#FIRST NAME ALAN MIDDLE NAME THE LOVE OF MY LIFE LAST NAME WILDER

[elektroblues]

Alan Wilder | Depeche Mode performing Everything Counts and Love, In Itself on RTL IFA, 1983

[balkinbuddies]

We’re celebrating July 4th with  the ALAN Review article entitled “Where Are They Now? Remembering Our Most Popular Young Adult Authors.”

     An article written by Don Gallo appeared recently in the Summer 2019 issue of The ALAN Review entitled “Where Are They Now? Remembering Our Most Popular Young Adult Authors.” Among those remembered were four authors with whom I worked very closely during my years at HarperCollins and, with Don Gallo's and the ALAN Review's permission, I'm including those remembrances on the Balkin Buddies blog:

     Here they are in  the order they appeared in the article:

Paul Zindel [Tied for first place with S.E. Hinton in 1988]*

    Paul Zindel's death in March 2003 ended the brilliant career of a unique individual. Not only did he win a Pulitzer Prize for Drama and an Obie Award for Best American Play in 1970 for The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds (1965), but he was also one of the earliest writers in the field of contemporary literature for young adults. The Pigman, published in 1968, is still one of the most well-known and widely taught novels in the genre. He followed The Pigman with My Darling, My Hamburger (1969); Pardon Me, You're Stepping on My Eyeball (1976), The Undertaker's Gone Bananas (1978); Harry and Hortense at Hormone High (1984); and other novels with attention-getting titles. His writing revealed how well he understood teenagers, believing that “adolescence is a time for problem-solving – for dealing with the awesome questions of self-identity, responsibility,  authority, sex, love, God, and death” (Gallo, 1990, p. 228).

     In addition to Gamma Rays, this versatile author wrote a number of other plays, including And Miss Reardon Drinks a Little (1971) and Ladies at the Alamo (1975), as well as a number of movies and television scripts that include Up the Sandbox (1972), starring Barbara Streisand; Mame (1974), starring Lucille Ball; Runaway Train (1985), starring Jon Voigt; Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-glass (1985), with a cast of 50 stars that included Red Buttons, Ringo Starr, Scott Baio, and Shelley Winters; Babes in Toyland (1986), starring Drew Barrymore and Keanu Reeves; and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1989), starring Keshia Knight Pullman. During those years working in Hollywood, Zindel associated with numerous movie and television actors and became good friends with Walter Matthau who lived in the house next door.

     In his later years, Zindel, always knowing what would appeal to teen readers, turned from realistic fiction to monster/horror books, such as The Doom Stone (1996), Rats (1999), and Night of the Bat (2001) – all of them filled with suspense and action and all selected as Quick Picks for Reluctant Young Adult Readers.

     Zindel reveals a lot about himself in his 1987 autobiographical novel, The Amazing and Death-Defying Diary of Eugene Dingman, except that the fictional Eugene grows up in Bayone, New Jersey, while Paul grew up on Staten Island, New York. Of his teen years, Paul says bluntly: “I was an awkward freak.” More about Zindel's early life, family, and adventures can be found in his autobiography, The Pigman and Me (1992), which was named one of the 100 Best of the Best Books published for teenagers during the last part of the twentieth century.  In 2002, the American Library Association bestowed upon Paul Zindel the Margaret A. Edwards Award for lifetime achievement, and later that same year, he was presented with the ALAN Award for his contributions to young adult literature.

M. E. Kerr [Tied for fourth place with Robert Cormier and Katherine Paterson in 1988]*

     Writing under the pseudonym of M. E. Kerr, Marijane Meaker was one of the earliest authors to gain notoriety in the YA publishing world with Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack!, published in 1972. Among her 20 popular novels are Is That You, Miss Blue? (1975), I'll Love You When You're More Like Me (1977), Gentlehands (1978), Him She Loves? (1984), Night Kites (1986), the Fell series (1987, 1989, 1991), and Deliver Us from Evie (1990). Kerr has always chosen to write about differences in people, “understanding them....trying to make sense of it all, never losing sight of the power love lends.”

     In an interview published in Teenreads, she explains her motives: “I was very much formed by books when I was young....I was a bookworm and a poetry lover. When I think of myself and what I would have liked to have found in books those many years ago, I remember being depressed by all the neatly tied-up, happy-ending stories, the abundance of winners, the themes of winning, solving,  finding – when around me it didn't seem that easy. So I write with a different feeling when I write for young adults. I guess I write for myself at that age” (“M. E. Kerr).

