Eighteen (18)(72)

Which leads me to the characters. I think pretty much everyone named in the book is a real character, but again, the story was told to keep everyone out of it. So Danny, you weren’t Sunday, but you were still a great friend. Phil was not a big time dealer, he was a fav of mine too, but there was a guy who lived in the house at the end of the alley who smoked me out on occasion. He was a fond memory from my 18th birthday, and not for that reason. And a guy I knew did live across Broadway in that house I gave Mateo, but we never dated. Rocky was real and I described her the way she looked back then. Danny in the book was actually a guy called Mark (I left Geoff out of this story for reasons you can probably imagine), and we were acquaintances. He was the kid sitting next to me while I had a meltdown in the office in Chapter One, and he really did tell all his friends about me, so that’s how I found my people that last semester. The arcade was an ice cream shop called Mr. Happy’s and that owner was also a friend. I ate at that restaurant, that cop did live across the way in my apartments, and I dated a much older man and did lots of dirty things with him, but he was not my teacher for night school and I was not 18 (yet). Not even close. LOL.

I did go to five high schools and the only evidence that I graduated from Anaheim, and not the school I started senior year in San Diego, is the 1987 group photo of the senior class standing out on the front steps. I have a Van Halen shirt on.

I skated though school. I’m smart. I was born that way. Just like Rook in Tragic was born tall, skinny and pretty—I was born smart. But I skated through school because I could. It did me no favors being smart. People still assumed I was stupid and it took me a much longer time to learn the lesson that Shannon learned at the end of this book.

Everything of worth requires effort.

The Colony, as that section of Anaheim is called, was my hood. These people and a lot of this story were real. I wrote Eighteen in two and a half weeks between Anarchy Found and Rook and Ronin HEA (releasing December 16th) because the world was already there. The characters were already there. It was written before I wrote it because I lived it.

Which brings me to why I wrote it. I saw a blog post about a book blogger who said she was breaking up with the New Adult genre. She had a lot of valid points. Too much angst, too much drama, too much of everything. I don’t think she could relate.

But I can relate to that drama. Eighteen was hard for me. It was probably one of the most difficult times in my life because I was adrift. My family was not cohesive. It didn’t pull me together, it unraveled long before I was moved out to California the middle of my junior year. But the drama that had me changing schools in the middle of senior year was real and overwhelming.

This is why I started writing new adult books to begin with. Rook in Tragic was drifting too. And people have asked a few times about which of my female characters I relate to the most, and although there is a lot of Veronica in me, Rook is the closest.

So I wrote this book for people who relate to drama and angst. I write all my books for them. Every book is filled with outsiders and anti-heroes because my whole life I’ve been on the outside, and while all my friends were good (or I wouldn’t be friends with them), it was never in the traditional sense. Don’t get me wrong, I like it here on the outside. I could give a f*ck what the world does. I live my life the way I live it because I don’t mind the outside. I like the fringe. And I put every bit of it into my books. People like Rook because they relate to her struggle, they admire her strength, and they want her to find that HEA.

I think I’ve found my HEA in books, just like a lot of you.

When the New Adult genre was just getting started people went crazy for it. It has since died down, but Coming of Age stories will never die down. Coming of Age is something we can all relate to. A few years ago when I wrote Tragic people were even asking if the New Adult genre was necessary and I remember writing a blog post for my book blog, New Adult Addiction, explaining why I thought it was relevant. There is a little bit of this story in that post. The reason it’s relevant is because not everyone wants the sweet story. Sure, people read fiction to escape reality, but not everyone wants the perfect Mary Sue character to be saved by the billionaire and the perfect ending with two point five kids.

People want a little reality in their story. They want angst and drama. They want to read about the risk they never took, the fear they never felt, and the victory when the characters get it right. Or maybe they did take that risk, they did feel that fear, and they did/did not make it right. Maybe they relate the way I relate and just want to know that it’s normal. That other people experienced coming of age that way too. Either way, I write for those people. And if you don’t like what I write, well, there are a billion other books out there. Have at it. I’m gonna keep doing my thing.

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So what’s next? A brand new genre, that’s all. Have you ever wanted to f*ck Batman? Or Ironman? Well, you’re gonna get your chance to experience the sexy world of superhero romance in the next book called Anarchy Found. You think I’m kidding? ;) Nah. You know me better than that. Anarchy Found is the first standalone book in a series about Alpha Superheroes. No Spiderman here. No Superman here. We like the outsiders, remember? The anti-heroes. We like Batman and Ironman because they are sexy as f*ck and they don’t take any shit. We like them because they have money, and power, and f*ck hot Batcaves where they (should) take their women. They are dark, they are scary, and they have been off the market for romance… until now.