#i run into people from my other book club in line for the magnetic fields

[garbagequeer]

the only girl i'll ever love is andrew in drag ass day today -> 😁

[businessownersjournal-blog]

Marketing Strategies For Busy Small-Business Owners

So... you have a great product. You have an awesome website and sharp business cards. You've even got really great Letterhead. But so far, they have gone virtually unused and unnoticed. You thought that people would line up at your door to buy your product, but it just isn't happening. What's the deal?

No one is going to know anything about your product until you promote it. You've got to come up with a really sound promotional plan in order to bring your hard work to fruition. However, before you jump out there and promote, you have to take care of some fundamentals first. Let's take a look at how to start.

1. Do your research. It is amazing how many small business owners don't perform this crucial step. It is not enough to have a great product. You have to take a realistic look at the market. Determine who is most likely to use your product. They will become your target marketing audience. Determine who your competitors are. Look at what they are doing to promote themselves. (Tip: A great place to look is in trade journals).

2. Determine your budget. Be realistic, but do understand that marketing should be a large piece of your budget. People do not realize that they need you or your product until you tell them. Once you decide upon your budget, stick to it. Now comes the fun part... go forth and promote! It's not that easy, you say? Oh, but it is.

3. Develop marketing collateral. This includes brochures, flyers, one page glossies, newsletters, etc. Put some thought into this step, because it should be cohesive and fluid with the image that you want your business to project. Make it sharp, concise and attention-grabbing. Think like your target consumers... what would they want to see?

4. Participate in promotional activities. Sponsor a Little League team or a local "fun run". Volunteer to clean a section of highway (You'll get your name on a plaque). Participate in fairs (health fairs, job fairs, etc). Get a booth in a tradeshow. Order give-aways (hats, coffee mugs, calendars, pens) and hand them out during these functions. Participate in community projects and clubs (Rotary Club, Chamber of Commerce). If your target audience has support networks, attend the meetings and hand your cards out. Donate your product as prizes in raffles at fundraisers. Put magnetic signs on your car. The idea here is getting yourself and your business in front of people. Do it as often as you can, in as many creative ways you can think of.

5. Become a leader in your field. You become a leader by promoting yourself as one! You know that you know what you are talking about and are good at what you do... so let everyone else know too! Start speaking at conferences, association meetings, etc. Write for trade journals. Create newsletters. Write a book! If you are perceived as an expert in your field, then that is what you will be! Public perception is everything.

6. Develop a Media Campaign. This might sound daunting, but trust me, it really isn't. Pick up your pen (or turn on your computer) and start writing! Write press releases, press kits and articles. Take up blogging and stream your blog through Twitter. Get a presence on Facebook. Write articles and publish them on Ezines. The more people that are reading your writing equates to more publicity that you are receiving, which is the ultimate goal.

7. Use a "Buddy Marketing Campaign". Team up with someone in a complementary business (for example, a pet store and a pet grooming business) to run advertising campaigns. You can do "buddy referrals" for each other and team up to run contests.

8. Put every document that leaves your office to work for you. I am sure you already have letterhead, business cards and a website. However, don't overlook your envelopes, signature on your email, receipts and fax cover sheets. Anything that leaves your office can carry your logo and slogan. Why not? If it's going to leave your office anyway, it might as well have a dual purpose: Advertising https://www.thebusinessownersjournal.com/!

9. Have measurable objectives. This means... don't say to yourself, "I will increase my marketing effort". Instead, say "I will send out 150 sales letters to local target consumers and distribute a mass mailing of 500 flyers by the end of the month. Do not be vague about your goals or you might see vague results.

10. Promotional strategy does not always involve in-your-face marketing. Promotional strategy also includes providing excellent customer service. If you create a reputation for world class service, that will contribute to the image that you are trying to project. Ask for referrals. Probably a third of your business will come from referrals. Allocate a specific amount of time each week for analyzing your current strategy and revising it to fit your current needs.

A good promotional strategy is a key element in any marketing campaign, and in my opinion, the most fun! It really is simple... just figure out who your target audience is and put yourself in front of them in as many ways as you can think of. Once you get those creative juices flowing, I think you will see that the opportunities are endless!

[almarchive]

   hello, its nora n this is the ethereal but spoiled alma olive putnam. she goes by all 3 names cos she’s pretentious as fuck. raised in a farmhouse in vermont, never really had to work for anything in her life and doesn’t want to. studying class civ cos she thinks it makes her sound smart, but actually hates fuckin latin and just loves learning about feckless hedonism and the festivals of bacchus. was expelled from princeton in her first year so her parents basically paid her way into lockwood. loves the smell of libraries and listening to french music from a tinny record player in knee socks. bio is below the cut, like this post to be bombarded with plotting messages. i might forget tho so pls message me x

application template.

( elle fanning  / cis-female ) haven’t seen ALMA OLIVE PUTNAM around in a while. the ELLE FANNING lookalike has been known to be TENACIOUS & MAGNETIC, but SHE can also be FANCIFUL & DOUBLE-CROSSING. The 20 year old is a SOPHOMORE majoring in CLASSICS. I believe they’re living in FIDELIS but I popped by earlier and no one answered the door. ( nora. 23. gmt. she/her. )

aesthetics.

a red beret nestled on top of bright platimum locks, neck scarves tied around your throat the way they do it in french new wave films, running barefoot through the woods in feckless hedonism, china dolls with porcelain faces lined against the walls of your room, the mona lisa smile, knee-socks tugged over the hockey grazes on your knees, a forged botticelli drying on your easel, ophelia floating in the middle of a lake.

connection to tatiana & did they choose her name during the watershed?

alma saw her as academic competition and a threat to her de jure throne. in freshman year, tatiana got the role alma auditioned for in a university production. she’s disliked her ever since. alma abslutely chose tatiana’s name, and she’d do it again without hesitating. [that vine voice] I WON’T HESITATE, BITCH

the short form.

—  born in vermont in a big old farmhouse. her great-great-grandfather moved to america as an immigrant and worked on a plantation, made his way up cos he could speak a lot of languages and therefore win more people over. for the last two generations, putnam men have owned the farm and do little of the dirty work. big in the meat industry.

— both her parents had large personalities, so alma’s never really been shy around adults, even as a kid she’d speak to them in a forthright, confident manner, and because she was always surrounded by adults, she’s always seemed a bit wise beyond her years. — very much a consolidation of every character in the secret history. has a morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs. obsessed with w.h. auden and the beat poets. — ”aestheticism is the only thing worth pursuing and even that is pointless” — is majoring in classical civilisation. can read ancient greek and latin. also speaks french. — studies hard and plays hard. she gets top marks but it’s because academia is literally her life, she loves the smell of libraries, the ancient smoke of learning, of feeling like old wine in a new bottle reincarnated from the bones of some old, dead witchy woman who invented a cure for cowpox or somethin. — isn’t a foward-planner, however. alma prefers to leave her options open, play the field, live in a spontaneous manner so her study style is mostly cramming a few days before a test, or staying up all night writing an essay on a massive adrenaline boost powered by red bull or probably adderall, scribbling (or typing) furiously into the night. — pretentious motherfucker. loves poetry, especially the romantics, loves morbid ones too, edgar allen poe, sylvia plath, allen ginsberg, she just loves them all. can’t get enough. her favourite films are like…. wanky artfilm independent european cinema. especially french new wave. “what do you think of goddard’s work??” while snorting a line off someone’s sink at 5am on a school night, but you can bet she’ll make it to that 9am class. — very intelligent and beautiful and knows both of those facts. plays devil’s advocate. humanitarian, vegan. — judgemental but takes great care not to appear so. petty and vindictive — just wants to be loved by all. a party girl ; doesn’t rlly enjoy it, jst feels she should enjoy it. — tries to be an enigma. wants to be mysterious and unreadable because that’s what books have taught her makes women desirable and interesting and cool. — obsessively devours mystery and thriller novels. she herself is a gillian flynn book waiting to happen. — act like the flower but be the serpent under it. is a user. manipulative. leads people on. will throw another student under the bus to demonstrate her own intelligence and integrity — heavily involved in the theatre society. loves attention. — has an addictive personality. seems unable to do anything in a small dose, she has to let it utterly consume her. with sports, she’s fiercely competitive, runs track, played lacrosse at school, now is a cheerleader probably. with alcohol, it’s never a shot, it’s a whole bottle – wine or whiskey – she’ll be table dancing before the night’s up and making out with someone she’ll regret in the morning. — her clothing style is like…. vintage thrift store but make it preppy. berets and cute hats, neck scarves, large fluffy cardigans or like those leathery jackets with big suede fringes on them, mini skirts (very 70s), and knee-high socks or boots. quite often she’ll be in sports kit, maybe a cute tennis skirt, n when she’s feeling casual she’ll wear like, a talking heads tshirt with a pair of mom jeans and converse, but otherwise, the library is her catwalk. — relates to ophelia from hamlet and sibyl vane in dorian gray. weirdly obsessed with women who commit suicide. loves jackson pollock paintings and abstract art. – likes old things. old books, old music, old houses, it reminds her of happier times like when she wasn’t alive. buys all her music on vinyl and has a gramophone because “the sound quality is better” kfdsjj.

plots.

here are some generic wanted plots but by all means message me so we can flesh them out more if any strike ur interest:

study buddies !! someone who is equally unprepared and so spends all night in the library with alma before a big deadline, maybe they even met in the library

if they’re from new england or vermont, then cousins . second cousins / extended family / family friends –  probably spat volavons on your character once as children, omg childhood friends !

people who live on the same floor and only know each other from brief interactions in the lift or the canteen

frinds !! unlikely friends !! toxic friends !! former best friends separated by sporting or academic rivalries !

hockey / cheer friends who are on other teams but who she absolutely loves playin against!!!

fellow academics who like meeting up to discuss latin and greek ! gimme a secret society bonding by their love of ancient learning

i reckon she’s in a lot of societies, definitely the film club, maybe works as a projectionist at the uni cinema if they have one so give me ppl affiliated with that, give me fellow wanky pretentious art-lovers and poets and historians who will go to museums and galleries with her and listen to the velvet underground on vinyl

people she gets mortally fucked off her tits with at parties

people who think she is throwing her academic potential away by caving to hedonistic impulse

people she has drunkenly made out with, hooked up with, or regularly sleeps with casually, maybe even a friend w benefits she is repressing feelings for, i love angst,

people she used to date or unrequitedly likes, but to them it’s just a physical thing, give me all the thirsty angst plots, and maybe some softness too, i need some religion in this girls life, she is a roman catholic after all

full biography.

alma olive putnam.

intro.

           the girl is a knife. razor-sharp, double-edged, the bright shine of a two-faced, lovely thing. silver like the secrets you magpie thief from other heads. you’re a scavenger of knowledge, of tidbits, of gossip to lock away for later use and late-night re-inspection. a mind is like a clock if you get to learn the pieces. bit by bit, you dismantle the inner workings of the brains that tick around you – how easy it is to change it’s path, how words and their meanings can make a person laugh or cry in an instant. to have the power to control that is to be a god. it’s the power trip you crave wielding pom-poms in your hands; a possessive need for control that a younger you, small and weak, never had as a child. small lips, smaller smile, a doll clutched in your too-hungry fingers, hard enough to shatter the bones of a real infant. you cut your hair with your mother’s kitchen scissors before the autumn falls, rendering you out of season, unfit for the cold weather that beats against the nape of your neck, where a stick-and-poke marks the star you were born under ; the bull. “mama, when will i be a queen?” as soon as they find a crown small enough not to slip from your head.

biography.

           if you get hungry enough, they say, you start eating your own heart. hands red, stained by pomegranate seeds, the empty pulp of its shell splattered on your thighs you find yourself wondering – what would it be like to want? in the beginning, you never knew hunger. twins, born under the same star, you first, him second – a nuclear family. never a sister to compete with, you were always the cherry pie of your parents’ hearts. white-haired, blue-eyed, beautiful baby of mine. the townhouse in vermont and the summer house in lyon, you wanted for nought, showered with attention, saddled with gifts - hardly a wonder you came to rely on such affection as a confirmation of your own worth.

           at eight years old you first met death, blood on a gingham-print dress, a smear of it over your cheekbone and the pulp of a mangled animal at your feet murdered by the hands of a stable boy. “alma, my precious baby, you get away from that filth,” your mama would cry from the upstairs balcony – cigar in one hand and a bloody mary in the other – though whether the filth she referred to was the dead pig or the boy with a kernel of corn in his mouth, you never did find out.

           your family earned their keeps in farming, great-grandfather wolfgang hildegarde a german immigrant, great-grandmother maura lisbon a prairie girl. they fell hopelessly in love between troughs and pig-shit, working for three dollars a day at a farm their descendants would later own, trade deals with the indians, vacations to calcutta, your father todd putnam in the kind of sheepskin coat his father’s father could only dream of owning. he worked hard so that you’d never have to. your mama once asked – you heard it through the window, rounding cartwheels across the picket-fenced lawn – could he not find a respectable career rather than selling shrink-wrapped pork for a dime a dozen? that blood money had no business raising a child. you look far back enough, edie, your father had said in his low, strong voice that could bring a civil war to silence, and i think you’ll find that all money is blood money.

           language was never fickle on your tongue, french dinner time talk by the time you were out of your hush puppy shoes, your mama fixing the au pair a smile as she fixed herself another martini. you learned the clarinet at four and how to dance with the grace of a swansong at six, ethereal under a spotlight, an audience captive in the palm of your hand. by eight you knew that you’d always been destined to be loved. loved so hard they would want to taste you, bite into the soft plump of your cheek and eat you alive. that was how magnetic you wanted to feel. but mother hamsters eat their own young when penned in together too long, and soon you became too wild, too restless, another package on your father’s delivery invoice, box-shipped out to english boarding school.

           fitting in had never been something you had to concern yourself with. you were always the shiny new toy the other girls wanted to play with, bright like a dropped coin from a magpie’s beak. wherever you went, you seemed to leave a trail of awe, pig-tailed harriet’s adoring you, imitating you, teachers forgiving your class-time chatter for the sake of your wild heart and the restless spirit you possessed. tell us what it’s like in the states, alma. they’d coo, enamoured by your hollywood drawl. does your father own a gun? you hardly knew. barely even knew the colour of his hair, for the scarce amount of times he’d stoop to kiss your cheek, though you’d tell silver-tongued tales if it’d guaranteed you an audience. when you learned how to smile at the right times, and that flattery would get you everywhere, it soon became apparent that charm would pave the yellow brick road to success even when your lack of drive couldn’t.

           the road you followed – gum-snapping, roller-blading, friendship bands all up your arm – eventually led you to small-town fame. bright-eyed and gingham skirted, you’d always known you were more. there was a hunger in you to be something extraordinary, a want so adamant to be imagined and desired that it was almost savage. in leather-bound volumes and a circle of stones, you were helen of troy, the girl for whom they’d launch a thousand ships. but there’s so much rage within you, collecting like sawdust in cavernous parts. hockey helped. there was something grounding about the feeling of a stick clasped in your hands. sweat. stiff knuckles. feet pounding the earth. the smash of wood against flesh in the scram of a game, passed off as mere enthusiasm. “slipped, sorry.” hockey is the one thing you had that was yours alone – a feral instinct that motivates you to play; something primitive within you that sparks an energy like no other. on the pitch, you feel alive.

[gotatext]

hullo everyone, i’m nora, i’m 22, from the gmt timezone, and i love gillian flynn w all my withered heart. below the cut is info on my latest baby frida parrish. LIKE THIS and i’ll hit u up for plots xo

       ( kristine froseth, cis-female ) did you hear how FRIDA PARRISH is applying to columbia university as a CLASSICAL CIVILISATION major ?! the 20 year old is living in the WALLACH HALL. i heard that they got in because they are + MAGNETIC and + TENACIOUS, but honestly i think SHE can be -DOUBLE-CROSSING and -FANCIFUL. they’re a real SYRABITE. oh well, only time will tell if the SOPHOMORE will make it til the end.   + a bubble of pink gum on chapped lips, pouring over leather-bound volumes in a library, bloodstains on the insoles of pointe shoes.

BACKGROUND.