     Marijane Meaker began her career in publishing after she was unable to sell any of her stories to magazines. She presented herself as Ms. Meaker, a literary agent with six clients, and sent out her own work under various pseudonyms, male as well as female. One was a middle-aged female teacher writing true confessions (at $300 a story); another was a young college woman selling to magazines, such as Redbook and Ladies Home Journal; a third “author” told a story, titled “I Lost My Baby at a Pot Party,” about her child wandering from a house where a saleslady was pitching Teflon pots. Along the way, a Gold Medal Books editor convinced her to write a novel about sorority life, for which she earned $4,000 a book at a penny a word. This very resourceful writer also published two or three adult mysteries a year under the name of Vin Packer, and other novels were penned as Ann Aldrich and Laura Winston. Her books for children are published under the name Mary James. “A lot of my stories,” she says, “sold well enough for me to enjoy trips to Europe, an apartment off  Fifth Avenue in New York City in the 90s, and a Fiat convertible.”

     M.E. Kerr's novels for teens have won multiple awards, including a Christopher Award in 1978, a Golden Kite Award from the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators in 1981, a California Young Readers Medal in 1992, the Margaret A. Edwards Award from the American Library Association in 1993 for her lifetime contribution to young adult literature, the Knickerbocker Award for Juvenile and Young Adult Literature in 1991, the ALAN Award in 2000, and the Golden Crown Literary Society Award for her groundbreaking works in the field of lesbian literature in 2013. In 1996, Long Island University awarded her an honorary doctorate.

     A collection of her short stories for teens – dealing with dating, love, race, bigotry, homosexuality, self-love, and  acceptance – titled Edge,  was published in 2015. And Highsmith: A Romance of the 1950s, a memoir recounting Meaker's relationship with famous mystery writer Patricia Highsmith, was published in 2003. Still writing at the age of 91, Meaker recently completed a novel about gay life in New York City during the 1940s and how she became a literary agent for her own work. It's titled Remind Me, based on the lyrics of an old song from that time written by Jerome  Kern and Dorothy Fields (1940): “Remind me / Not to find you so attractive / Remind me that the world is full of men.

Katherine Paterson [Tied for fourth place with Robert Cormier and M. E. Kerr in 1988]*

     Born in Qing Jiang, China, in 1932, the middle daughter of missionary parents, Katherine Paterson has lived in a variety of places, from Tennessee, Virginia, Maryland, and New York City to China and Japan, where she was a Presbyterian missionary. She now lives in Montpelier, Vermont.

     Her highly regarded novels include The Sign of the Chrysanthemum (1973), Of Nightingales That Weep (1974), Master Puppeteer (1975), and Rebels of the Heavenly Kingdom (1983), but she is known best for Bridge to Terabithia (1977), which won the Newbery Medal in 1978; The Great Gilly Hopkins (1978), which won the National Book Award in 1979; Jacob Have I Loved (1980), which won the Newbery Medal in 1981; and Park's Quest (1988), which made The Horn Book Fanfare Honor List in 1988. Published in 1996, Jip, His Story won the Parents' Choice Story Book Award and the Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction in 1997. In 2006, Bread and Roses, Too won the Christopher Award and was a Bank Street Best Children's Book of the Year, a Notable Social Studies Trade Book for Young People, a Parents' Choice Gold Medal historical fiction book, and one of Voice of Youth Advocate's Top Fiction for Middle School Readers.

     Paterson has also authored several autobiographical books about her writing, including Stories of My Life (2014), and is a coauthor of Consider the Lilies (Paterson & Paterson, 1986), a nonfiction book about various plants of the Bible that she wrote with her husband, John.

     Over her long writing career, Paterson has also received a long list of awards for her body of work. Among them are the Kerlan Award from the University of Minnesota (1983), the ALAN Award (1987), the Hans Christian Andersen Medal for Writing (1998), the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award (2006), the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award (2013), and the Massachusetts Reading Association Lifetime Award, along with writing awards from Germany, France, and Sweden. In 2000, she was declared A Living Legend by the Library of Congress, and for 2010-2011, Paterson was the US Ambassador for Young People's Literature. She is also the recipient of more than a dozen honorary degrees, including ones from Vermont College of Fine Arts, the University of Maryland, Hope College, and Washington and Lee University.

