. You can see this is headed for disaster, now, can't you.

(Photo: This is me on my first day of High School-Year 7. You can now wake up every morning with a sense of gratitude that, for all that may suck about your life, at least you didn't grow up in an age when it was cool to wear socks with sandals.)

Back then, I loved to write and one way I expressed that love was through having multiple "pen pals". I wrote to other teenagers all over the world; yes, with pen and paper, with stamps that needed to be purchased from the Post Office with a little blue AIRMAIL sticker running up the side. In writing these letters to strangers, I could be whoever I told them I was. I could be engaging and funny. And they liked me. Even people who I met on summer holidays would prefer to write to me, than hang out with me while our families holidayed together. In fact, one of my pen pals called me on the phone one Sunday afternoon and I didn't know how to talk to her. She stopped writing to me after that. On paper, I was good at making and keeping friends.

Which was probably why I was so shocked when one of my pen pals wrote to me saying she was writing to too many people and so was cutting back. I was on the exit list. I suppose it's yesteryear's equivalent of being de-friended on Facebook during a cull.

Well, it just so happened that I told my school friends about it, and Ella, our group's 'leader' came over so we could respond to the letter together. And we did; we wrote the letter together. We were nasty. We were rude. We were accusatory. It was full of terrible swear words and described in very unpleasant terms the type of person we thought she was.

To this day, I have no idea why we even wrote it. It was completely unnecessary. She was a lovely girl. And it was really lovely of her to even write to let me know she wouldn't be able to keep corresponding with me.

I have even less of an idea of what on earth I was thinking in posting it to her.

It was a couple of weeks later that my father confronted me in our family's kitchen, holding a photocopy of my letter and a note from the poor girl's parents saying that if there was any further communication from me that they would be involving their lawyer. My parents were horrified. They had barely heard me swear before, let alone knew I was capable of writing such a horrific letter to another human being.

They banned me from having anything more to do with Ella.

When I told Ella what had happened, she couldn't believe I'd posted the letter. She was smarter than me. Much, much smarter.

It was sometime later that Ella asked me if I wanted to go down the street with her, and without even thinking I told her what my parents had said. And that I wouldn't be allowed to go if she was going.

That was the last time I spoke to Ella, or her to me, for a very long time. Our friendship never recovered. And of course, she took all my other friends with her. I was in Year 7 at the time. I didn't socially begin to recover until about Year 10.

I sincerely hope no one else has such a tragic story to tell about losing their friends. But if you do, let me know in the comments and we can sob over it together ... through our keyboards, of course.

Photo: this is me and one of my besties (my daughter tells me only twelvies say besties, and I'm not allowed to use the word) best friends, Jax. This photo warms my heart. Best friends are awesome.

Thanks for dropping by. You can connect with Catriona through social media 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. ;)

On how the teenage years are brutal

My first novel, The Boy in the Hoodie, officially launched into the world this past weekend.  In fact, today is its release day. It is officially available in shops from today. 

It’s been a long-term project for me.

I used to love writing. And reading. Then I went to Uni and suddenly reading and writing became all about the work, and I kind of lost my passion for it. Throw into the mix beginning to work as a teacher, and all the planning and marking that came with it, and the flame well and truly threw itself under the proverbial bus.

But then, about six years ago, the flame caught alight again. I began to write because I’d had some stuff happen to me in my adult life that I needed to deal with. And so, like Kat in The Boy in the Hoodie, I began to deal with some of my issues through the power of the written word. It helped me to process things I hadn’t processed properly from years previously, and heal, and recover. And best of all, I began helping others with similar experiences also confront their pasts through my writing. It was liberating. I was hooked. So was then born, The Boy in the Hoodie.

The Boy in the Hoodie is the first of my novels I’ve pursued publication with. And just as my first writings were very personal, so this project was personal for me. I was a sad, anxious and terribly self-doubting teenager. Trying to look back without prejudice, I realise others probably didn’t see me that way. But I was desperate to be loved and validated by the world.

I flittered from boyfriend to boyfriend because I loved that feeling of knowing that someone new thought I was pretty and fun to be with. I got myself into trouble a couple of times with boys who wanted a lot more than I was willing to give, and that damaged my innocence. I figured other girls didn’t like me much, probably because I was a terrible flirt. But also because I could be mean. I didn’t like myself, so being mean to others made me feel better. I wanted to be in the in-crowd, but I knew deep down I wasn’t that kind of girl. I wore the wrong jeans. I bought the wrong clothes. I had a mole on my face where big hairs would suddenly, like overnight, grow in the middle. My hair was completely unfashionable no matter what I tried to do to it. I had freckles across my nose and a relentless supply of pimples across my chin. I was cursed with a blotchy tan. I couldn’t relate to boys except through flirting, which they loved, but made my boyfriends wild, so I learned how to fight - and not necessarily in a good way. 

The teenage years are brutal. But that’s why I write YA. I want the world to know (or be reminded) just how difficult it is to be a teenager. To make the right choices. To grow up and yet still do what your parents tell you. To be confident. Being YA is tough. But it’s also doable. It’s survivable. The other side is achievable. 

Should you chose to read it, I hope The Boy in the Hoodie imparts some of that hope onto you. 

The Book launched at the annual Omega Writer's conference (this year in Sydney). At the conference was an amazing YA author from the US, Alex Marestaing, who inspired and encouraged me heaps. I have since found an interview he did not long before coming out to Australia to speak at the conference, so if you're interested, here's the interview:

Photo credit for this photo goes to moi! I am generally terrible at taking selfies, but am in training by my teen and tweenie daughters. It's not brilliant, I know. But, you know, I haven't had as much experience as they have, so really, they just need to be patient and not laugh so much at me. #parentingproblems #borntoosoon #stilllearning

Photo credit #2 goes to children's author Penny Morrison, whose photo I "borrowed" from Facebook, so if she ever sees this, I hope that is okay, Penny! The photo is of me speaking at the book launch, with Rochelle Manners, my publisher, and Emily Sweasey, one of the editors at Rhiza Press who spoke about the novel.

If you want to connect with Catriona, you can do so here This week on FaceBook Catriona is giving away a FREE copy of The Boy in the Hoodie - so head on over there if you're interested in entering into the fun.