—  born in vermont and lived there til she was about eleven, but then her family moved to new york for her dad’s job. her dad is kind of famous. a big shot art dealer. he actually got so well connected in the art world by creating forgeries of famous works when frida was still really young, but once he had enough money and contacts, he decided to follow a more legal and reputable path and now he just deals legit art rather than fakes. —  her parents, mara dagney and richard parrish met doing a fine art cause at nyu. richard was raised in the uk, one of three cambridge-born brothers. mara grew up on a ranch in new mexico. they met in freshers week and were basically inseparable after that. —  pretty soon after graduating, her parents realised there was very little money to be made taking art commissions in a little new england town, and plenty of competition, so they began forging famous works and selling them to collectors for thousands.  —  when frida was a born (her brother two years her senior, a nuclear family), her parents were still involved in forgery. the parrish kids were taught that people and places were temporary with suitcases permanently packed for the move. they were raised on the fluidity of identity and taught to be resourceful and wise rather than school-smart. phillip was never as resourceful as frida, but he was incredibly learned when it came to literacy and numeracy, and a bit of an art prodigy. —  when frida (affectionately referred to as ‘fox’ by her family because of her auburn hair – it stuck) was nine and phillip (’pippin’, after the broadway musical lmao her mum is lame) was twelve, the family ran into some trouble, managed to bribe an officer to stay quiet, but had to move from burlingdon to new york, to start a new, legal life. —  mara retrained as a grade school teacher. richard opened up his own arts collective space and coffee shop. within a few years, her father had a really large collection of rothko’s, pollock’s and johns’, and began to appear on a tv show where he would value and auction paintings. frida and phillip attended a public new york day school, where frida took up flute, lacrosse and ballet.

PERSONALITY.

— both her parents had Large Personalities, so frida’s never really been shy around adults, even as a kid she’d speak to them in a forthright, confident manner, and because she was always surrounded by adults, she’s always seemed a bit Wise Beyond Her Years. — very much a consolidation of every character in the secret history. has a morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs. obsessed with w.h. auden and the beat poets. — ”aestheticism is the only thing worth pursuing and even that is pointless”  — is majoring in classical civilisation. can read ancient greek and latin. also speaks french. — studies hard and plays hard. she gets top marks but it’s because academia is literally her life, she loves the smell of libraries, the ancient smoke of learning, of feeling like old wine in a new bottle reincarnated from the bones of some old, dead witchy woman who invented a cure for cowpox or somethin. — isn’t a foward-planner, however. frida prefers to leave her options open, play the field, live in a spontaneous manner so her study style is mostly cramming a few days before a test, or staying up all night writing an essay on a massive adrenaline boost powered by red bull or probably adderall, scribbling (or typing) furiously into the night. — pretentious motherfucker. LOVES poetry, especially the romantics, loves morbid ones too, edgar allen poe, sylvia plath, allen ginsberg, she just loves them all. can’t get enough. her favourite films are like…. wanky artfilm independent european cinema. especially french new wave. “what do you think of goddard’s work??” while snorting a line off someone’s sink at 5am on a school night, but you can bet she’ll make it to that 9am class. — very Intelligent and Beautiful and knows both of those facts. vocal feminist. soapbox sadie. Very Passionate about Issues. plays devil’s advocate. humanitarian, vegan. — judgemental but takes great care not to appear so. — just wants to be Loved By All. a party girl ; doesn’t rlly enjoy it, jst feels she Should enjoy it. — tries to be an Enigma. wants to be mysterious and unreadable because that’s what books have taught her makes women Desirable and Interesting and Cool. — obsessively devours mystery and thriller novels. she herself is a gillian flynn book waiting to happen. — act like the flower but be the serpent under it. is a user. manipulative. leads people on. will throw another student under the bus to demonstrate her own intelligence and integrity — heavily involved in the theatre society. loves attention. — has an addictive personality. seems unable to do anything in a small dose, she has to let it utterly consume her. with sports, she’s fiercely competitive, runs track, played lacrosse at school, now is a cheerleader probably. with alcohol, it’s never a shot, it’s a whole bottle – wine or whiskey – she’ll be table dancing before the night’s up and making out with someone she’ll regret in the morning.  — her clothing style is like…. vintage thrift store but make it preppy. berets and cute hats, neck scarves, large fluffy cardigans or like those leathery jackets with big suede fringes on them, mini skirts (very 70s), and knee high socks or boots. quite often she’ll be in sports kit, maybe a cute tennis skirt, n when she’s feeling casual she’ll wear like, a talking heads tshirt with a pair of mom jeans and converse, but otherwise, the library is her catwalk. — relates to ophelia from hamlet and sibyl vane in dorian gray. weirdly obsessed with women who commit suicide. loves jackson pollock paintings and abstract art. – likes old things. old books, old music, old houses, it reminds her of happier times like when she wasn’t alive. buys all her music on vinyl and has a gramphone because “The Sound quality is Better” kfdsjj. 

anyway, here you will find a pinterest board, and here u will find a stats page.

PLOTS.

here are some generic wanted plots but by all means message me so we can flesh them out more if any strike ur interest:

study buddies !! someone who is equally unprepared and so spends all night in the library with frida before a big deadline, maybe they even met in the library

if they’re from new england or vermont, then cousins . second cousins / extended family / family friends –  probably spat volavons on your character once as children, omg childhood friends !

people who live on the same floor and only know each other from brief interactions in the lift or the canteen

frinds !! unlikely friends !! toxic friends !! former best friends separated by sporting or academic rivalries ! 

hockey / cheer friends who are on other teams but who she absolutely loves playin against!!! 

fellow academics who like meeting up to discuss latin and greek ! gimme a secret society bonding by their love of ancient learning

i reckon she’s in a lot of societies, definitely the film club, maybe works as a projectionist at the uni cinema if they have one so give me ppl affiliated with that, give me fellow wanky pretentious art-lovers and poets and historians who will go to museums and galleries with her and listen to the velvet underground on vinyl

people she gets mortally fucked off her tits with at parties

people who think she is throwing her academic potential away by caving to hedonistic impulse

people she has drunkenly made out with, hooked up with, or regularly sleeps with casually, maybe even a friend w benefits she is repressing feelings for, i love angst, 

people she used to date or unrequitedly likes, but to them it’s just a physical thing, give me all the thirsty angst plots, and maybe some softness too, i need some religion in this girls life, she is a roman catholic after all

thats all for now folks jeez louise thanks for stickin with me

[prettylittleliarsxxxx]

Pretty Little Liars may have ended earlier this summer, but that doesn't mean that fans' adventures in Rosewood need to come to a complete stop anytime soon. After all, there's a PLLspinoff television series in the works, featuring Sasha Pieterse and Janel Parrish, and author Sara Shepard is reportedly hard at work on penning new stories about our favorite Liars — including three e-books completely focused on Alison DiLaurentis.

And that's not the only PLL-related tale that Sara has been working on. She has also created a short story titled It's Not Easy Being "A" — which is exactly what it sounds like: a look inside the mind of the OG villain in the black hoodie, Mona Vanderwaal. The story will be available inside the paperback release of her novel The Amateurs, which is on sale as of today (Tuesday, October 3), along with the second book in The Amateurs series, Follow Me. And if you can't wait to read all about what Mona has to say, you're in luck, because Teen Vogue has an exclusive excerpt right here.

In the short story, Mona takes the reader on a journey down her path to becoming "A," going back as far as the day that Ali disappeared. She explains that once Ali was gone and out of Rosewood, she tried to befriend the other Liars, but was only able to secure Hanna's companionship. Still, she couldn't let go of the way Ali had bullied her all throughout middle school, and she slowly decided to get revenge. "I started to think about Ali's whole posse," Mona explains in the story, adding: "They didn't have a clue what it felt like to be teased the way they'd teased me — and they probably never would. I wanted to give them a little education."

From there, Mona describes the very moment she decided to become "A" — and it's a chilling scene involving Ali's old room, lost memories, and a secret diary. The story itself is the perfect dose of nostalgia for fans who are missing the series, especially the early seasons leading up to Mona's huge reveal. Ahead, check out the excerpt of the short story, and be sure to read the entire thing once you get your hands on a copy of Sara Shepard's The Amateurs.

Excerpt from It's Not Easy Being "A", by Sara Shepard:

I wish I could say I’m humble. The sort of girl who fades into the shadows after pulling off something amazing and says, Oh, you know. We all worked hard. But forget that, people. You don’t get far in life by sharing the spotlight. I’ve been kicked around too much already—life owes me. Nope, I want all the credit. I want to go down in freaking history. And you know what? I think it might just happen.

It’s Friday night, and I’m at the Rosewood Country Club, where the welcome-back masquerade party I’m throwing for my longtime bestie, Hanna Marin, is about to start. It’s a typical Mona Vanderwaal party. You know, where a huge party tent is transformed into a casino swanky enough that supermodels and high rollers would beg to play here. There are faux-marble walls and velvet banquettes. I called in professional card dealers from Atlantic City. A fleet of hot waiters roams about with canapés. I even rigged a Cleopatra-style platform for Hanna to ride in on for her big entrance. Basically, Vanity Fair and Us Weekly should be photographing this thing instead of the lame-ass Main Line society blog . . . and I’m the mastermind behind all of it.

I hear a crackle on my headset. “Okay, Hanna’s in position.” It’s a sophomore loser whose name I can’t remember; I chose her from a list of minions who begged to help out with the party. Little do these girls know they’ll be helping out with a few other details tonight, too. Namely, spying.

“Great,” I say into the microphone. “DJ, let’s get some entrance music for my girl.”

The opening notes of classic hip-hop swell from the DJ booth. The tasseled platform, held aloft by a team of muscled models, parades into the tent. Hanna, her banged-up face concealed with a satin mask, sits atop the thing, waving like a queen. Welcome back, Hanna! reads a banner over the entrance. Before I hung it up, I had everyone at school add personalized messages, cheesy things like We were so worried about you! and So happy you’re okay! Girls Hanna never even spoke to signed that thing like they were her soul sisters—but, hey, when a girl is mowed down by a car in a dark parking lot, everyone’s going to rally around her. Naturally, I added my own message, a long note about how I was so thankful that all that had happened to my bestie in the hit-and-run was a mild case of amnesia. It felt a little disingenuous writing it—because, well, yours truly was the one who was driving the car that fateful night. I had to do it, though. She’d figured out I was A. She knew too much.

Not that Hanna remembers that.

“Woot!” Hanna cries under the mask. Everyone from Rosewood Day cheers. I plaster a fake smile on my face until my cheeks hurt. Enjoy it for now, bitch, I think as the guys bobble Hanna’s platform even higher. Because it’s all going to be over soon. And this time, I’m going to leave you with a lot more than just bruises. Let the party begin!

I'm really not one for sob stories. I don’t want you to pity me. Yes, I, Mona Vanderwaal, used to be a girl I don’t like thinking about anymore, a girl with qualities I’m so far removed from I’m not going to bore you by talking about them. And I just happened to live on the same street as Alison DiLaurentis, one of the cruelest girls I’ve ever met, a girl who took great pleasure in making my life miserable. But whatevs, right?

Others might wallow in this sad past. They might make anti- bullying proclamations on their Facebook pages or start a charity, and they’d definitely slouch through high school as a weird, nichey nerd. But I never wanted to be that girl. When Ali and her little crew—Spencer Hastings, Hanna Marin, Emily Fields, and Aria Montgomery—teased, taunted, laughed, and humiliated me, I might have run away with my tail between my legs, but I was pissed.

I didn’t have anything to do with Ali’s disappearance the very last day of seventh grade. Still, the day the news broke, I shut myself inside my bedroom and stared at myself in the mirror. There was a wide, freaked-out smile on my face. I laughed silently for what felt like hours. The universe had finally listened to me. It was a miracle.

My parents were glued to the TV that whole weekend, horrified that the most magnetic, beautiful girl in all of Rosewood had disappeared from our street. They joined the search parties. They went to charity events in Ali’s honor. But can you guess what I was doing? Crossing my fingers and toes. Throwing coins into fountains. Coming up with every superstitious way to wish for that bitch to be gone for good.

Once eighth grade began, a light switch came on, and all of a sudden, my social life improved. With Ali still missing, I realized I could scoop up one of her adrift friends and start a new clique. That’s right: My first instinct was to befriend those bitches, not to ruin them. What can I say? I idolized them. I wanted to be them. Fun fact: My first choice was Spencer Hastings. We were in the same honors classes together—not that she ever noticed me—and our houses were across from each other. I spent every day staring at the large, stately gates that surrounded the Hastings property. Spencer, in all her preppy, purebred Rosewood-ness, felt right.

But Spencer ignored me same as ever. Guess we don’t always get what we want.

Hanna, the group’s weakest and most insecure, ended up a great second choice, though. Together, she and I got hot. Straightened our hair. Discovered self-tanning. Basically, we became swans. Kids I’d known since kindergarten thought I was a new girl, I looked so different, and with Hanna at my side, I had instant entrée into popularity. You’d think I’d be satisfied with that.

Oh, people. All that glitters . . . well, sometimes it turns green the moment you put it on your finger.

The thing is, even after Hanna and I started sharing sushi bento boxes for lunch and shopping out of each other’s closets, there were still these moments when I’d look over at her and think, I can’t believe you. Let’s face it: Hanna might not have been the one dishing out the insults, but she’d stood there like a tree stump and let Ali tease me again and again and again. She never stuck up for me. She never looked conflicted about what Ali was doing. And you know what? After we became close, Hanna never apologized about it. I kept waiting for this big mushy moment between us...but it never came.

So after years of friendship, I started to get bitter. I started to think about Ali’s whole posse, actually, and what they were up to now that Ali was gone. They didn’t really seem damaged by any of it. They didn’t have a clue what it felt like to be teased the way they’d teased me—and they probably never would.

I wanted to give them a little education.

Cue the DiLaurentis family finally moving out of their house. Cue them dumping all sorts of shit on their curb for the garbagemen. Cue nosy me noticing their garbage, which included framed boy-band posters from Ali’s room, which her family had kept like a shrine for four long years. It might sound sort of perverse, but I really wanted those posters. I wanted something from the girl who made my life hell hanging in my bedroom. As a reminder, maybe. As a weird sort of vision board.

What I found beneath those boy-band posters, of course, was far more valuable: a diary full of dirt on Ali’s best friends. It turned me into a whole new person: A.

Yep. I want credit for that, too.

[pines-troz]

New Middle Name

**Ford used to associate family with high expectations, selfishness, betrayal, and mistrust. But over the course of that fateful summer, Ford learned many valuable lessons from Dipper, Mabel and Stan; that teamwork would accomplish the most difficult of tasks, how trust should be given to those who earned it, and that second chances are possible in this world.

Now he wants nothing more than to show his family his gratitude for them.

Based on a headcanon of mine that I shared on tumblr with @a-million-chromatic-dreams**

April 11, 2013

Aboard the Stan O’War II gently sailed the cold waters of the Northern Pacific Ocean. Stan and Ford Pines recently completed their supernatural mission on the Arctic Ocean. They come across a threatening Kraken, some buried treasure and no babes (much to Stanley’s dismay). The two brothers had finished traversing the Bering Strait and were a day’s trip away from Nome, Alaska, which was the perfect place to stock up on supplies.

Since there was a low amount of food on the ship, the seafaring brothers had to make do with what little food they had in the cabin for dinner. Stan indulged himself with a tub of ice cream, while Ford was rummaging through the cabinets for something to satisfy his sweet tooth.  

The twins were glad to have gone on their dream trip together. They were able to make up for forty years of cold shoulders, betrayal and separation of a terrifyingly cosmic scale. Though Ford and Stan learned to make up during the end of the world, it would only make sense that they would continue to mend their relationship by embarking on an abnormal expedition.

That’s not to say that their time sailing the world was a walk in the park. Both brothers had their fair share of bad days on the boat. Stan would be revisited by painful memories of his years on the run from the authorities. Other times it would be during the ten-plus years spent as a homeless grifter, a hapless prisoner, or a desperate man trying to fend himself from the vicious men he owed money to. Ford was also haunted by his past. Most of the time it was the horrific abuse Bill Cipher had inflicted on him after refusing to open the portal. But there were instances in which both men remembered a dark figure that loomed over their childhoods: their father Filbrick Pines.

To say that their Pa was a stoic man would be a massive understatement. Filbrick was the type of man who rarely smiled and was never amused by sentimentality. Hidden behind his dark sunglasses were the eyes, constantly on watch for any misstep Stan and Ford would make. He also cast Stanley out on the streets and threw an already packed duffle bag at him, banning him from the Pines household before the poor teen had the chance to complete high school. The disgruntled father also channeled his disappointment into Ford, who expected their son to make millions after completing college. When Ford decided to pursue a career in studying anomalies, Filbrick was angry with his son’s decision and the two never spoke since.