     Paterson's latest novel is My Brigadista Year (2017), set in Cuba in 1961 during the literacy campaign that made Cuba a fully literate nation in  one year.

Robert Lipsyte

     The author of The Contender (1967) turned 80 years old this spring, as his ground-breaking novel passed the 50-year mark in print. Lipsyte is also the author of One Fat Summer (1977), Summer Rules (1981), The Brave (1991), The Chemo Kid (1992), The Chief (1993), and Raiders Night (2006) for teens, and for young readers, The Twinning Project (2012). Lipsyte's list of publications for teenagers isn't especially lengthy when compared to those of some authors who have been writing for the same length of time, but that's because writing books for and about teenagers is only one kind of work he has done especially well. He has also published a number of short stories, essays about sports issues, and biographies of several sports celebrities, such as Muhammad Ali, Jim Thorpe, and Michael Jordan, as well as several nonfiction books for adults, including Nigger, with Dick Gregory (1964), the African American satirist; Sportsworld (1975/2018); and Idols of the Game (1995). As the author of The Contender, one of the very first realistic novels about contemporary teenagers, Robert Lipsyte was honored with the Margaret A. Edwards Award by the American Library Association in 2001.

     And that's not all. Among other things, Robert Lipsyte has been a highly respected columnist and prize-winning sports reporter for The New York Times, a correspondent for the CBS television program Sunday Morning with Charles Kuralt; the host of his own award-winning television interview program, The Eleventh Hour, on New York City's public television station, WNET Channel 13; author of a television documentary series about sports; and the Life (Part 2) series for PBS-TV on subjects of interest to older people. He is also the author of an entertaining memoir, titled Accidental Sportswriter (2011).

     In addition to speaking at a lot of high schools, Lipsyte recently has been flying to North Carolina for a week at a time to teach at Wake Forest University, which he says he enjoys very much. He continues to write a monthly column, mostly on local politics, for his hometown weekly, The Shelter Island Reporter, which he says “gives me as much pleasure as the old Times' column.” He also occasionally writes about sports and politics for a site called Tomdispatch, which distributes to a batch of leftish publications like The Nation and The Guardian. If that's not enough, after his cameo on the O.J.: Made in America documentary film (Edelman, 2016) that won an Oscar, he gets called often to pontificate on various TV documentaries, most recently on one about Sonny Liston, three on  Muhammad Ali (including one by Ken Burns), and another on that “hard year” 1968.

     Meanwhile, this very busy author has been promoting the film, Measure of a Man (Scearce, 2018), starring Donald Sutherland, based on One Fat Summer, Lipsyte's 1977 novel about a bullied teen. View the trailer at https://trailers.apple.com/trailers/independent/measure-of-a-man/. “I have toyed with a new YA novel,” he claims, but where will he find the time?

     *Based on the list of 169 authors' names Mr. Gallo sent to 41 present and past officers of ALAN in 1988, asking them “to identify the most important and popular YA fiction writers of the time and to add other names of writers they felt were as important.” Due to space limitations, he “limited this investigation to the top 30 authors included on that 1988 list.”

     The ALAN Review   Summer 2019

     Reprinted with permission from the ALAN Review and Don Gallo.

     I hope you enjoyed this excerpt and get to read the entire article. Personally, I feel honored to have worked with such incredibly talented authors as well as with all the amazing people at ALAN.

     For information on Balkin Buddies, be sure to visit our website or blog.

Catherine Balkin, Balkin Buddies

[rhetoricalrogue]

5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45, 50, 55, 60, 65, 70, 75, 80 + Elsa and Maggie! 💕💕

Aaaah, thank you for the asks!  For Elsa, I’ll do the Gaggle of Hawkes AU, though her personality doesn’t really change much otherwise.

5.What does your OC normally wear? What would your OC wear on a special night? Elsa: simple dresses or outfits she can easily travel in.  For something fancier, she’ll go with silk or satin gowns in pale colors that bring out the blue in her eyes.

Maggie: work dresses or pants and blouses, mostly in the dark maroon or blue families.  She would love to find a reason to wear any of the flowing dresses she often sews for the ladies in Blackwater, even if only to spin and see the skirts twirl around her legs.

