(Untitled 1) Work in Progress

Untitled Work in Progress: Plot Synopsis

Genre: Young - Adult - Fiction - Realistic - Coming of Age 

Samren Trouillefou is living contently in his French town of Lourdes with his withdrawn widower father with the feeling that nothing will ever change when he enters his last year of high school. He soon finds himself jerked out of comfort and complacency with his village life when his brother introduces him to a British-French near his age named Elliott Thomas. Samren is immediately drawn to the stranger's intensity and disregard for the rigid tradition so revered by the town. What's more, due a business decision his father declares that the family will move to Paris. Additionally, his father promises that they will host an American exchange student for the year as a condition of the buisiness promotion.

What results is a story that explores the role of memory, coming-of-age, as well as identity as Samren is wrenched forever from his quiet country life in Lourdes and faced with growing up quickly among new and exciting: but at times challenging and dangerous influences and people.

Using this work without recognition of the author, especially without express permission, or using any part of this plots or character names is stealing and a violation of intellectual property rights. 

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I'm so excited to be working on this story! Right now in my mind I usually refer to it as "Lourdes, August" but I'm not sure if by the time I finish the work that I'll feel the title is representative of the book. 

E-Published: Pity Smacked- Unedited 1st Ed.

Hello Blogspot World:

I have released my first ever full length novel's first edition. I wrote and edited this book during the time between eighth grade and sophomore year of high school. And I've chosen to e-publish this edition for kindle. Perhaps I will do print-on-demand available through Amazon once I've done a complete edit and overhaul. This will require getting back in touch with the characters to the point I feel I can accurately explore them on the written page. You really have to know your characters, even better than you know your friends. Hell, you have to feel and imagine for them. It's hard freaking work when you work a full time job. I can see why there's the stereotype that writers have to be holed up by themselves, and I'm just not that solitary of a person. Although I'm rediscovering passion for my projects. 

This is available at Amazon.com kindle store. Kindle is functional on PCs, Kindles, iPads, and Macs once you download the software. http://www.amazon.com/Pity-Smacked-ebook/dp/B008CXL0TC/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1340989605&sr=8-1&keywords=pity+smacked

About This Blog

Yes, I know I have a lot of blogs. Yes, I know I haven't been keeping up with them as well as I should, but I think that this blog should be something I can maintain, if not very well from day to day and week to week, perhaps quite well from month to month, season to season, or year to year. At least it may provide some motivation to create content, explore characters, and perhaps interact with a interwebs community of writers, readers, and bored anglophones worldwide.

Writing is something I began very early on in my life. My favorite thing to collect as a child was notebooks, pens, and pencils. When I got my allowance the first place I went was Barnes and Noble and Office Depot. I would buy journals, notebooks... and for a time I actually filled them up. Then I went to college and got a bit distracted meeting deadlines and fulfilling research to meet the expectations and content as guided by professors. Now that I graduated college my intellectual palate has had some time to be cleared although I continued to study biology and medical sciences online. Even if I may never enter a medical school, I find myself growing enormously through everything I study.

And yet there used to be a carefree and intense part of myself where I knew these characters better than I knew my best friends, and maybe even myself. Rather, it seems the potentiality I felt in high school exploded into all these characters of what I imagined could have been for myself during high school and even after high school and in adult life. It fascinated me, it enveloped me, it was my life. And I thank any friends and family who were that to me. I don't know if other writers out there feel this way. I haven't felt this desire to talk about their lives so intensely as I did in middle school and high school. It seems some part of that faded when homework became more copious than free-time. But it's something I would like to get back to.

At this blog I aim to:
-generate written content, about my characters, and maybe discover new characters and stories yet untold
most content generated for the blog will be short works, prompt-inspired pieces, and many of them may involve my original characters
-promote the sale of longer, more polished or complete works through self-publishing venues (Kindle Direct Publishing)
-interact with a community of online writers, online or electronic readers and receive feedback, offer feedback, grow together

I specialize in:
-risque, a bit off the beaten path, GBLTQ Fiction (but not erotica) -
-love stories, realistic fiction from the first person
-fictional commentaries on social issues of our times: global warming, problems with food subsidization (A book which I find inspirational to where I want to go in the future with my writings is My Year of Meats by Ruth Ozeki: great for anyone who is critical of the American food industry or modern industrial agriculture as well as anyone interested in Japan)

Thanks and Enjoy the Blog!

Creative Writing Exercise Day 1

Just a couple of old birds out at a bar, somewhere in New York. I stirred my cocktail slowly, ran my finger around the rim of its glass, stared ahead at the rows of spirits and syrups—none of them particularly expensive, unique, or noteworthy. Just your typical bar. The bell tied around the door handle jingles, and my old buddy Sam walks in. He's barely greyed, only if I look really hard can I spot a few hairs that are no longer black. It's still long and tied back in a half ponytail and he's wearing a long leather jacket.

He sits and orders something hard.

“Elliott, you shouldn't be here.” He says.

“Mon ami, it's been a while. Your posh suburbs life got you down?”

“Actually, I only come here for business anymore. Mine a bit, mostly my son's. We're still living on the other side of the country.”

“Yeah, I know.” By we he referred to his wife.

He scooted toward me, weight leaning over one of his long and still elegant legs which hung over the bar stool. My hand grasped the drink glass, however, rather than the glass at my lips, I found his lips come toward mine.

I'd been under the impression we would sit and chat it up: not of our tangled past but of the present: which I had no idea was so equally tangled. I felt weak, tired. It wasn't just the alcohol.

-Written Spring, 2012-

This work is copyright Malia Autio, 2012
This work was written from a Writer's Digest prompt: a night at a bar, something unexpected happens and a memorable night ensues. Thoughts? Comments? Be my guest.