Worst of all, his father would always be attached to Ford by namesake. When Ford and Stan were born, their father had lazily named both of their sons Stan, mainly because the couple never planned to have raise twins in addition to their older son Shermie. In addition, the man had the ego to insert his name as the middle name of the eldest twin.

“Aren’t you a sight for sore eye! Stanford Filbrick Pines! My old pal!!”

Ford shuddered. The old man refused to revisit those horrible memories again. He needed to find a way to take his mind off of his past.

Shuffling through a couple empty boxes of crackers, he noticed a crumpled bag of jellybeans. Ford immediately retrieved the bag of his favorite candy from the cabinet and closed the door. The researcher inspected the item within the palms of his six-fingered hands. A close glance at the crinkled bag of sweets sent his mind back in time...

The summer sun shone on the grassy hill near the outskirts of Gravity Falls. Ford had brought his nephew Dipper near the town border to answer his biggest question: why the heck are there so many weird things in Gravity Falls is a magnet for all things weird. The scientist took out a handful of the jellybeans from the bag, including an oddly-formed one, and threw them down the hill. As the normal beans tumbled down the hill without issue, the deformed bean bounced upwards by the force-field surrounding the town.

Ford turned to his nephew, whose eyes widened with curiosity and fascination at the bizarre oddity. The boy had realized that Gravity Falls was a magnet that attracted all things strange and unusual. Everything from gnomes and leprecorns to people like Dipper and Ford, born with unusual anomalies such as weird birthmarks and polydactyly.

Ford put his hand on his nephew’s shoulder and smiled. “You and I are some of the strangest beans this town has ever seen, Dipper.”

“Mason,” The boy blurted out. He was shocked by what came out of his mouth. After a moment of silence he looked up to his great uncle and repeated what he said.

“My real name is Mason. Dipper is just a nickname. But everyone got used to it, and now it feels too late to tell everyone the truth.” He explained with an almost apologetic look on his face before casting his eyes downwards. “And it’s kind of a dumb name anyway. Don’t tell anyone.”

Ford was in awe by Dipper’s admission. He didn’t know what compelled the boy to tell him of all people the truth of his birth name. But the researcher’s heart swelled upon realizing that his nephew, the one person whom Ford held great admiration for and trusted the most had decided to confide in him.

Ford beamed at his nephew while gently tousling his hair. “Your secret’s safe with me, Mason.” He told Dipper. “And I think it’s a great name. The Masons are a great secret society, you know.”

Dipper gazed at his uncle and smiled. Seeing the look of joy on Dipper’s face made Ford realize how much his nephew had come to love him, something he had not received in an awfully long time. Not since his days with Jheselbraum the Unswerving had someone given him the trust and compassion he desperately needed.

Ford would forever be grateful for Dipper’s presence and companionship.

A warm smile appeared on his face.

Ford had learned to utilize his deformity as calling card, a badge of honor he could proudly showcase to the world. When Ford returned to Gravity Falls from the Nightmare Realm, he learned to become more comfortable with his polydactyly. Mabel complimented him on his fingers when she introduced herself. Dipper also looked past his physical flaw as the two spent time together. After Ford reclaimed his three journals, he read Dipper’s entries in his third book and was surprised to learn that his nephew’s nickname stemmed from his unusual birthmark.

Ford used to associate family with high expectations, selfishness, betrayal, and mistrust. But over the course of that fateful summer, Ford learned many valuable lessons from Dipper, Mabel and Stan; that teamwork would accomplish the most difficult of tasks, how trust should be given to those who earned it, and that second chances are possible in this world.

Now he wants nothing more than to show his family his gratitude for them.

“Earth to Ford!”

The researcher spun around to find his brother smirking at him while clutching onto his tub of ice cream. “Whatcha thinkin’ about?”

Ford looked over at Stan. “I’ve been reminiscing over the summer.”

Stan put his ice cream on the table and approached his twin, placing a hand on his brother’s shoulder. “Thinkin’ about the kids again?”

Ford gave his twin a knowing smile. “Every day.”

“Same here.” Stan agreed, smiling at the shared sentiment.

The researcher pushed his glasses upwards as he continued to speak. “But I’ve also been thinking about changing my middle name.”

“Really? You gonna change it to Isaac Newton or some other nerd name?” Stan joked. “At least then it would be a step up from Filbrick.”

“No, no.” He dismissed with a wave of his hand. Ford then placed his hands behind his back, his face softened. “I want my middle name to be Mason.”

Stanley’s eyes lit up. He had not heard that name in a while. Back in September, a while after Dipper and Mabel left Gravity Falls, Stan found an aged photograph in his wallet of his younger self holding two precious twins with a tearful smile. One look at the picture created a spark in his mind, reeling back to the day the niblings were born. He broke from his trance and ran to Ford. Stan showed his brother the picture and told him everything he could remember of that day;  Mabel punching the doctor in the jaw, Dipper cheating death after the umbilical cord was removed from his neck, how Stan was able to hold the precious twins before Shermie had the chance. He also told Ford how the twins were named Mabel and Mason so that they were even more special. From that day on Stan would never allow himself to forget that special day.  

Stanley looked to Ford and chuckled. “You actually have a great idea for once poindexter.”

Ford rolled his eyes before giving his brother a wry smile. “So you think Mason would be a good alternative.”

Stan lifted up his arm and playfully pulled Ford close to him. “I think it’s a great middle name Ford!”

Ford gratefully smiled back at his brother.

Mabel and Dipper were mindlessly watching a rerun of Cash Wheel at home when they heard a small buzzing sound. They looked around the room only to realize that it came from Mabel’s cell phone.

“Hello?” Mabel answered.

“Well hello Mabel dear.” Ford warmly replied on the other line. “How are things back home?”

The girl was surprised to hear her Grunkle's voice. Normally the Pines had set up their long video chats over the weekend, but it was a pleasant surprise that Ford had called on a Thursday.  

“Things are going well.” Mabel happily answered. “Dipper and I have been busy with school and all of the clubs we go to. I’ve been enjoying Art Club and Model U.N., and I’m sure Dipper will tell you all of the stuff he’s been up to with Band and Gaming Club.”

“All of that sounds wonderful sweetheart.” Ford said.

“We’ve also been thinking about you and Grunkle Stan a lot.”

Ford’s heart swelled. “I’m touched to hear that from you. Stanley and I are always thinking about you and your brother.”

“D’aww, Grunkle Ford…” Mabel cooed. She looked over at her brother and decided that he should have a turn speaking with their Grunkle. “Oh, you can talk with Dipper now if you want. I gotta finish working on my sweater for one of my friends.”

“Okay, well I enjoy hearing your voice again dear.”

“Love you Grunkle Ford!”

“I love you too Mabel.”

“Alright, here’s Dip-Dop!!” Mabel announced as she passed her phone to her brother.

The teen held the pink phone against his ear and spoke up. “Hey Grunkle Ford!”

“Greetings my boy.” Ford answered. “So Mabel informed me that you’re busy with school.”

“Yeah, I’ve got a truckload of stuff goin’ on, but I’m glad to have Mabel around during my down time.”

“Yes, having a sibling you can count on is always a blessing indeed.” Ford agreed. “So Dipper, I wanted to speak to you about something important.”

Dipper’s ears perked up and he went into the kitchen to better hear what Ford had to say. “Alright, you’ve piqued my interest.”

“So I’ve been thinking during my down time with Stan on the boat.”

“Careful Grunkle Ford, I heard that’s a dangerous pastime.” Dipper joked.

The researcher chuckled at his nephew’s jest. “Stan would tell me the same thing.” Ford laughed. He cleared his throat before getting back on topic. “But as I told Mabel, you and your sister are always on our minds. You kids showed a foolish old man such as myself how important family is...and I have another confession to make.”

Dipper cupped the cellphone closer to his ear to better listen what his Grunkle had to say.

“My original middle name was Filbrick, after my father...”

Dipper cringed. From what Stan had told him and Mabel last summer, great-grandpa Filbrick Pines was anything but great. “That’s...that’s awful.”

“I know, which is precisely why I’m going to change my middle name when Stan and I return to Oregon.”

“Really?” Dipper asked.

The teen imagined that Ford would probably decide to have his new middle name based on one of his idols in the scientific field, like Nikola Tesla or Carl Sagan.

“So I’ve decided to change my middle name to Mason.” Ford announced.

Dipper’s eyes grew wide. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

When Ford heard the silence from the other end, he was afraid that he had reopened an old scar by planning to adopt the boy’s name as part of his own. Ford ushered an explanation. “I know that you’re sensitive over the name, but I wanted to ask for your permission before doing so. If you don’t want me to, I completely understand.”

Dipper remained speechless. His great uncle, the man he looked up to last summer, wanted his middle name to match as his nephew’s true name.

On the other end, Ford began to feel anxious. Perhaps Dipper’s birth name was a sore subject for the boy and was too uncomfortable with his uncle using it as his middle name.

“Dipper? Did I upset you?”

“No, no. Not at all.” Dipper admitted. He let out a joyful laugh as tears of joy ran down his face. “I’m honored...I’m absolutely honored that you would do that Grunkle Ford.”

Ford heard his nephew’s voice cracking with such raw emotion. The researcher wished he could magically teleport to Piedmont so he could give his nephew the biggest hug imaginable.

“I want my middle name to reflect the love I have for this family. To do away with the past and move forward with the people I can trust. And I feel changing my middle name to Mason best reflects that.”

Dipper’s smile grew wider after hearing his great uncle’s explanation. “I’m happy for you Grunkle Ford. Mabel and I will absolutely support your decision.”

Ford smiled. “Thank you my boy.”

Back in the living room, Mabel overheard her brother’s sniffling. She dropped her knitting items and immediately got up to check on Dipper. The teen was about to approach her twin when she noticed that he was still on the phone with Ford. After impatiently waiting for some time, Dipper bid Ford good-bye before ending the call. Mabel carefully walked over towards where Dipper stood as he wiped away his tears.

“Is everything okay bro-bro?” Mabel asked quietly.

“Yeah, everything’s great actually.” Dipper replied with a reassuring smile. “Ford wants to change his middle name to Mason. Mabel, he wants my name to be his middle name!”

Mabel shrieked ecstatically before wrapping her arms around Dipper. The boy laughed joyfully as he accepted his sister’s embrace.

June 1, 2013

Stan stood outside of the Mystery Shack as a beat-up pickup truck rolled down the dirt road. When the vehicle parked outside the tourist trap, all four doors immediately flung open as Dipper, Mabel, Soos and Wendy emerged from the car. The four young people noticed Stan standing by the steps.

Dipper and Mabel ran towards Stan as they tackled the old man into a playful hug. After sharing their first embrace of the summer, Stan and the twins slowly got up from the ground.

“Where’s Grunkle Ford?” Mabel inquired.

“I’m here.”

Dipper and Mabel turned to see Ford stepping outside the Mystery Shack in an almost dramatic flair.

“Allow me to reintroduce myself.” He announced with a soft baritone. “My name is Stanford Mason Pines.”

The twins graciously beamed at their great uncle. Ford sprinted towards Dipper and Mabel, scooped them into his arms and lifted them up in the air. The young twins laughed as they returned the warm embrace.

The love Ford felt for his family had truly changed him for the better.

[cathygeha]

REVIEW

The Escape Room by Megan Goldin

What are you willing to do to succeed? Is money everything? Who would you step on or perhaps even kill to come out on top? And, what about revenge? What would it take to make you seek it?

Such a well-crafted book this book proved to be! It begins with the nightwatchman hearing something then moves on from there to move in alternating chapters that tell of the four in the elevator and of a woman named Sarah Hall. It took a few chapters to figure out what part Sarah had in the lives of the other four but as the story unfolded her part and that of another member of the team, Lucy, became abundantly clear.

What I liked about this book:

* It drew me in little by little

* I was invested in the outcome

* I was given insight into the corporate finance world

* It made me think about values

* It was intriguing

* I just liked it – and am thankful that I cannot see myself as a character in this book

What I did not like:

* Most of the characters

* What happened to the innocent (there were a few)

* Probably exactly what I was meant not to like

I am not sure about the ending. I saw it coming...eventually...but knowing it was coming still left me unsettled and wondered how those that may have survived would carry on in the future.

Did I like this book? Yes

Would I read more by this author? Yes

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the ARC – This is my honest review.

5 Stars

SYNOPSIS

In Megan Goldin's unforgettable debut, The Escape Room, four young Wall Street rising stars discover the price of ambition when an escape room challenge turns into a lethal game of revenge. Welcome to the escape room. Your goal is simple. Get out alive.

In the lucrative world of finance, Vincent, Jules, Sylvie, and Sam are at the top of their game. They’ve mastered the art of the deal and celebrate their success in style—but a life of extreme luxury always comes at a cost.

Invited to participate in an escape room as a team-building exercise, the ferociously competitive co-workers crowd into the elevator of a high rise building, eager to prove themselves. But when the lights go off and the doors stay shut, it quickly becomes clear that this is no ordinary competition: they’re caught in a dangerous game of survival.

Trapped in the dark, the colleagues must put aside their bitter rivalries and work together to solve cryptic clues to break free. But as the game begins to reveal the team’s darkest secrets, they realize there’s a price to be paid for the terrible deeds they committed in their ruthless climb up the corporate ladder. As tempers fray, and the clues turn deadly, they must solve one final chilling puzzle: which one of them will kill in order to survive?

EXCERPT

PROLOGUE

It was Miguel who called 911 at 4:07 a.m. on an icy Sunday morning. The young security guard spoke in an unsteady voice, fear disguised by cocky nonchalance.

Miguel had been an aspiring bodybuilder until he injured his back lifting boxes in a warehouse job and had to take night- shift work guarding a luxury office tower in the final stages of construction. He had a muscular physique, dark hair, and a cleft in his chin.

He was conducting a cursory inspection when a scream rang out. At first, he didn’t hear a thing. Hip- hop music blasted through the oversize headphones he wore as he swept his flashlight across the dark recesses of the lobby.

The beam flicked across the classical faces of reproduction Greek busts cast in metal and inset into niches in the walls. They evoked an eerie otherworldliness, which gave the place the aura of a mausoleum.

Miguel paused his music to search for a fresh play list of songs. It was then that he heard the tail end of a muffled scream.

The sound was so unexpected that he instinctively froze. It wasn’t the first time he’d heard strange noises at night, whether it was the screech of tomcats brawling or the whine of construction cranes buffeted by wind. Silence followed. Miguel chided himself for his childish reaction.

He pressed PLAY to listen to a new song and was immediately assaulted by the explosive beat of a tune doing the rounds at the dance clubs where he hung out with friends.

Still, something in the screech he’d heard a moment before rattled him enough for him to be extra diligent.

He bent down to check the lock of the revolving lobby door. It was bolted shut. He swept the flashlight across a pair of still escalators and then, above his head, across the glass- walled mezzanine floor that overlooked the lobby.

He checked behind the long reception desk of blond oak slats and noticed that a black chair was at an odd angle, as if someone had left in a hurry.

A stepladder was propped against a wall where the lobby café was being set up alongside a water fountain that was not yet functional. Plastic- wrapped café tables and chairs were piled up alongside it.

In the far corner, he shone his flashlight in the direction of an elaborate model of the building complex shown to prospective tenants by Realtors rushing to achieve occupancy targets in time for the building’s opening the following month.

The model detailed an ambitious master plan to turn an abandoned ware house district that had been a magnet for homeless people and addicts into a high- end financial and shopping precinct. The first tower was almost finished. A second was halfway through construction.

When Miguel turned around to face the elevator lobby, he was struck by something so incongruent that he pushed his headphones off his head and onto his shoulders.

The backlit green fluorescent light of an elevator switch flickered in the dark. It suggested that an elevator was in use. That was impossible, because he was the only person there.

In the sobriety of the silent echo that followed, he convinced himself once again that his vague sense of unease was the hallucination of a fatigued mind. There was nobody in the elevator for the simple reason that the only people on- site on weekends were the security guards. Two per shift. Except to night, Miguel was the only one on duty.

