Nobody wins ( Read more... )

1. “Where did mom go?”
2. “They found Penny’s body.”
3. “Why are we moving all the way up there?”
4. “New Orleans isn’t that far away.”
5. “He had another one of his dreams, Grandma.”
6. “You have a girlfriend?”
7. “I’m coming home.”
8. “Stay here, I can handle this.”
9. “There’s no one left.”
10. “I’m so sorry, Daniel…”

Lauren Santini ( Read more... )

"I dreamt I saw you walking up a hillside in the snow
Casting shadows on the winter sky as you stood there
Counting crows
One for sorrow
Two for joy
Three for girls and four for boys
Five for silver
Six for gold and
Seven for the secret never to be told..."She is barely five when her grandmother teaches her how to count the crows. It’s a myth, a ( Read more... )

1. "Mom, you didn't fix Penny's veil the right way ( Read more... )

So, every now and then, we write ourselves into a corner. And we have the choice to either write our way out, or to give up our stories completely. Sometimes an idea has so much potential, but you end up taking it in the wrong direction. If you are me, this happens more often than not because I find myself constantly inspired by so many things, I ( Read more... )

"The true magic of this broken world lay in the ability of the things it contained to vanish, to become so thoroughly lost, that they might never have existed in the first place." The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, by Michael Chabon.It's been four years now since Lauren lost her best friend. Four years since her entire world got swallowed ( Read more... )

1. My mom was an anthropologist. She died in a plane crash coming back from Greece. We weren't speaking then, and now... I can't even remember what we were fighting about in the first place ( Read more... )

1. Mom
2. Dad
3. Elaire
4. Hallie Lockwood
5. Cole McAllister
6. Ernest Hemingway
7. Kennedy Bradford
8. Olivia Lafferty
9. Professor London
10. Callidora Theophilus, aka Callia (she's Greek, not a character from J.K. Rowling)

Vindication ( Read more... )

I learned a lot about religion, growing up the daughter of an anthropologist. She was always telling me about this culture, or that culture, or this ancient belief system and how it translates to what we believe today. I don't think there was a particular denomination to anything my mother ever believed. Because she looked at the past, and she ( Read more... )