10. What does your OC keep in a special drawer? Elsa: keepsakes from places she and her family lived, little odds and ends that remind her of certain events, extremely sappy romance novels with over the top happy endings that she wouldn’t be embarrassed if people knew she read them, but she’d rather keep to herself.

Maggie: her mother’s lace shawls, her parents’ wedding rings, a snip of her son’s baby curls, a vial of expensive perfume that she sparingly dabs on when she feels blue to cheer herself up.

15. What was your OC’s childhood like? Elsa: She spent most of the time being the Responsible Middle Child in between her oldest siblings and her youngest.  Her family was always on the move, and she was the one who often grabbed little trinkets to remind her and her family of the places they’d been.

Maggie: she spent most of her childhood hanging around her grandfather on her mother’s side.  He taught her all the things that she later leaned heavily on to survive when she ran away from home after her mother’s death and her father’s subsequent spiral into serious debt and alcoholism. 

20. What kind of mother/father would your OC be? Elsa: firm but gentle, the type of mom that would be patient with her kids and show them to be kind to others.  She’d let them know there were consequences to their actions, but that even though she was upset they disobeyed or did something wrong, she still loved them

Maggie: practical and caring.  She’s had to be Daniel’s only parent for the first eight years of his life, and she teaches him how to stand on his own two feet without having to depend on anyone.  Even still, she teaches him to laugh and find joy in the little things in life, and the two of them often dance and play or simply snuggle together.

25. If your OC has a soulmate, who is it? Elsa: Sebastian

Maggie: Charles

30. Did your OC participate in extracurricular activities, and if so, what were they? Elsa: archery

Maggie: hunting and fishing

35. How is your OC working towards his/her dream job and/or achieved his/her current profession? Elsa: she doesn’t have a “dream” job per se, but she tries to get involved with charities throughout Kirkwall and wiggles her way into the political sphere by doing good deeds or anything to bring her family’s name to the attention of higher ups in hopes that by winning their favor that maybe life will be a little easier for her mother and her siblings.

Maggie: she sort of fell into her job as a seamstress back in Montreal and she continued to use her skills to earn a bit of money to supplement the income that Alan would send back from whatever traveling lawyer job he was at (none of the money he sent was ever enough, which was why she was grateful that people needed her to mend or create new clothes.)  When the bottom fell out and she and Daniel were left penniless in Blackwater after being robbed trying to get back up north to Canada, she lucked out that the tailor’s shop needed skilled help and hired her on the spot.

40. How does your OC handle grief? Elsa: she throws herself into caring for others.  If she’s busy making sure that other people are being comforted and taken care of, she can forget her grief, even for a little while.

Maggie: she internalizes everything and pretends that it doesn’t bother her, even when it really, really does.  She has far too many things that need to be done to have time to mourn, even if that means that she finds herself crying in the middle of doing chores without realizing it.

45. What are some things that annoy your OC? Elsa: overly judgmental people or people who mock others for their faiths

Maggie: general rudeness, abrasive people

50. What secrets does your OC have? Elsa: Elsa was horribly jealous of Bethany and Gavin for being mages.  They had something shared between them and their father that no matter how close the rest of the family was, they couldn’t quite match that.

Maggie: That she knew about her husband Alan’s double life.  When he was shot dead in Saint Denis, his law partner found out about Maggie after reading the “on the occasion of my death” letter that both of them had written to the other.  The partner was expecting bank account information and next of kin, not the revelation that quiet, somewhat spineless Alan had been married to a woman living in Strawberry and they had a child together, especially since quiet, somewhat spineless Alan was married to a young woman in Saint Denis and they had a child not even three years old.  Maggie, not wanting to upset a woman who needed Alan’s insurance money more than she did and who had honestly loved him, had pretended to be a family friend paying their respects.  She swore Alan’s partner to secrecy and asked him to fudge her marriage certificate and Daniel’s birth certificate.  When he asked her what last name she wanted to use, she blurted out Smith. It was an impulsive thing, and she can’t bring herself to tell Charles when she finally sees him next that they’ve been technically married for a little over four years.

55. What are your OC’s thoughts on death? Elsa: doesn’t like to think of it too much.  She finds that after people are gone, they’re either an almost tangible presence in the space they once took up or else there’s a terrible sense of emptiness that nothing can ever fill up again.