When Stu had been a no- show for his shift, Miguel figured he’d manage alone. The construction site was fenced off with towering barbed- wire fences and a heavy- duty electric gate. Nobody came in or out until the shift ended.

In the four months he’d worked there, the only intruders he’d encountered were feral cats and rats scampering across construction equipment in the middle of the night. Nothing ever happened during the night shift.

That was what he liked about the job. He was able to study and sleep and still get paid. Sometimes he’d sleep for a couple of hours on the soft leather lobby sofa, which he found preferable to the lumpy stretcher in the portable office where the guards took turns resting between patrols. The CCTV cameras hadn’t been hooked up yet, so he could still get away with it.

From the main access road, the complex looked completed. It had a driveway entry lined with young maples in planter boxes. The lobby had been fitted out and furnished to impress prospective tenants who came to view office space.

The second tower, facing the East River, looked unmistakably like a construction site. It was wrapped with scaffolding. Shipping containers storing building materials were arranged like colorful Lego blocks in a muddy field alongside idle bulldozers and a crane.

Miguel removed keys from his belt to open the side entrance to let himself out, when he heard a loud crack. It whipped through the lobby with an intensity that made his ears ring.

Two more cracks followed. They were unmistakably the sound of gunshots. He hit the ground and called 911. He was terrified the shooter was making his way to the lobby but cocky enough to cover his fear with bravado when he spoke.

“Something bad’s going down here.” He gave the 911 dispatcher the address. “You should get cops over here.”

Miguel figured from the skepticism in the dispatcher’s cool voice that his call was being given priority right below the doughnut run.

His heart thumped like a drum as he waited for the cops to arrive. You chicken shit, he berated himself as he took cover behind a sofa. He exhaled into his shirt to muffle the sound of his rapid breathing. He was afraid he would give away his position to the shooter.

A wave of relief washed over him when the lobby finally lit up with a hazy blue strobe as a police car pulled in at the taxi stand. Miguel went outside to meet the cops.

“What’s going on?” An older cop with a thick gut hanging over his belted pants emerged from the front passenger seat.

“Beats me,” said Miguel. “I heard a scream. Inside the building. Then I heard what I’m pretty sure were gunshots.”

“How many shots?” A younger cop came around the car to meet him, snapping a wad of gum in his mouth.

“Two, maybe three shots. Then nothing.”

“Is anyone else around?” The older cop’s expression was hidden under a thick gray mustache.

“They clear out the site on Friday night. No construction workers. No nobody. Except me. I’m the night guard.”

“Then what makes you think there’s a shooter?”

“I heard a loud crack. Sure sounded like a gunshot. Then two more. Came from somewhere up in the tower.”

“Maybe construction equipment fell? That possible?”

A faint thread of red suffused Miguel’s face as he contemplated the possibility that he’d panicked over nothing. They moved into the lobby to check things out, but he was feeling less confident than when he’d called 911. “I’m pretty sure they—” He stopped speaking as they all heard the unmistakable sound of a descending elevator.

“I thought you said there was nobody here,” said the older cop.

“There isn’t.”

“Could have fooled me,” said the second cop. They moved through to the elevator lobby. A light above the elevator doors was flashing to indicate an elevator’s imminent arrival. “Someone’s here.”

“The building opens for business in a few weeks,” said Miguel. “Nobody’s supposed to be here.”

The cops drew their guns from their holsters and stood in front of the elevator doors in a shooting stance— slightly crouched, legs apart. One of the cops gestured furiously for Miguel to move out of the way. Miguel stepped back. He hovered near an abstract metal sculpture set into the wall at the dead end of the elevator lobby.

A bell chimed. The elevator heaved as it arrived.

The doors parted with a slow hiss. Miguel swallowed hard as the gap widened. He strained to see what was going on. The cops were blocking his line of sight and he was at too sharp an angle to see much.

“Police,” shouted both cops in unison. “Put your weapon down.”

Miguel instinctively pressed himself against the wall. He flinched as the first round of bullets was fired. There were too many shots to count. His ears rang so badly, it took him a moment to realize the police had stopped firing. They’d lowered their weapons and were shouting something. He didn’t know what. He couldn’t hear a thing over the ringing in his ears.

Miguel saw the younger cop talk into his radio. The cop’s mouth opened and closed. Miguel couldn’t make out the words. Gradually, his hearing returned and he heard the tail end of a stream of NYPD jargon.

He couldn’t understand most of what was said. Something about “nonresponsive” and needing “a bus,” which he assumed meant an ambulance. Miguel watched a trickle of blood run along the marble floor until it formed a puddle. He edged closer. He glimpsed blood splatter on the wall of the elevator. He took one more step. Finally, he could see inside the elevator. He immediately regretted it. He’d never seen so much blood in all his life.

ONE

THE ELEVATOR

Thirty-four Hours Earlier

Vincent was the last to arrive. His dark overcoat flared behind him as he strode through the lobby. The other three were standing in an informal huddle by a leather sofa. They didn’t notice Vincent come in. They were on their phones, with their backs to the entrance, preoccupied with emails and silent contemplation as to why they had been called to a last-minute meeting on a Friday night at an out-of-the-way office building in the South Bronx.

Vincent observed them from a distance as he walked across the lobby toward them. Over the years, the four of them had spent more time together than apart. Vincent knew them almost better than he knew himself. He knew their secrets, and their lies. There were times when he could honestly say that he’d never despised anyone more than these three people. He suspected they all shared the sentiment. Yet they needed one another. Their fates had been joined together long before.

Sylvie’s face bore its usual expression, a few degrees short of a resting-bitch face. With her cover-girl looks and dark blond hair pinned in a topknot that drew attention to her green eyes, Sylvie looked like the catwalk model that she’d been when she was a teenager. She was irritated by being called to an unscheduled meeting when she had to pack for Paris, but she didn’t let it show on her face. She studiously kept a faint upward tilt to her lips. It was a practice drummed into her over many years working in a male-dominated profession. Men could snarl or look angry with impunity; women had to smile serenely regardless of the provocation.

To her right stood Sam, wearing a charcoal suit with a white shirt and a black tie. His stubble matched the dark blond of his closely cropped hair. His jaw twitched from the knot of anxiety in his guts. He’d felt stabbing pains ever since his wife, Kim, telephoned during the drive over. She was furious that he wouldn’t make the flight to Antigua because he was attending an unscheduled meeting. She hated the fact that his work always took precedence over her and the girls.

Jules stood slightly away from the other two, sucking on a peppermint candy to disguise the alcohol on his breath. He wore a suave burgundy-and-navy silk tie that made his Gypsy eyes burn with intensity. His dark hair was brushed back in the style of a fifties movie star. He usually drank vodka because it was odorless and didn’t make his face flush, but now his cheeks were ruddy in a tell-tale sign he’d been drinking. The minibar in his chauffeured car was out of vodka, so he’d had to make do with whiskey on the ride over. The empty bottles were still rattling around in his briefcase.

As they waited for their meeting, they all had the same paranoid notion that they’d been brought to a satellite office to be retrenched. Their careers would be assassinated silently, away from the watercooler gossips at the head office.

It was how they would have done it if the positions were reversed. A Friday-evening meeting at an out-of-the-way office, concluding with a retrenchment package and a nondisclosure agreement signed and sealed.

The firm was considering unprecedented layoffs, and they were acutely aware they had red targets on their backs. They said none of this to one another. They kept their eyes downcast as they worked on their phones, unaware they were the only ones in the lobby. Just as they hadn’t paid much mind to the cranes and construction fencing on their way in.

Sam checked his bank account while he waited. The negative balance made him queasy. He’d wiped out all the cash in his account that morning paying Kim’s credit-card bill. If he lost his job, then the floodgates would open. He could survive two to three months without work; after that, he’d have to sell assets. That alone would destroy him financially. He was leveraged to the hilt. Some of his assets were worth less now than when he’d bought them.

The last time Sam had received a credit-card bill that huge, he’d immediately lowered Kim’s credit limit. Kim found out when her payment for an eleven-thousand-dollar Hermès handbag was rejected at the Madison Avenue store in front of her friends. She was mortified. They had a huge blowup that night, and he reluctantly restored her credit limit. Now he paid all her bills without a word of complaint. Even if it meant taking out bridging loans. Even if it meant constantly feeling on the verge of a heart attack.

Sam knew that Kim spent money as much for attention as out of boredom. She complained that Sam was never around to help with the twins. He’d had to point out that they’d hired a maid to give her all the help she needed. Three maids, to be truthful. Three within the space of two years. The third had walked out in tears a week ago due to Kim’s erratic temper.

Kim was never satisfied with anything. If Sam gave Kim a platinum necklace, she wanted it in gold. If he took her to London, she wanted Paris. If he bought her a BMW, she wanted a Porsche.

Satisfying her unceasing demands was doable when his job prospects were good, but the firm had lost a major account, and since Christmas word had spread of an impending restructure. Everyone knew that was a euphemism for layoffs.

Sam never doubted that Kim would leave him if he couldn’t support her lifestyle anymore. She’d demand full custody of the girls and she’d raise them to hate him. Kim forgave most of his transgressions, she could even live with his infidelities, but she never forgave failure.

It was Sam who first heard the footsteps sounding through the vast lobby. The long, hurried strides of a man running late to a meeting. Sam swung around as their boss arrived. Vincent’s square jaw was tight and his broad shoulders were tense as he joined them without saying a word.

“You almost didn’t make it,” observed Sylvie.

“The traffic was terrible.” Vincent ran his hand over his overcoat pocket in the habit of a man who had recently stopped smoking. Instead of cigarettes, he took out a pair of glasses, which he put on to examine the message on his phone. “Are you all aware of the purpose of this meeting?”

“The email invite from HR wasn’t exactly brimming with information,” said Sam. “You said in your text message it was compulsory for us to attend. That it took precedence over everything else. Well, we’re all here. So maybe now you can enlighten us, Vincent. What’s so important that I had to delay my trip to Antigua?”

“Who here has done an escape-room challenge before?” Vincent asked.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Sam said. “I abandoned my wife on her dream vacation to participate in a team-building activity! This is bullshit, Vincent. It’s goddamn bullshit and you know it.”

“It will take an hour,” said Vincent calmly. “Next Friday is bonus day. I’m sure that we all agree that it’s smart to be on our best behavior before bonus day, especially in the current climate.”

“Let’s do it,” said Sylvie, sighing. Her flight to Paris was at midnight. She still had plenty of time to get home and pack. Vincent led them to a brightly lit elevator with its doors wide open. Inside were mirrored walls and an alabaster marble floor.

They stepped inside. The steel doors shut behind them before they could turn around.

TWO

SARA HALL

It’s remarkable what a Windsor knot divulges about a man. Richie’s Italian silk tie was a brash shade of red, with thin gold stripes running on a diagonal. It was the tie of a man whose arrogance was dwarfed only by his ego.

In truth, I didn’t need to look at his tie to know that Richie was a douche. The dead giveaway was that when I entered the interview room, a nervous smile on my pink matte painted lips, he didn’t bother to greet me. Or even to stand up from the leather chair where he sat and surveyed me as I entered the room.

While I categorized Richie as a first-class creep the moment I set eyes on him, I was acutely aware that I needed to impress him if I was to have any chance of getting the job. I introduced myself and reached out confidently to shake his hand. He shook my hand with a grip that was tighter than necessary—a reminder, perhaps, that he could crush my career aspirations as easily as he could break the bones in my delicate hand.

He introduced himself as Richard Worthington. The third, if you don’t mind. He had a two-hundred-dollar haircut, a custom shave, and hands that were softer than butter. He was in his late twenties, around five years older than I was.

When we were done shaking hands, Richie leaned back in his chair and surveyed me with a touch of amusement as I settled into my seat across the table.

“You can take off your jacket and relax,” he said. “We try to keep interviews informal here.”

I took off my jacket and left it folded over the back of the chair next to me as I wondered what he saw when he looked at me. Did he see a struggling business-school graduate with a newly minted MBA that didn’t appear to be worth the paper it was written on? Or was he perceptive enough to see an intelligent, accomplished young woman? Glossy brown hair cut to a professional shoulder length, serious gray eyes, wearing a brand-new designer suit she couldn’t afford and borrowed Louboutin shoes that were a half size too small and pinched her toes.

I took a deep breath and tried to project the poise and confidence necessary to show him that I was the best candidate. Finally I had a chance at getting my dream job on Wall Street. I would do everything that I could humanly do not to screw it up.

Richie wore a dark gray suit with a fitted white shirt. His cuff links were Hermès, arranged so that the H insignia was clearly visible. On his wrist was an Audemars Piguet watch, a thirty-grand piece that told everyone who cared that he was the very model of a Wall Street player.

Richie left me on the edge of my seat, waiting awkwardly, as he read over my résumé. Paper rustled as he scanned the neatly formatted sheets that summed up my life in two pages. I had the impression that he was looking at it for the first time. When he was done, he examined me over the top of the pages with the lascivious expression of a john sizing up girls at a Nevada whorehouse.

THREE THE ELEVATOR

All the lights in the elevator turned off at once. It happened the moment the doors shut. One moment they were in a brightly lit elevator; the next they were in pitch- darkness. They were as good as blind, save for the weak fluorescent glow from a small display above the steel doors showing the floor number.

Jules stumbled toward the elevator control panel. He pressed the button to open the doors. The darkness was suffocating him. He had to get out. The elevator shot up before anything happened. The jolt was unexpected. Jules lost his footing and fell against the wall with a thud.

As the elevator accelerated upward, they assumed the lights would be restored at any moment. In every other respect, the elevator was working fine. It was ascending smoothly. The green display above the door was showing the changing floor numbers. There was no reason why it should be dark.

Without realizing it, they shifted toward one another, drawn together by a primordial fear of the dark and the unknown dangers that lurked within it. Jules fumbled for his phone and turned on the flashlight setting so that he could see what he was doing. He frantically pressed the buttons for upcoming floors. They didn’t appear to respond to the insistent pressure of his thumb. “It’s probably an express,” explained Sylvie. “I saw a sign in the lobby that said something about the elevator running express until the seventieth floor.”

Jules pressed the button for the seventieth floor. And the seventy-first. And, for good measure, the seventy- second, as well. The buttons immediately lit up one after the other, each button backlit in green. Jules silently counted the remaining floors. All he could think about was getting out.

He loosened his tie to alleviate the tightness in his chest. He’d never considered himself claustrophobic, but he’d had an issue with confined spaces ever since he was a child. He once left summer camp early, in hysterics after being accidentally locked in a toilet stall for a few minutes. His mother told the camp leader that his overreaction was due to a childhood trauma that left him somewhat claustrophobic and nervous in the dark.

“I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’ll be taking the stairs on the way down,” Sam joked with fake nonchalance. “I’m not getting back into this hunk of junk again.”

“Maybe the firm is locking us up in here until we resign voluntarily,” Jules said drily. “It’ll save Stanhope a shitload of money.” He swallowed hard. The elevator was approaching the fortieth floor. They were halfway there. He had to hold it together for another thirty floors.

“It would be a mistake if the firm retrenched any of us,” said Vincent. “I told the executive team as much when we met earlier this week.” What Vincent didn’t mention was that several of the leadership team had avoided looking at him during that meeting. That was when he knew the writing was on the wall. “Why get rid of us? We’ve always made the firm plenty of money,” Sylvie said.

“Until lately,” Vincent said pointedly.

They’d failed to secure two major deals in a row. Those deals had both gone to a key competitor, who had inexplicably undercut them each time. It made them wonder whether their competitor had inside knowledge of their bids. The team’s revenue was lower than it had been in years. For the first time ever, their jobs were vulnerable.

“Are we getting fired, Vincent?” Jules asked as the elevator continued rising. “Is that why we were summoned here? They must have told you something.”

“I got the same generic meeting invite that you all received,” Vincent responded. “It was only as I arrived that I received a text with instructions to bring you all up to the eightieth floor for an escape room challenge. The results of which, it said, would be used for ‘internal consultations about future staff planning.’ Make of that what you will.”

“Sounds like they want to see how we perform tonight before deciding what to do with us,” said Sylvie. “I’ve never done an escape room. What exactly are we supposed to do?”

“It’s straightforward,” said Sam. “You’re locked in a room and have to solve a series of clues to get out.”

“And on that basis they’re going to decide which of us to fire?” Jules asked Vincent in the dark.

“I doubt it,” Vincent said. “The firm doesn’t work that way.”

“Vincent’s right,” said Jules cynically. “Let’s take a more optimistic tack. Maybe they’re using our escape room performance to determine who to promote to Eric Miles’s job.” Eric had resigned before Christmas under something of a cloud. They’d heard rumors the firm was going to promote someone to the job internally. Such promotions were highly sought after. At a time when their jobs were in jeopardy, it offered one of them a potential career lifeline.

The green display above the door flashed the number 67. They had three more floors to go until the elevator finished the express part of the ride. The elevator slowed down and came to a stop on the seventieth floor. Jules exhaled in relief. He stepped forward in anticipation of the doors opening. They remained shut.

He pressed the open button on the control panel. Nothing happened. He pressed it again, holding it down for several seconds. The doors still didn’t budge. He pressed the button three times in quick succession. Nothing. Finally, in desperation, he pressed the red emergency button. There was no response.

“It’s not working,” he said.

They looked up at the panel above the door that displayed the floor numbers. It had an E on its screen. Error.

A small television monitor above the control panel turned on. At first, they didn’t think much of it. They expected to see cable news or a stock market update, the type of thing usually broadcast on elevator monitors.

It took a moment for their eyes to adjust to the brightness of the white television screen. After another moment, a message appeared in large black letters.

WELCOME TO THE ESCAPE ROOM. YOUR GOAL IS SIMPLE. GET OUT ALIVE.

From The Escape Room. Copyright © 2019 by Megan Goldin and reprinted with permission from St. Martin’s Press.

Buy-book link:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250219671

AUTHOR BIO

MEGAN GOLDIN worked as a correspondent for Reuters and other media outlets where she covered war, peace, international terrorism and financial meltdowns in the Middle East and Asia. She is now based in Melbourne, Australia where she raises three sons and is a foster mum to Labrador puppies learning to be guide dogs. THE ESCAPE ROOM is her debut novel.

The Escape Room Blog Tour Q&A

1. How did you become inspired to write The Escape Room?

There were a number of inspirations that led to me writing The Escape Room. First of all, I’d had my third baby and, for the first time since my working life began, I'd taken a year or so out of the workforce to be with him. When I started looking to go back to work, I interviewed for a job for which I should have been a serious candidate as my experience closely matched the job description and I'd done something similar before for a similar company. Instead, the interviewer ate snack food throughout the interview with, let's just say, very bad table manners. He crunched particularly loudly every time that I spoke. I drew on this experience when I wrote about the job interview from hell that Sara Hall went through in The Escape Room. It made me feel powerless. I told friends about what happened and they shared with me their own horror stories in the workplace. It made me want to explore sexism in the workplace in my next novel. It also inspired the idea of a revenge theme. I liked the idea of someone who is beaten down by the system making a comeback.

Around that time I was also stuck in an elevator. I’d gone shopping with my kids. I had a cart full of food. The elevator stopped and the lights went off. It took a couple of minutes until we were able to get out but it was a dark, cold, and frightening couple of minutes in that elevator. I’d been thinking about a setting for this thriller revenge story that I had in mind. It struck me that the elevator was a perfect setting. I was fired up by the challenge of setting a novel in an elevator. It also served my purpose well. I wanted to put my characters in a pressure-cooker atmosphere where animosity would build as they learned each other’s secrets. An elevator was perfect.

2. What was your research process like when writing about the financial industry in the U.S?

When I research my books, I apply journalism skills acquired over the years. That means immersing myself in whatever information I can get ahold of. I read books, newspaper articles, elevator manuals, and even journal studies on human psychology. I also followed forums for investment bankers and others working in the financial industry and some of their social media feeds. I spoke with people who worked in the world of finance and also drew on material that I’d collected in the past. For example, there were big name investment banks in my previous office building and I’d often overhear bankers and brokers chatting in the elevator about their personal lives and work, or in my condominium building where many of them lived. I tend to write and research at the same time as I don’t plan my novels other than the story arc. As the story evolves on the pages while I write, I’ll stop writing for a few hours and branch out to research whatever might be relevant for the novel. In the case of The Escape Room, that included issues such as ‘game theory’ and things as mundane as technical manuals about elevator safety mechanisms and issues related to guns and ballistics. The research is one of the fun parts of writing a novel. I get to learn new things and it breaks up the intensity of writing. 

3. Are there any authors that you most look up to?

There is an endless list of authors, from crime and thriller writers, to literary fiction, classics, and non-fiction. Now that I am writing myself, I tend to analyze other books as I read. I look at plot, structure, character, voice, and various other writing techniques. Even as a journalist, I always saw writing as a constant process of learning and refining. I think it’s a lifelong endeavor. Among my favorites is John le Carre. I consider his novels master classes in suspense writing and I often reread them. Yuval Noah Harari's series, starting with Sapiens, was another inspiration behind The Escape Room, as I’d been reading it and watching Yarari's lectures on Youtube. It made me look at office culture through a prism of evolutionary biology. Offices are a modern-day human habit and the backbiting office politics is really a case of survival of the fittest.

4. If The Escape Room was to become a movie, which actor or actress would you like to play some of the roles?

Well, a close friend just suggested Bradley Cooper for Vincent! Or perhaps Colin Farrell, Ryan Gosling or Jesse Eisenberg for Sam and Jules. As for actresses, maybe Jennifer Lawrence for Sylvie, or Anne Hathaway or Margot Robbie for Sara Hall. Lucy could be Emily Blunt. 

5. Do you have any upcoming projects you’re working on?

I am working on my next book. It's also a thriller and it addresses contemporary themes but it's quite different from The Escape Room. I'm a little hesitant about how much to divulge at this point until it's done.

6. Anything else you’d like to add?

I'm extremely touched by all the support and feedback that I've been getting from so many bloggers and reviewers who are passionate about The Escape Room and who love the characters. Thank you all so much.

[landy-amor]

1

Let’s start on a lighter note. My name is big and bold on the top of the page, so those who know me will probably know of whoever I decide to talk about. Even so, I will not post names. Outside of that, I will be as honest as possible.

Lighter note = what I now call “my worst heartbreak”.

Disclaimer* (just to not sound like an ardida): I have talked things out with one of the people involved in this tragedy. This helped a lot with putting my heart and mind at ease. My feelings toward the other person have eased up, and although it was indeed an awful experience, I am not angry anymore. I am using this blog as an outlet and sharing my personal experiences with no intent to harm anyone. If anyone who thinks I am talking about them feels like I am not being honest, you are more than welcome to share your side of the story.

Let’s take a step back to ~2004, my third grade math class. I don’t quite remember how I first met this person. I only know my first memory of us. I had a book that I was loving. For whatever reason, this person (which I’ll refer to as A) had my book at a moment she was not supposed to. Therefore, our math teacher took it away and said something about asking for it back after class. I got my book back or whatever. Fast forward to my next memory being fifth grade. I was an elementary kid beginning my lust for boys. Of course, I’ve only had two boyfriends in my entire life, and anyone who says otherwise is a psycho /.\ So in fifth grade, A mentioned her liking this boy. I don’t know if she ever told him, but I feel like she probably did not. During the end of the year festivities, someone told me that same boy liked me and was going to ask me out. {This is the earliest I remember that after hearing a boy likes me, I magically like them back.} So yeah, I liked that same boy A said she liked.

Blah blah, fast forward to ¡middle school! This is when A and I really began to grow close imo. Sixth grade, we joined drama club and band. Drama club was after school, and I was only able to join because she could be my ride home. Looking back, this is when I first connected my ability to participate in things with her desire to. Drama club helped me a lot with my shyness. At least I’d like to think so. We were able to learn improv and experience school plays. I believe this is when we began to hang out outside of school. I might be remembering wrong, but I think I would go over to her house most of the time. She went to mine at the time maybe a couple of times because I lived with my aunts and uncles in a trailer too small for so many people. Anyway, we grew very close over Just Dance on her wii, calls to Cody Simpson’s fan voicemail, and talking about whoever I liked at the time. This went on for 2 years until I moved and entered eighth grade at a different school. The summer I moved, my biggest concern was whether or not we would see each other as often. I knew our friendship could never end. I moved only like 10 minutes away, but A did not really visit. Instead, the other main person of this story visited and grew closer to me. She will be referred to as B.

B and I met in sixth grade. We were in the same social studies class. I don’t remember how we began talking, but Facebook probably had a lot to do with it. The summer that I moved, B came over a lot. We bonded over crazy singing and joking around in my room making videos to post of Facebook. We had a sort of awkward but goofy friendship. It slowly but surely kept growing since that summer.

That year felt like it would be tough. Adjusting to a new school where I would be with people I had heard of but hadn’t met before sounded awful. Being away from my bestest friend sounded worse. I even started making video diaries for A, but they didn’t really get a response. Or the response I was looking for. I don’t remember how many times A and I actually hung out during that year, but we definitely grew a little apart.

HIGH SCHOOL STARTED. I don’t remember much about nineth grade other than I continued to be a nerd with no breaks. Keep in mind, all these years I went around meeting people and telling them about my bff A. OH YEAH my quinceañera! So before high school began, I was supposed to move to Mexico, and we were not going to plan my quinces until we got there. However, my mom changed her mind after Obama announced DACA (which has had a huge impact & deserves its own post). A and I were hoping we’d go to the same magnet high school, but because I was not planning on starting high school here anymore, I did not apply to magnet. Anyway, preparations for my quinces began. I would like to think I kept her in the loop on everything because her opinion meant so much to me. Sadly, I barely knew anything about hers. I was just asked to be a madrina, and I showed up. For mine, she was my dama and all that. I’m not sure if the differences in involvement were because we had just grown apart for a year prior. A big moment I remember was on my quinceañera day, I felt like she wasn’t very present. I never knew if anything had actually happened with her that day.

After nineth grade, I moved close to my high school. Here, I lived with only my mom and sisters. These next few years were full of sleep overs, movies, late night stalking, talks about boys I liked, the usual. Me me me. This is a big question mark for me. Why was it always about my stuff? Did I talk a lot? Was I too self-absorbed?? Or did she just not want to talk about herself??? During these same years, B also joined into our friendship and became my second BFF.

Let’s break down our friendship dynamic now. A, B and I were bffs. I was closest to A though. And somehow, I felt like A and B were closer than B and I. A also had another super bff that was just a friend to B and I. A also had another close friend who B and I were also friends with. This friendship dynamic got confusing various times for me. It also made me very self conscious of my friendship with A because I felt like she was my main bff while she had several. I felt disposable many times.

I would say senior year of high school was the best year of our lives together. A, B and I ruled the world. I trusted them with absolutely everything. My mom and sisters had also grown a loving and trusting relationship with both of them. Although this last year of high school was our best because we could drive and go out more, there were various times where I didn’t know what was going on in A’s life. Although I told A and B literally everything to do with me, it was hard to hear news from A. The last two years of HS, she was involved in extracurriculars that kept her busy and cut our hanging out time, which is fine. I’ve had a problem with expecting the same effort from others as I make with them. Senior year, I was a part of a lot of clubs, and I even invited A and B to join one at my school to increase our time together. Anyway, senior year was going by, and we had many great times together. I met my bb, broke up, met another boy who everyone in my new club-family liked, didn’t work out, began to build my current relationship, and A and B walked every step with me.

During this same year, A and I worked together. Towards the end of the school year, we took a trip with this job. A and I roomed with 2 other girls who we loved. However, A and I were supposed to be this pair of bffs who were the closest ever. Sadly, I felt avoided this whole trip. This wasn’t anything new, though. I experienced this same feeling with A several times before: when I went out of town with her family and on a middle school band trip. I don’t know how to describe the feeling other than avoidant and absent.

Continuing, the end of senior year was approaching. Prom came, and with it, came its own mess. That mess I will keep private. Regardless, it was a mess not very noticeable, and we all had a blast. College visits also came, and A, B and I went together to the one we’d be attending together that fall. Unfortunately, it didn’t turn out this way. Graduations came, and we each had separate ones. I wasn’t able to see A’s because I was in line to walk onto the field while she was walking. B saw her walk, and A and B rushed over to mine right after (which I’m deeply grateful for). The next day, A and I watched B graduate. High school had ended.

The summer after high school graduation was the beginning of the end. A was again very distant and hard to reach. Right after graduation, I moved once again. This time, I moved about 4 streets, ~2 minute drive from A. However, no help was offered from either A or B. No visiting was suggested right after we had settled in. I hadn’t seen A in a while, until one day, A and her sister were visiting my neighbor. Yes, the person right next door to me. Apparently, I was one house too far from visiting potential. Through out that summer, B and I tried getting all 3 of us to hang out several times. A was unavailable. She was mysteriously free to hang out with B whenever I couldn’t or just did not mention it to me. AGAIN, this is my experience. I did run it all through B, and not many changes were pointed out. As I mentioned, the 3 of us were unable to start college together that fall. I began school terrified and anxious because I didn’t have the two people I counted on to explore this new territory. Of course I wanted to see them as soon as I could whenever I could during that start of the semester. Sadly, it didn’t go that way. I felt alone. I felt disappointed. I felt hurt. So yes, I broke up with A. We didn’t communicate as much. We never saw each other. And I felt like I was the only one trying. I didn’t want to carry us anymore. Then, I broke up with B because she didn’t see anything wrong with what was going on. (I can now say this one was a bad reason to leave someone.)

For the next year, I questioned my decisions daily. I regretted them several times. I reached out once or twice when I didn’t feel okay. (No help really came from it.) I had trust issues for a year, really bad trust issues. I couldn’t connect with anyone new. I didn’t know how to make a new friend or try to make a new best friend. I vented in the middle of the lunch area to two guys who thought I was crazy. “Why can’t you just knock on her door and confront her?” one said. Hello??? Do you not know girls? I talked things out with my first close buddy who helped me trust again whether she knew it or not. I healed slowly. Then, I found out things I did not know existed about A. These I will also keep private, but my point is, I did not know A like I thought I did for so many years.

The questions I was leading up to are here now: were we doomed from the start? I mean from when I liked the same guy she said she liked. Were the signs there all along? like when she was distant. Was it my fault for making our friendship all about me? Or was it her fault for not bringing herself into our friendship? Was it no one’s fault but miscommunication?

What did I do wrong? What did I do wrong? What did I do wrong? I asked myself this over and over many times when we first broke up. Why did she not try anymore? This was the W O R S T heartbreak I had ever felt. Now it made sense.

I have heard other people’s theories on why things happened. I will not know the why or the who. However, I did take some good things out of this heartbreak.

independence: I learnt how to try things because I wanted to, not because A also wanted to.

renewed trust: I let new people into my heart. I made new close friends I don’t think I would have if my bowl of friendship was filled by mostly one person.

discovery: I opened my eyes to what I already had around me. My first best friend, my first jump to begin a friendship, my first bold friend. All three became my new best friends. My true friends. My honest friends. My adulting friends. My life partners.

love: I may have gotten to this without this experience, but it would have taken me a lot longer. I used to be a “friends are more valuable than boyfriends” gal. Now, I’m a “who has been more valuable to me” gal. During this break up, I leaned on my boyfriend a loooot. He became my best friend quickly. Because of that, I found my true feelings for him much easier.

What a rollercoaster. And that was only one topic....

[crossedbeams]

Transitory - Trinity Ch.10

Genre: Casefile | Fandom: The X-Files x The Fall x Sreetcar | Rating: Mature | Setting: Circa 2012. Canon compliant | Chapters: 3/6 of Part 2

Trinity Part I

Chapter 1 - Perfume || Chapter 2 - Impression || Chapter 3 - Connection Chapter 4 - Delusion || Chapter 5-  Confrontation || Chapter 6 - Post Mortem

Trinity Part I

Prologue - Purgatory || Chapter 1 - Animosity || Chapter 2 - History

This chapter is rated teen+ for a little sexual content. Also it’ angsty AF. sorry!

TRINITY: PART II CHAPTER III - TRANSITORY

Scully wakes up on hotel-crisp sheets after not nearly long enough. Her mind is racing but her body tells her it’s not morning yet. The clock is showing 11:15pm and she’s only been asleep for around four hours, the remains of a room-service salad drying out on the desk. Stella Gibson, with her brusquely dismissive, “You’ve been up at least 36 hours. Check yourself in, the Bureau will cover the bill, and we’ll discuss what happens next in the morning,” is staying two floors up.