Maggie: it’s an unpleasant fact of life out in the wilderness.  She tries to be practical about death and teaches her son how to survive on his own should the worst happen to her.

60. If your OC could change one thing about him/herself, what would it be? Elsa: her height.  Out of her siblings, she’s the shortest.

Maggie: nothing really.  She works with what she has and the situations she’s been given.

65. What is your OC’s favorite drink? Elsa: black tea with dried roses and honey

Maggie: coffee or blackberry wine

70. What is your OC’s favorite book? Elsa: Swords and Shields, but she’ll never tell Varric, lest his ego gets too much.

Maggie: any dime novel adventure, the more outlandish and with the most incorrect details the better.

75. What is your OC’s favorite scent? Elsa: old books and leather

Maggie: lavender, sawdust, and pine

80. What is your OC’s favorite dinosaur? Elsa: She isn’t aware that Thedas has any dinosaurs, but she can admire the huge bleached bones of dragons that she’s come across.  Her siblings are quick to remind her that said skeleton had a relative that tried to eat them back in the Bone Pit if she gets too sentimental though.

Maggie: She hasn’t seen very many, but she does remember wandering riverbeds as a girl with her grandfather and finding these strange tracks that belonged to what her granddad told her were huge plant eaters.  She remembers that the prints were huge, but there were several smaller sized ones scattered among them, like a family had traveled up and down the river.

OC Asks

[innisffree-blog]