The end of the afternoon had passed in a hurry of meetings and memorandums, an updated file  arriving from the morgue complete with forms declaring that Scully’s late night examination had been totally by-the-book defusing Stanning’s fury from apoplectic to merely seething. He was biding his time, Scully could tell; smarting because Blanche Dubois had refused to speak to him when she’d finished with the sketch artist, affronted when Stella had gone straight to AD Gilmore to request approval to involve the Miami field office in their hunt for Jane Doe, his macho bravado growing louder with every small step the women of the taskforce took forward without his input. And it wasn’t that they sought to exclude him, Scully had realised as the day wore on, it was quite simply that he wasn’t willing to listen or participate until it suited his purpose.

When the police artist had come into the situation room with an e-fit sketch from Blanche’s description, Stanning had stood right next to them as Stella listed the databases she wanted it run against, he was well within earshot of Scully’s suggestion that they also check it against hospital staff records in the cities of interest. Short of profound deafness, there was no way he could have missed Scully’s subsequent explanation that most intravenous drugs capable of killing with the required speed and subtlety are controlled substances. and that access to such drugs makes it possible their perp is a medical professional of some sort. Scully could even have sworn that Agent Stanning had nodded his approval to extend their search parameters, but by the time they reached the last meeting of the day, Scully’s reiteration of those same suggestions to the gathered taskforce had been met with a unsubtle, definitely not under-the-breath, “Would be great if your little consultant would run this stuff past me before sharing with the room,” to Gibson, standing stonily at his side.

Scully suspects that Stanning’s hostility towards her has a lot more to do with Stella Gibson than Scully herself, but she hasn’t had a chance to ask what might be at the root of it. Things between her and the British detective have thawed as the day has worn on, the previous night’s unpleasantness put aside for now in the interest of furthering the case; Blanche’s clear preference for Scully has changed the landscape and they are both still adapting, Stella has made space for Scully’s ideas and investigative victories despite her instinct to hold all the cards. It’s imperfect but it is working.

Tomorrow will be another rebalancing, and in the honesty of midnight darkness Scully prays that she will be asked to stay, that Stella’s initial promise of partnership will be renewed and the day will carry her to the morgue to assist with processing, or to a crime scene, anywhere where she can work, help and be useful in the search for the truth. This case has burrowed its way into her mind and she feels that familiar itch of unfinished business, of injustice, her mind rejecting sleep in favour of going over the evidence. After all, the structure and strictures of investigation, of neatly typed reports and linked evidence is a much kinder and more familiar cause for insomnia than the choking misery of Mulder’s absence which has become her frequent bedfellow these last few months.

Trying not to count back the nights where she’s reached for him and found only a cold pillow, Scully flicks on the TV, hoping for some numbing background noise. Instead, she finds her own face.

The photograph is old, maybe as much as a decade. She vaguely remembers having it taken for a hospital ID on a day when her hair was at an awkward in-between stage after being on the run, and next to Stella’s pristine police portrait she looks like the scruffy younger sister. Clicking on the sound, she catches the end of a report identifying her as a possible consultant and speculating as to what could have brought two women from such wildly different backgrounds on to the suspected serial case. When they cut back to the anchor, Scully recognises one of the men from from outside the station, and she realises that, in absence of any official statement to the press, she and Stella are likely the closest thing anyone has to a story. She only hopes that- and then in a flash Mulder’s face is on screen, and it’s too late, the potted official history of their partnership laid out for the late-night news audience with the standard side order of ridicule and sensationalism. She feels a pang then, for the old days where they’d have laughed off the bad press over bad coffee, the marks on each of their bodies reassuring them that the truth they sought was valid and important, their scars an armour of proof that only the other could see or understand. It’s a fond memory, and it gives Scully the excise she has been pretending not to be waiting for. If her involvement has made the news, there is a chance it will make it to Mulder. She has to call. She pretends her heart isn’t racing at the thought of hearing his voice.

Scully calls their landline on autopilot. It’s the closest phone to Mulder’s desk and she knows that is likely where he will be. Late night calls are a staple of their relationship, or at least they had been back when they still talked, miles of telephone wire condensing to nothing under the magnetism of their connection, his voice in her ear more intimate than the touch of any man who had come before him. Even at the beginning, his sincerity, his fervour had stripped away her cynicism, if not her scepticism, and left her open and vulnerable to everything he was, everything that they became… everything they have lost.

He picks up on an inhale but says nothing, forcing her to break the silence. Again.

‘Mulder, it’s me.’

And she wishes she could see his face, because his ‘Scully?’ is a question she doesn’t know how to answer. It’s not a ‘Where the hell are you and why have you got my phone?’ It’s not a ‘Why haven’t you come home?’ It’s ‘Why are you calling me Scully?’ and she doesn’t know how to answer him.

She’d planned to tell him that she was assisting the FBI, not to worry and sorry she’d snuck out but he seemed busy. She’d thought perhaps she’d tempt him into the case, saying, ‘Please if you have any “Mulder hunches” call me because this guy is a sick fuck and I want to catch him’ and meaning, ‘I miss you. I miss us.’ But now frustration and loss and rage are fighting in her throat and, ‘Mulder I love you; why don’t you see me slipping away?’ is tangled up in, ‘Did you even notice I was gone?’ and ‘Why the hell haven’t you checked your phone in two days? I could have been dead in a ditch and you wouldn’t know, wouldn’t even care, you self-involved bastard!’

In the end, nothing comes out. And that’s what she tells him.

‘It’s nothing Mulder. I’m fine, I was just... Don’t worry.’

And he tells her goodbye and puts the phone down and Scully feels, just for a second, like she is nothing. That it has all been for nothing.

Mulder’s phone is heavy in her hand, one more thing of his he seems content to live without, and Scully lets it drop to the bed and get lost in the dark. He’d sworn they wouldn’t get lost in the dark, but it’s not the first promise he’s broken.

Determinedly swinging her legs out of bed, Scully drags workout clothes out of her luggage and pulls them on, transplanting the energy of her anger, the tension of her hurt into her muscles and as soon as her sneakers are laced she’s out of the door and headed for the health club. She skips the elevator, jogs down the ten flights of stairs and thanks God and whoever signs off Stella Gibson’s expenses for the Hilton and their 24/7 fitness centre.

The gym is empty and the music is off, but that suits Scully fine. She picks a treadmill by the window overlooking the pool for the distracting chlorine-fuelled fractals the water casts on the walls and ups the incline until she can feel her thighs start to burn. Mulder likes to run outside, to escape, but for Scully running has always been a form of punishment, penitence for that extra dinner roll, her legs pounding Hail Marys into the conveyor until her lungs burn and her mind empties. It’s not about getting anywhere or away from anything, it’s about staying the course. Tonight she will run until she forgets to feel hurt by what she’s left behind, until she forgets to be afraid of what comes next.

Ten minutes in and movement below catches the edge of her consciousness, figures intruding on the edge of her pool-rippled blank space. She keeps running, keeps gazing but they do not retreat, and Scully finds herself leaning in, observing the people below from her vantage point as if through a microscope.

There’s a familiarity to the arch of the woman’s back as she slips into the spa tub in a seal-black line. There’s a recognisable arrogance to the way she rises up on her knees and leans into her companion, to her dedication to her own pleasure as she slips the straps of her bathing suit down her shoulders in a public area, not caring who might be watching the sensuous skid of fingers down her now naked back. It’s not until the woman throws her head back, her lips tight with pleasure, that Scully realises why the stranger seems so familiar.

It’s Stella, her hair slicked back and dark from the pool. She seems as confident here, half naked and straddling someone in an empty jacuzzi, as she had in the boardroom. Scully hits the emergency stop on the treadmill, meaning to rush away, ashamed of her accidental voyeurism but as she is about to step back the scene below her changes. Stella rolls away from her partner to recline against the edge of the pool, and as she settles in a languid pose, somehow both soft and hard in one liquid pose, she looks up and notices her audience.

Scully freezes, still poised to run but now there’s a dare in Stella’s eyes, a wicked invitation to stay a little longer, to see how far things go, and Scully finds herself starting the treadmill again, a low setting, no incline, a feeble excuse to spectate Stella’s conquest.

Without relinquishing eye contact, Stella slides over to reclaim her partner, pulling them into her lap and arching her neck to give them access to the ivory swoop of her skin. A slight smile curves her lips when Scully eventually realises the body draped over her colleague is that of another woman. Scully is not surprised, there have been moments where Stella’s glance has skirted the edges of seductive, and remembering them now, wondering if she encouraged them, pins Scully more firmly in the sweet place between fight and flight. She runs harder, looking for another explanation for the heat rising in her cheeks and settling in places she will not acknowledge when Stella’s fingers dip playfully under the edges of the other woman’s bikini. She should leave. She doesn’t want this. Does she? Scully has never been a voyeur but the adrenaline coursing through her body from the exercise and the taboo of what she is watching is intoxicating. And so she keeps jogging, keeps making excuses and chalking up her shortness of breath to exertion.

A quarter mile later and the dark haired woman’s hands have vanished from view, the unfocused blue of Stella’s gaze giving Scully a pretty good idea of what they might be doing, though from her vantage point all she can see is bubbles. For a mad moment she considers going downstairs, some insidious voice in the back of her mind telling Scully that Stella wouldn’t mind, but even this much, even dragging her own lower lip into her mouth as Stella’s eyes finally snap shut and biting down to feel the corresponding tightness in her nipples and between her legs feels sinful. It’s a mix of sexy and sordid that without Stella’s gaze to hold her in place feels overwhelming, and as reason crashes in on this early hours insanity, Scully leaves. She doesn’t glance back to where deft fingers have now vanished inside bikini bottoms and definitely doesn’t acknowledge the ache between her own legs until she has reached the safety of her room.

Locking the door and dimming all the lights, as if that can hide the shameful desperation of her desire, Scully strips off and lets the shower head and her fingers finish what started ten floors down. It’s a technique she’s perfected in the months spent waiting for Mulder, a quick release so she can go to bed satisfied if not sated.

She remembers the first time, she’d put it off for weeks, unwilling to accept that yet another of their connections had failed, until her body was screaming to be touched, and then finally, desperately, Scully had crawled onto Mulder’s side of the bed, head deep in his pillow, and she’d touched herself pretending it was him. Afterwards she cried herself to sleep with loneliness of it, waking up alone with the evidence, before relocating to the shower where at least it felt more like an emotional ablution than a last resort. She tells herself the same thing now, that it’s a natural urge, a hormonal release, and has absolutely nothing to do with whatever devilish desire had kept her watching downstairs, and that the uncharacteristic act of watching has nothing to do with what is missing at home. Scully’s almost convinced herself of both lies by the time she crawls back into bed, and she drifts off to dreams of running, of following Mulder down a dark and endless tunnel, calling out for him to wait and then looking back to see Stella Gibson chasing behind, face bright with freedom and laughing as the gap begins to close.

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[mcglynntheredonethat]

CUBA

This isn’t a normal Cuba guidebook write-up. If you want to know where to sightsee, Google “things to do in Cuba”. My list is at the bottom, but first I’ll tell you some do’s and don'ts.

Traveling there: It’s really easy to get to Cuba now! You don’t need a special tour or to worry about booking your trip through a company or group. As of November 21st, 2016 all you need to do is book your flight and choose one of the 12 sanctions - I chose journalism, but they never check and there’s no follow up or anything so it doesn’t really matter what you choose.. I booked my flight with JetBlue and they took care of everything. The ticket price included the mandatory travel insurance that Cuba requires, as well as most other fees for coming and going from the US. The only additional fee you have to pay is a $50 visa that they seamlessly take care of when you arrive at the airport for your flight.

Food: Do not come to Cuba for the food. Everything you know about Cuban food in America is not the case there (except for all the ham). Not only is good Cuban food hard to find, but sometimes any food you want is hard to find. It is common for restaurants to be completely sold out of many items on the menu by about 4pm. Most meat dishes are made with pork, so if you want beef you need to ask for beef. Breakfasts options are limited - you will eat eggs, toast, and fruit every day. On the plus side, lobster is inexpensive! We really enjoyed our meal at Biky Restaurante in Havana – there’s long line to get in, but it’s worth the wait (or do what we did and have Yeilia get your name on the VIP list).

Shopping: Don’t go to Cuba for shopping! There are souvenir shops around, but they’re mostly selling the same thing over and over - little wooden cars, magic boxes, magnets, and other small handmade items. There is a central market called San Jose, near the cruise ship piers. It’s big and they sell stuff, but again mostly all the same items at each shop.

Money: Credit cards, especially American, don’t work. Cash is king and it’s all you will use. There are two currencies in Cuba, convertible (CUC – sometimes called ‘kook’) and National (CUP aka ‘koop’). It’s super hard to get National, but you may be able to get it as change. The exchange rate is about 1 USD = 1 CUC = 25 CUP, so don’t be alarmed if a local food place charges $25 for a hamburguesa – they list their prices in CUP.

Convert your American money to Euros before coming to Cuba because the exchange is much better. American currency is charged the normal 3% conversion tax, plus an additional 10% fee, so you’re paying 13% on every dollar you exchange. If you use Euros it’s only 3% and you can probably get them from your bank in the States for free. Figure about $100/day per person. Convert your money at the airport when you land – there may be a long line but they’re long at all the Casa de Cambia (Cadeca) and it’s easiest just to get this out of the way. Get small bills whenever you can! Many places can’t make change for even a 20.

Transportation: You will see the notorious old American cars driving around, as well as new European cars and everything in between. Pretty much anyone is a taxi in Havana and the price is always negotiable! You’ll pay more for nicer cars. Paying around $10 to get anywhere is normal. It costs $25 or $30 to get from the airport to downtown Havana. I tried to ride around in the cool old cars as much as possible, but take any car that stops for you.

There are old American cars everywhere! Some look nicer than others but they are all over the place, and the outside doesn’t always match the inside. Take photos - they won’t mind! They’re proud of their cars and want to show them off. The especially nice ones do city tours - for $50 they will drive your group all around the city for an hour showing you sights along the way.

Safety: Cuba is very safe! It’s literary the safest country I’ve ever been to. I never felt nervous to walk down empty streets at night, and neither did any of the girls I was with. Or get into a stranger’s car. Nobody is going to try to harm you. It’s so safe it’s almost weird.

Everyone is nice and helpful! Pretty much anyone will help you and be friendly. If you need anything, they will make it happen for you. It’s very refreshing how helpful and kind every single person is.

Internet: There is no internet. You won’t find restaurants with free wifi or hotel lobbies or anything. Quickly get over the fact that you won’t have internet access. There are a few street corners where you’ll see like 30 people standing with phones and laptops paying by the hour to get online. If you absolutely must get online, the best place to go is the Hotel National. (It’s cool to see this place anyway) They charge 7 CUC for an hour and you type in a code and can go online while you sit in the AC. It’s nice but the wifi will drop every few minutes and it will get annoying. You should really only bother trying to get on wifi if you have no self-control and must get online!

Lodging: You should get an AirBnB. There are plenty of “fancy” hotels that you can book but it’s way more fun to stay in an authentic Cuban home. The hosts are amazing and kind and will bend over backwards to make your stay great. You can find rooms for $20-$30 per night on either AirBnB or Hostelworld – make sure you have the address and your host knows when you’ll be arriving, since you won’t be able to get in touch with them when you land.

Stay here in Havana:

They are so wonderful! The host Yeilla (pronounced “YAY lee”) is amazing! I can’t recommend these guys highly enough! She will call you a taxi to anywhere, make you breakfasts and cocktails on their nice outdoor patio and she will even set you up with a car and lodging to Viñales or any other destination! They only have 4 rooms and book up fast so make a reservation in advance – however she has lots of friends in town so if your group grows she can find you more space.

Sightseeing: Havana is fun, but you don’t need to spend more then 2 or 3 days there. The sightseeing list looks extensive but you can see pretty much everything in that time. Go on day and overnight trips to other parts of Cuba also!

There’s a bunch of stuff to see on the lighthouse side of the water. Go under their famous tunnel (they love this tunnel and every cab driver will get excited about it, but if you’re from NYC, we have 4 of them and it’s nothing more special than the Holland or Lincoln tunnel). On that side of the water is the fort with the lighthouse, another cool fort where they do a ceremonial cannon shoot every night at 9pm (get there by 8:15 for a good spot), and more stuff if you get the taxi to drive you around. Tell him to bring you to the big Jesus statue and you can walk to the Che museum and Missile Crisis Museum in the same area.

Out of town: Go to Viñales. It’s a 2 ½ hour drive from Havana. You can take taxi one way with 4 friends for $25 each. It’s a nice drive. Get a fun car for the trip and see if the driver will show you around when you arrive.

Stay here in Viñales:

Rafael is awesome and speaks perfect English. He has hookups everywhere. Even with the government. He can book you literally any kind of trip or excursion you want. He has one guest house, which his daughter Solange runs, with 3 beds.

Viñales is where the tobacco plantations are. You will see the fields and learn how they roll cigars. You can buy a bunch of cigars cheap out here. They sell them without labels here and there are no factory chemicals in them. You’ll pay the same price for one in Havana with a label that you’ll get 20 for in Viñales.

Go horseback riding in Viñales. It’s awesome! You will go on a 4 hour horseback ride through the Viñales countryside. You will stop along the way every hour at a different spot. You’ll see more tobacco plantations, a coffee plantation, some beautiful viewpoints and a lake to swim. The best part is it only costs $25 per person.

Beaches: Don’t go to Cuba for the beaches. They aren’t anything special. There are better countries for beaches. It’s a fun day trip but not a reason to come. We took a ‘57 impala taxi for the one hour drive to Jibacoa. It’s nice, you can go to an all-inclusive resort and go scuba diving and stuff but there’s not much else there.

Playa del Este are the beaches near Havana, about 30 minutes away. They’re nice if you can’t make it all the way to Jibacoa or Varadero.

Tips: Carry toilet paper! The bathrooms don’t have toilet seats and most don’t have TP either. You may also have to pay a few coins to use the restroom at some places (the importance of having small bills and change!).

Take a nap if you plan to go clubbing. Cuban nightlife starts at about 1:30am so after dinner take a nap and rest up because when it’s time to go out, you’ll wait in line to get in some clubs and the live music won’t start until well after midnight.

You’ll need to meet you friends the old-fashioned way, since you won’t have phones or internet. Pick a meeting place and a time and be there.

Most people run businesses out of their homes, so check out some local places to eat, it’s literally just a person cooking you dinner in their home kitchen – these are called paladars.

It’s fun to bring gifts for locals and kids. Anything from matchbox cars to bouncy balls are perfect little gifts. The kids went crazy for a ¢25 bouncy ball. It’s a nice thing to do and requires little cost/effort and makes a difference since decent toys are hard to come by.

Bring all of the toiletries you need and leave them behind when you go – there are basically NO stores and people have a hard time accessing even basic supplies.  

SIGHTSEEING:

• Old Havana (Habana Vieja)

• Plaza Vieja (popular public square)

• The Malecón (seafont boulevard)

• Castio de los Tres Reyes del Morro (also known as El Morro Fortaleza de San Carlos de la Cabana (sits atop La Cabana hill)

• Ceremonia del Cañonazo (actors in 19th-century costumes perform a cannon-firing ceremony at 9pm each evening

• El Capitolio (National Capitol Building)

• Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (National Museum of Fine Arts)

• Paseo del Prado (beautiful street in Havana)

• Gran Teatro de La Habana (one of the world’s largest opera houses)

• Plaza de la Revolucion (Jose Marti Memorial)

• Museo de la Revolucion  (must see)

• Hotel Nacional de Cuba (World Heritage Site and a National Monument)

• Central Commercial (San Jose shopping market)

• Catedral de San Cristobal (Cuban Baroque style)

• Castio de la Real Fuerza (an impressive military fortress)

• Plaza de Armas (popular public square)

• Palacio de los Capitanes (home to the Museo de la Ciudad or City Museum)

• Camera obscura (35-meter tower)

• La Bodeguita del Medio (a former Hemingway hangout)

• Museo de Comandancia del Che (with the office of Che Guevara preserved)

• Fusterlandia (small artist village on the outskirts of Havana)

• Maqueta de La Havana  (with a scale model of the city) (in Miramar)

• Playas del Este (a long stretch of palm-fringed beach that runs for miles)(20 mins east of Havana)

• Finca La Vigia, San Francisco de Paula, Cuba  (residence of Ernest Hemingway)

• National Botanical Garden of Cuba

Viñales

• views (hills that are rounded in shape)

• traditional tobacco plantations

• caves

• tranquil little town

• horseback riding

[almarchive]

     hello, its nora bringing yet another problematic character. this is a spoiled daddy’s bitch, raised in a farmhouse in vermont, who’s never really had to work for anything in her life and doesn’t want to. studying class civ cos she thinks it makes her sound smart, but actually hates fuckin latin and just loves learning about feckless hedonism and the festivals of bacchus. was expelled from princeton in her first year so her parents basically paid her way into lockwood. loves the smell of libraries and listening to french music from a tinny record player in knee socks. has a twin brother called otto who is basically guy bellingfield from the riot club and tbh knowing my lack of self control i‘ll probs end up bringing him here too.

bio is below the cut, like this post to be bombarded with plotting messages x

it might be HER SOPHOMORE year but I still think ALMA OLIVE PUTNAM looks exactly like ALICE PAGANI and sometimes I think the FEMALE is actually them. Of course I’m wrong, as they’re 20 and studying CLASSICAL CIVILISATION while living in AUDAX here at Lockwood. The TAURUS can be rather TENACIOUS and MAGNETIC, but also kind of FANCIFUL and DOUBLE-CROSSING. Their most played song on Spotify was LAISSE TOMBER LES FILLES by FRANCE GALL, so I think that says a lot.

THE SHORT FORM.

—  born in vermont in a big old farmhouse. her great-great-grandfather moved to america as an immagrant and worked on a plantation, made his wa up cos he could speak a lot of languages and therefore win more people over. for the last two generations, putnam men have owned the farm and do little of the dirty work. big in the meat industry.

— both her parents had Large Personalities, so alma’s never really been shy around adults, even as a kid she’d speak to them in a forthright, confident manner, and because she was always surrounded by adults, she’s always seemed a bit Wise Beyond Her Years. — very much a consolidation of every character in the secret history. has a morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs. obsessed with w.h. auden and the beat poets. — ”aestheticism is the only thing worth pursuing and even that is pointless” — is majoring in classical civilisation. can read ancient greek and latin. also speaks french. — studies hard and plays hard. she gets top marks but it’s because academia is literally her life, she loves the smell of libraries, the ancient smoke of learning, of feeling like old wine in a new bottle reincarnated from the bones of some old, dead witchy woman who invented a cure for cowpox or somethin. — isn’t a foward-planner, however. frida prefers to leave her options open, play the field, live in a spontaneous manner so her study style is mostly cramming a few days before a test, or staying up all night writing an essay on a massive adrenaline boost powered by red bull or probably adderall, scribbling (or typing) furiously into the night. — pretentious motherfucker. LOVES poetry, especially the romantics, loves morbid ones too, edgar allen poe, sylvia plath, allen ginsberg, she just loves them all. can’t get enough. her favourite films are like…. wanky artfilm independent european cinema. especially french new wave. “what do you think of goddard’s work??” while snorting a line off someone’s sink at 5am on a school night, but you can bet she’ll make it to that 9am class. — very Intelligent and Beautiful and knows both of those facts. vocal feminist. soapbox sadie. Very Passionate about Issues. plays devil’s advocate. humanitarian, vegan. — judgemental but takes great care not to appear so. — just wants to be Loved By All. a party girl ; doesn’t rlly enjoy it, jst feels she Should enjoy it. — tries to be an Enigma. wants to be mysterious and unreadable because that’s what books have taught her makes women Desirable and Interesting and Cool. — obsessively devours mystery and thriller novels. she herself is a gillian flynn book waiting to happen. — act like the flower but be the serpent under it. is a user. manipulative. leads people on. will throw another student under the bus to demonstrate her own intelligence and integrity — heavily involved in the theatre society. loves attention. — has an addictive personality. seems unable to do anything in a small dose, she has to let it utterly consume her. with sports, she’s fiercely competitive, runs track, played lacrosse at school, now is a cheerleader probably. with alcohol, it’s never a shot, it’s a whole bottle – wine or whiskey – she’ll be table dancing before the night’s up and making out with someone she’ll regret in the morning. — her clothing style is like…. vintage thrift store but make it preppy. berets and cute hats, neck scarves, large fluffy cardigans or like those leathery jackets with big suede fringes on them, mini skirts (very 70s), and knee high socks or boots. quite often she’ll be in sports kit, maybe a cute tennis skirt, n when she’s feeling casual she’ll wear like, a talking heads tshirt with a pair of mom jeans and converse, but otherwise, the library is her catwalk. — relates to ophelia from hamlet and sibyl vane in dorian gray. weirdly obsessed with women who commit suicide. loves jackson pollock paintings and abstract art. – likes old things. old books, old music, old houses, it reminds her of happier times like when she wasn’t alive. buys all her music on vinyl and has a gramphone because “The Sound quality is Better” kfdsjj.

PLOTS.

here are some generic wanted plots but by all means message me so we can flesh them out more if any strike ur interest:

study buddies !! someone who is equally unprepared and so spends all night in the library with alma before a big deadline, maybe they even met in the library

if they’re from new england or vermont, then cousins . second cousins / extended family / family friends –  probably spat volavons on your character once as children, omg childhood friends !

people who live on the same floor and only know each other from brief interactions in the lift or the canteen

frinds !! unlikely friends !! toxic friends !! former best friends separated by sporting or academic rivalries !

hockey / cheer friends who are on other teams but who she absolutely loves playin against!!!

fellow academics who like meeting up to discuss latin and greek ! gimme a secret society bonding by their love of ancient learning

i reckon she’s in a lot of societies, definitely the film club, maybe works as a projectionist at the uni cinema if they have one so give me ppl affiliated with that, give me fellow wanky pretentious art-lovers and poets and historians who will go to museums and galleries with her and listen to the velvet underground on vinyl

people she gets mortally fucked off her tits with at parties

people who think she is throwing her academic potential away by caving to hedonistic impulse

people she has drunkenly made out with, hooked up with, or regularly sleeps with casually, maybe even a friend w benefits she is repressing feelings for, i love angst,

people she used to date or unrequitedly likes, but to them it’s just a physical thing, give me all the thirsty angst plots, and maybe some softness too, i need some religion in this girls life, she is a roman catholic after all

FULL BIOGRAPHY.

alma olive putnam.

intro.

            The girl is a knife. Razor-sharp, double-edged, the bright shine of a two-faced, lovely thing. Silver like the secrets you magpie thief from other heads. You’re a scavenger of knowledge, of tidbits, of gossip to lock away for later use and late-night re-inspection. A mind is like a clock if you get to learn the pieces. Bit by bit, you dismantle the inner workings of the brains that tick around you – how easy it is to change it’s path, how words and their meanings can make a person laugh or cry in an instant. To have the power to control that is to be a God. It’s the power trip you crave wielding pom-poms in your hands; a possessive need for control that a younger you, small and weak, never had as a child. Small lips, smaller smile, a doll clutched in your too-hungry fingers, hard enough to shatter the bones of a real infant. You cut your hair with your mother’s kitchen scissors before the autumn falls, rendering you out of season, unfit for the cold weather that beats against the nape of your neck, where a stick-and-poke marks the star you were born under ; the bull. “Mama, when will I be a Queen?” As soon as they find a crown small enough not to slip from your head.

biography.

            If you get hungry enough, they say, you start eating your own heart. Hands red, stained by pomegranate seeds, the empty pulp of its shell splattered on your thighs you find yourself wondering – what would it be like to want? In the beginning, you never knew hunger. Twins, born under the same star, you first, him second -- a nuclear family. Never a sister to compete with, you were always the cherry pie of your parents’ hearts. Raven-haired, blue-eyed, beautiful baby of mine. The townhouse in Vermont and the summer house in Lyon, you wanted for nought, showered with attention, saddled with gifts - hardly a wonder you came to rely on such affection as a confirmation of your own worth.

            At eight years old you first met death, blood on a gingham-print dress, a smear of it over your cheekbone and the pulp of a mangled animal at your feet murdered by the hands of a stable boy. “Alma, my precious baby, you get away from that filth,” your Mama would cry from the upstairs balcony – cigar in one hand and a bloody Mary in the other – though whether the filth she referred to was the dead pig or the boy with a kernel of corn in his mouth, you never did find out.

            Your family earned their keeps in farming, great-grandfather Wolfgang Hildegarde a German immigrant, great-grandmother Maura Lisbon a prairie girl. They fell hopelessly in love between troughs and pig-shit, working for three dollars a day at a farm their descendants would later own, trade deals with the Indians, vacations to Calcutta, your father Todd Putnam in the kind of sheepskin coat his father’s father could only dream of owning. He worked hard so that you’d never have to. Your mama once asked – you heard it through the window, rounding cartwheels across the picket-fenced lawn – could he not find a respectable career rather than selling shrink-wrapped pork for a dime a dozen? That blood money had no business raising a child. You look far back enough, Edie, your father had said in his low, strong voice that could bring a Civil War to silence, and I think you’ll find that all money is blood money.

            Language was never fickle on your tongue, French dinner time talk by the time you were out of your Hush Puppy shoes, your mama fixing the au pair a smile as she fixed herself another martini. You learned the clarinet at four and how to dance with the grace of a swansong at six, ethereal under a spotlight, an audience captive in the palm of your hand. By eight you knew that you’d always been destined to be loved. Loved so hard they would want to taste you, bite into the soft plump of your cheek and eat you alive. That was how magnetic you wanted to feel. But mother hamsters eat their own young when penned in together too long, and soon you became too wild, too restless, another package on your father’s delivery invoice, box-shipped out to English boarding school.

            Fitting in had never been something you had to concern yourself with. You were always the shiny new toy the other girls wanted to play with, bright like a dropped coin from a magpie’s beak. Wherever you went, you seemed to leave a trail of awe, pig-tailed Harriet’s adoring you, imitating you, teachers forgiving your class-time chatter for the sake of your wild heart and the restless spirit you possessed. Tell us what it’s like in the States, Alma. They’d coo, enamoured by your Hollywood drawl. Does your father own a gun? You hardly knew. Barely even knew the colour of his hair, for the scarce amount of times he’d stoop to kiss your cheek, though you’d tell silver-tongued tales if it’d guaranteed you an audience. When you learned how to smile at the right times, and that flattery would get you everywhere, it soon became apparent that charm would pave the yellow brick road to success even when your lack of drive couldn’t.

            The road you followed – gum-snapping, roller-blading, friendship bands all up your arm – eventually led you to small-town fame. Bright-eyed and gingham skirted, you’d always known you were more. There was a hunger in you to be something extraordinary, a want so adamant to be imagined and desired that it was almost savage. In leather-bound volumes and a circle of stones, you were Helen of Troy, the girl for whom they’d launch a thousand ships. But there’s so much rage within you, collecting like sawdust in cavernous parts. Hockey helped. There was something grounding about the feeling of a stick clasped in your hands. Sweat. Stiff knuckles. Feet pounding the earth. The smash of wood against flesh in the scram of a game, passed off as mere enthusiasm. “Slipped, sorry.” Hockey is the one thing you had that was yours alone – a feral instinct that motivates you to play; something primitive within you that sparks an energy like no other. On the pitch, you feel alive.

[theinvisiblebookofqp]

CHAPTER 3: 14th of January – RECEIVING SIGNS FROM VENUS

It’s 00.55 of a brand-new day, and although I should be dancing in a local and very familiar club with friends and colleagues, I decided to head back home around 20 minutes after I arrived and write this chapter for you, my invisible friend, instead.

You have probably noticed that I did not mention a certain someone in the last chapter. That is no coincidence at all. Did you really think that this is the typical story about “boy meets girl, but they can’t be together, so boy screws it up and goes into sorrow and do all kind of pathetic things instead”? Well, maybe to an extend… but at the same time think again. It is true that deep emotions are the strongest fuel that moves the world. It is also true that this frustration and pain mixed with the sweetest of feelings is my biggest motivation at present, and that the events that happened during New Year’s Eve are the match that set fire for this book to exist.

However, what I am trying to tell you through this book is about much more. It’s about life, consciousness, psychology, energy, love, courage, fear, pain, reality, fantasy, thoughts, reason, truth, physics, death, inspiration, determination, falseness… I am trying to write down the reflection of my soul in words that anyone may comprehend and feel identified with at some level. I am trying to show you that Universe as we perceive and study it right now is complete, and in order to thrive as a species we need to dig and riase our awareness of the power each one of us holds on how the world and our life is presented to us. I want you to find your unique way to sit down in the steering wheel of your life, and I believe Quantum Psychology is the key to give sense and answers to some of the biggest questions that there are.