2016

beginning: 2016 is shiny and new tommy and special k and liam--we drink tea and cuddle sem2 begins, ugh I dislike physics i dislike class idislike work (sorting leaves, grinding dirt) BUT there is late night penguin sliding in the arb, loitering about town, Sammy slamma jamma I grow closer to the mounge people
we are so annoying and terrible as a group (sd io kds sm nm sp sb pl. nb. ss jp ck. ns sd sk sh ab. etc etc) but I like being a part of this and being emancipated from the cove, an increasingly toxic place Lovely lovely people but I think glory hates me and this is an internal barrier i hate physics i dislike class i hate work (I’m not getting paid for this shit wtf) but i keep going bc “It’s all about the experience.” -Sujay Sarah + wilbur, I do not like wilbur for many reasons. i start to feel weird about sarah, my sister figure. she didn’t even tell me. glory definitely hates me, no one wants to own up to it barrier grows: • the fucking tshirts
• the special fucking breakfast club • the fucking group message barrier grows, I shrink. trying to claw my way out. took a risk, made a mistake (to be cont.) 
soc anx creeps back in at increasing pace I am failing physics. v day song with Nathan is a seemingly insignificant bright point dark point=all the hours I spent sorting dirt in the lab and the horror and embarrassment that is being a lowly freshman in research time goes on soccer I want to be friends with grace and Hannah etc!! Talk with grace and jon before we all move out and they were like duh we felt the same about you and this makes me disappointed and pleased at the same time, there is hope for next year w these cool people (I’ve regressed to having friend crushes) passed physics, passed everything, survived the anxiety attacks, goodbye for now umich, lessons learned jeez sem2=done, year1=done bordines! I like it there, watering flowers and rescuing snails for money. FL Cameron hates me fr now. Still don’t know why. Picnic w Mack to get back in the groove of clarkston life, she has changed a bit ROCK CAMP ROCK CAMP ROCK CAMP 
(june 10 - july 10) I meet ~22 strangers in an Ann Arbor ally and we depart for Wyoming. After 3 days of driving, we arrive as a family. I love it already, minus the altitudesickness. we laugh a lot and have a good time in the mountains. i like these people a lot but especially Brady and jack b and ***MERYN WHIMSY CAMPBELL*** she is a jewel, she is a ray of sunshine, she is a princess in overalls. why did I try to reject her at first? she is so generous with her love that I couldn’t keep her out. I learned the biggest lesson of 2016 from her and she doesn’t even know it. climb a giant loaf of bread in the middle of the night to see the moonrise, barefoot & blind & by myself, a “risky bitch” -Loafie Sutz I see my shadow miles away in the sunrise on that spire thing 3 weeks in: kinda blow up and leave, walk into the wilderness by myself (bad) and swim to an island where I climb a big boulder and make new friends. I calm down. The Grand Nips are the most beautiful place I have ever spent a month, but I never want to see another minivan in my life. I (Pepino) feel at home outside. Caterpillar fights, bfast burritos, stars. Don’t want to leave. back to Michigan to rot. Try to go to mopop with Alaina but sell my ticket to sean during unnecessary study visit to A2 for the class I eventually drop out of. Sushi with sarah (sarah - Wilbur = i’m so happy abt this event that breaks her heart, I am a selfish friend) Calc ii eats me alive, I give up. More rotting. pentwater w fam, Meryn shows up. golf ball incident: I let myself blow up at dad, but Lauren is there and Alan is there and I come back feeling stronger. more rotting in clarkston. sem3! year2! I’m a mentor! so good to see everyone, I begin to appreciate Nicco a lot, become good friends with kastriot (another jewel) and others (matt and jon, etc), trash candy in nicco’s room and HOLY SHIT I love Alex so much, she is another sister figure. It's foreign to have friends who are girls. so excited abt life in mrc, living with Sarah is good and bad. happy. CONFIRMED(co Nicco): glory hates me EXPLANATION: im too friendly(?????) stumble upon ivy and shouri and keilah and I learn more abt this, they hate glory now, I fucking won the battle w my patience and kindness lolol (I hope she's moved on, I feel neutral about her)(drama is foreign to me) get rejected from EH Things are good, hanging out w old crew and rock camp ppl and the boy who i Like and needs to stop acting as though he Likes me too, v misleading sean’s bday @ the trap house / wolf shirts Housing 2017 is a mess, I am a mess :’| this issue is the tip o' the yikesburg FALL BREAK oct 15 -going up to backpack at pictured rocks with camp ppl, but I realized that I don’t rlly fit w them and also they are s l o w so I split and hike alone for 13 miles in one day, oct 16 ****this is the best day of my life**** screaming and yelling out to Lake Superior in pure joy almost falling off the cliff, seeing aaron on the trail, passing the starburst men, getting lost in a soggy forest after dark (kept my cool), getting picked up by Alan: muddy, bleeding, sweaty, thirsty, wielding a knife (Pepino the Risky Bitch™ is back) high on the sublime beauty of oct 16, 2016 oct 17 - study day, drive around Marquette with my boy tommy, climb around on an abandoned aqueduct, talk about life/love. I am so grateful for this brother of mine. oct 18- south! Pasties are gross oct 19 - bad stats test (50%) (how am I this dumb?) (everything is bad again) (this is the beginning of the descent) I stop going to class bc I can’t get out of bed. I haven’t seen my friends in forever. I don’t have friends anymore. I am trapped in my room/head. I want to die. Dropping orgo Failing stats Dropping/failing friends I want this to end. I want to jump out the window of 479 jo and fall like that raven off the cliffs. I want to pull a Chris McCandless, but I don’t have a car. Alex makes everything better by not telling me that everything is going to get better. she’s been there, she’s failed. I love having her around. Bond with tim and eduardo (woops) and alec and jiten at Chris’s house, but sober erin remembers the barriers I’ve lived on this earth for two whole decades!!(Failed a test on the same day) sad bday churros w Lauren, spent the night on the floor at her place. Meryn brought me oranges and a book about glaciers <33 seds is taking up too much of my time but it’s kinda nice. stubborn boy named haydar tries to bring me pad thai and I say no but we become pen pals anyway, now he knows too much. a good character in my life. Nicco takes an absolute SHIT on me - with one statement he discredits all the friendships I thought I had at umich. It isnt a big deal to him, it’s in the past, but it isn’t for me. barrier is complete. The ghost of glory lives on. Same day- Lauren storms out (why doesn’t she want equality??? I thought she had changed) and Kastriot picks up the pieces Time goes on, erin fails stats sem3=done, but a waste of time/resources. I hate myself. Clarkston grandma is drunk and sad Alan is there with Lauren I am kind of there pickling eggs w Mack– I still love her but man oh man she has changed Royal w tommy and nick new years at konrad’s abandoned ghost house, liam dangles me over possibly the last of the giant ass bonfires, graffiti in the barn loft. learned some stuff about konrad, but he is truly a starfish among urchins. Faith in friendship is restored by him and others and myself. I think I’ll stop hating myself now. 2017 will be shiny and new end