But today I wanted to come back home to talk to you about life signs. And I’m not talking about the kind of signs explained by probability or coincidence. Have you ever had the feeling that something happens, often small and meaningless to everyone else, but that for you has a very deep and relevant meaning at that moment in your life, that the unlikeness of the event it’s just too big to be explained by pure chance? And right when that happens, you have some short of inner shivering going through your spine and a brise in your soul whispering you that sometimes the Universe is capable to talk straight to your soul.

Before we go into detail and dirty examples, it is time for further introductions. As I said before, you can call me S.M. Why? You will know soon enough. When? Time is totally relative when you enter the Quantum Realm (or the part of the reality forming the Universe ruled by the laws of the subatomic particles), as you will learn later. The next person I want to introduce you in this story is that special someone I have been referring to: her name is Venus. Because right now she is my Venus; beautiful, magnetic, inspiring, the brightest star in the sky when the night is darkest before the daylight; and, at the same time, so far and acid to survive its atmosphere, so wild and untamed, independent and rebel within her unique beauty.

The best way to describe Venus is as an alluring and dangerous rose. With a sense of simetry and balance when you are at her presence; and with thorns ready to bleed you if they must. Because make no mistake: she might look angelical, fragile and sweet to the eye, but as soon as you are close enough to her you realise she is independent, unpredictable and adventureous enough to take on the whole world if needed. Because she knows how to find her way in any type of situation in a natural and soft way, hidding her manipulation techniques to the naked eye. She can achieve things out of reach for the vast majority of human kind. Her eyes shine like 2 big round, crystal blue, quiet lagoons where you can drown yourself in and lose sight of everything else in this world. Her hair is long, voluminous and indomitable, between brunette and soft blonde depending on the light, and falls with a harmonious grace below her shoulders. And, just like her, seems in quiet and controlled despite its wild nature.

Her smile is big and genuine, with the rest of her facial expression following that curve of warmthness, even when she is telling you off. Her voice sounds soft and innocent, spelling some sort of charm in you that brings you inner peace even when you don´t like what you are hearing. Because don´t let the apparience deceive you: Venus will not hesitate to tell you things straight if she must no matter how hard they are; yet, she will find the way to present them to you with a sweet aroma around them. Her body language is paused and measured, transmiting a sense of self-control and control over everything happening around her. And, when she looks directly into my eyes, my soul feels naked and vulnerable; there is a deep sense of mutual understanding within which comforts and exposes me at the same time. Because sometimes you can feel that her eyes can see everything that happens in the room: what you say and do and what you don´t. And this information is carefully used and synchronise with her calculated next move or word. Her skin is soft and made of pure silk, but she will rarely make physical contact with you. Her energy shines with a magnetic field that attracts my own, like a bug would run into a source of light in the middle of the night, without questioning whether it will die by getting too close.

 Coming back to the signs, some years ago I used to think that the kind of strong, meaningful and smooth signs that I’m talking about would appear in your path to guide you in the right direction and to point you out what to fight for. Over time, I started to switch the control and importance of those signs: I stopped believing that they were due to a supreme force trying to influence my life and me being a passive being that just tries to make this supreme entity’s will a reality the best way possible.

I think the nature of those signs is much more interactive and retro-influential. Say for example that there is a subject that really occupies your mind most of the time, therefore it drives your attention and energy. As you have most of your energy focused at this particular subject, your cognitive system, neurons, cells, mind, soul, and even the atoms you interact with will be gathering all the available information (true or false) possible related to that thought.

But this is a two-direction path: you will be sending to the Universe a message shaped by your own energy, thoughts, wishes, ideas or obsessions consistently. As a response, there will be a degree of counter-reaction from all the energy connected around you, sometimes in the shape of this type of small and meaningful signs. ON the top of that, you also have the predisposition to pay attention to this type of cues since to since the idea is occupying your mind already. Basically, all your senses perceive food when you are starving.

The problem comes when we must differentiate whether those signs are a genuine response to your own energetic message, or a consequence of your own obsession and willingness to be right about that specific situation. Because, as we will discover in a few weeks´ time, wanting to be right is one of the strongest and most dangerous psychological principles that there is.

But, throughout this (sub) conscious interaction between ourselves and the energetic or quantum world around us, if you pay enough attention, sometimes you will listen the whispers coming back at you from that energy around you, giving you answers to the questions that your Quantum Self (or you can call it soul, energetic field, or spiritual self) is broadcasting to the world. I am talking about the kind of ideas that, despite existing only in your head at present, they still find a sort of correspondence and equilibrium in the quantum or energetic world. And, if you can filter all the irrelevant noise that the willingness of being right about that idea makes in your head, you will hear the truth right in front of you: whether you should follow that path or let it go and move on.

So, when this happens, you face a real dilemma: you have a strong emotion (which always blurries all logic) channelling a great amount of your energetic resources, which also makes you vulnerable to experience a cognitive confirmation bias. And often you will experience signs and details that, whether they are real messages from the Universe or not, you will happily tend to interpret as confirmations of your own wishes. We always need to be aware of the dangers of the confirmation bias, but we will dig deeper into that down the road.

The bottom line is that you need to be really careful to differentiate your personal desire from what really makes sense from a “quantum balance” point of view. Because I believe that when we are in peace with ourselves, doing what’s right on our own subjective existence, we also project our balanced energy into the world, and we then interactact with the energy in people or situations that has the same valence, making us feel better and and in control.

It’s like screaming in a cave where all the responses you get it’s your own echo, and therefore even if you can hear a voice it will be your own repeating your message. On the other hand, you could be having a conversation with someone else where you both share a vision, yet the information provided by the other person enriches your own point of view and vice versa.

Deciding whether what you feel as real corresponds to reality or is only part of your imagination is a tough challenge; because when I see those silly signs with meaning only to Venus and I that are too unprobable to be explained by chance, I have no other certainty than they come from my balance with the Quantum Realm; it just feels that way in my soul. And, at the same time, they hurt and pinch my soul, wondering why I keep receiving the same unprobable message over and over again; why anything else doesn’t make any sense; why I know I must complicate my life this way because I know is the right thing to do no matter what, even if I don’t know its destination yet.

 To further explain this, I will give you real and personal examples of both situations - confirming my own thoughts and where my Quantum Self knew what I had to do). Back in 2012 I was living in Spain (my home country), working full time in a job that didn’t motivate or estimulate me, while studying my Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology, which I finished it that September.

I was also in the process of sweeping out different toxic relationships with people close to me that had dried my soul to its bones. But, to be fair, pretty much everything about my life was toxic at the time: my job, a broken and complicated relationship with almost all the members of my dysfunctional family, which led me to move alone after my dad kicked me out of the house, a failed romantic relationship, and the lack of purpose in my life after achieving the only clear goal that I had at the moment (my Degree). My life was a total caos: nothing to look up to or any clue about how to move forward, I was stuck. Yet looking backwards I feel grateful for the situation I was in, as I truly gained mental strength, perspective and knowledge about my own self.

In the middle of that, I met someone who lived in Valencia, which was around 3 hours driving from me. We started to see each other, and after a couple of months things seemed to be going well. Then things, as my life, just got stucked. I wasn´t aware back then, but just “going well” wasn´t enough. It was a relationship condemned to never succeed for different reasons, and therefore it needed to end. But back then I was surrender by darkness, and I didn’t have the clarity about the situation that I have now.

I got to the point where it was clear that the only way to try to work this relationship out was by moving to Valencia. I tried to convince myself that this was the onoy way forward, probably motivated as an easy way to scape from the shitness of my reality. I started to perceive all kind of little signs that seemed to point me towards this direction. I even got job offers from Valencia from random sources.

My conscious and logical mind wanted to see self-confirmation that by moving there my life would thrive. As you can imagine, with all the negative noise, energy sucking and toxicity around me at the time, my head got to a boiling point and about to explode wondering what I should do. At the same time, there was something inside of me that didn’t feel right about this. My heart, soul and Quantum Self were screaming at me that this wasn’t the path I should take. Yet I was so scare to listen to them that I sent such a strong message to the world that got me those signs in return, even if they were caused by my own willingness.

However, that inner part of my subconscious, kept whispering me realities that I was not ready to listen out of fear. When I was finally ready to accept that something about this whole idea didn’t fit, I started to consider alternatives to my original plan of moving to Valencia. Once I opened my mind for other options, a chance for me to move to Brighton, in England, araised as one of my best friends decided to move there and asked me to accompany him. I happily lived in Brighton between 2005 and 2007 (that’s another great story from one of my previous lifes!). Even though my Quantum Self knew straight away this was the right choice to follow and fulfil my own potential, my self-destructive side kept insisting that I should move to Valencia as it was just easier and made more logical sense.

Eventually I came up with one of the most random, brave and crazy decisions I have ever made to make up my mind, one which would change my life forever in a hearbeat. I drove to my favourite secret beach, where I lost someone close to me. I used to go to this beach, always alone, to think, listen to music, play the guitar, or just to be melancholic, to try to gather a fresh perspective on whichever was troubling my mind.

There I was, thinking for about 1 hour about which course of action I should take: in one hand, pursuit the signs I had been receiving and move to Valencia; on the other side, pack everything again and go back to the city where I were once happy. I didn’t realise at the time, but I attuned my Quantum Self with the energy around me in order to decide. Then I decided to flip a coin; that coin would change my life forever; heads, Brighton. Tails, Valencia.

And as they say, the rest is history. Brighton was the destination that the atonement between my Quantum Self and the infitine number of possibilities simultaneously exiting in the Quantum Realm, set me on for. Thanks to that sole act of random craziness I made one of the best decisions in my life. Thanks to that coin, I started a path that allowed me to know new amazing people; expand my comfort zone in so many new levels; study my Master’s Degree in Research Methods in Psychology in London; to truly break through and deal with my past; to test some of the theories I have about the world that can change the way we perceive everything; to move to Prague and take on my biggest professional challenge to date; to meet Venus; to be here now talking to you across space and time; and to set in motion wherever this path will lead us to...

Now I comprehend inside me that the other option would have deemed my own destruction. Because there is no possible outcome where I would have been happy with this person or my new life in Valencia. Around 5 months after I moved to Brighton, this person asked me for advice about whether she should truly give a chance to this guy she had met. Maybe what she was really asking me was whether I was coming back and if there was still a possibility for us. And I won’t lie to you my friend, I still had some feelings for her, yet I knew inside that was not what I was meant to do with my life; that even if I did not know why yet, my destiny was where the coin took me.

I did what was right, against my own selfish interests (my peace of mind is not negotiable); I advised her to give him the chance to get closer to her, to try and start a relationship with this new guy and to move on with her life. Nowadays they are married and with one child according to social media. I have no doubt that I would have never made her anywhere near as happy as she is now. Now I can look back with confidence, perspective and peace of mind knowing that I defeated my own dark demons by doing the best thing for someone I cared about.

Because sometimes the biggest decisions you will ever make in life can be revealed to you in a heartbeat. And even if at first sight they may scare you and challenge everything you know, be brave enough to listen to your Quantum Self. Just follow your path no matter what; no matter how many times people discourage you or tell you how wrong they think you are; no matter how crazy it might look to the social conventionalisms; just follow what you know will help you deliver your full potential. It is only when we are the most scared when we have the chance to prove ourselves how brave we can be.

Something similar happened when I decided to move to Brighton for the first time back in 2005. I was 20 and I had been win my first serious relantionship for 2 years with an English girl, to whom I got engaged when I was 18. The reason for us to get engaged was mainly because I was young, naive, and even if we met in Spain, she moved back to her hometown, Brighton, to study. I was only a teenager starting the university, but it seemed such a clever idea to get engaged and have a long-distance relationship while I worked part time at my father’s company to pay for my recurring trips to the UK.

After over 1 and a half years the relationship really went downhill (more details when we speak about my different lifes within my life) and a lot of shit and crazy stuff happened in between. However, after those ups and downs, I found myself visiting her in Brighton at the beginning of October 2005, when I had just started my 3rd year at College. Back then my life in general wasn’t easy, and I was clearly not ready to move on from the first meaningful and comforting emotional relationship I had ever experienced in my life.

During that holiday week in Brighton I had an ephipany. One of those revelations where you instantly know what you need to do, and you feel a mix of immense fear, aware of the challenge ahead, and an incredible peace and balance finding a long seeked answer. I was having a hot chocolate in a cafe, and the song “Fix You” from Coldplay started to play. It was the first time I heard that song, and by the time it ended I understood what I had to do, which I said out loud: “I am moving to England”.

For you to get an idea about how big of a decision that was to me at the time, I was raised in a small city called Cartagena, in a family where no one had ever lived anywhere outside the county, or spoke English, or studied in College. Back then I did not know how to pay a bill, or rent a flat, and all my experience was focused on studying or working in my father’s air conditioning company. Additionally, this was a time before all social media: no so Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Whatsapp, Skype, smart phones or any easy and fluent way of communication with anyone from outside your city. Basically, I was leaving behind everything that I had ever known and jumping into the unknown with both feet.

Yet, the moment I said those 5 words, I understood deep inside that my life had changed forever. Somehow, I comprehended that I had to walk that path, even if I wasn’t sure what was the reason behind it. To this day I can tell you that, if I hadn’t had that revelation at that exact moment, I would probably be homeless or dead by now. You think I am exaggerating? Keep reading my invisible friend…

The very same day I landed back in Spain, I told everyone that I would move to Brighton within 3 weeks, no matter the cost. Everyone tried to take the idea out of my head: “you are crazy”, “you will fail”, “I cannot support you on this”, “she doesn’t deserve it after all that happened”… what they didn’t understand (as hardly could I to be honest), was that I did not take that decision because of my ex-girlfriend; she was only the excuse. Deep inside I knew I had to do that for myself; everything inside me told me that was the right thing to do. It made sense only to me, but I didn´t need anything else. I won’t lie to you my friend, a part of me was scared to the bone; however, I felt that inner peace with myself and a sense of balance with the Universe that I had never felt before.

I dropped from university and moved to Brighton on the 25 of October 2005, as I said I would. I can now say that it was a turning point in my life. Despite all the discourage I found everywhere, and my young age, I somehow found the reasons to stick to my instinct and follow my heart. It wasn’t the easy or logic thing to do, but it was the rightest.

There has been only a handful of times I have had that clear, sudden and revealing feeling understanding that my life was about to be changed forever in a sudden moment of crazy bravery. The last time was last New Year’s Eve, and as you can imagine Venus was involved. I had the most peaceful and spiritual moment of my life on the night of the 31st of December, followed by a shit storm that totally rocked my world. And, even if I’m not sure where this path leads, all I know is that my life was changed forever for the better or worse.

Because it’s 03.24 am, and I left a Latin club called La Bodeguita del Medio to write to you about signs because, as you can imagine, the last time I went there I was with Venus; and only with her. And, just as it has been happening for a few weeks, some signs were presented to me there tonight.

But it’s not the first weird sign I have had involving this club where I had an incredible night with Venus: only 1 week ago, while I was speaking to a client over the phone, he told me that he visited Prague a couple of months ago and loved a certain club where they play Latin style music. I knew which club he was talking about before he told me the name. And, again tonight, I was led to go to this club by the people I was spending the evening with, even if they had never been there before…

As I decided to leave the place surrender by sweet memories, a meaningful song – Venus’ favourite Latin song now, which also resembles the situation we are in – started to play, with a rhythm that seemed to drag me back to that night when there was only Venus and I in La Bodeguita del Medio.

Even more, even though I am Spanish, doing the Spanish market in my company, talking and contacting only people and companies in Spain, I was still contacted by two Chinese people this week at work, even if no one from this country ever contacted me before. For you to understand the importance and singularity of China as a sign, Venus lived in China, concretely in cityt where one of those people live.

Not only she lived there, but she speaks the language as well. This is a language that is not unfamiliar to me either, as I decided to tattoo a Chinese symbol in the back of my neck around 10 years ago: the Phoenix Bird (confirmed by Venus and another 2 people that’s the real meaning of my tattoo), consumed by its own flames, yet reborn from his own ashes over and over and over.

I was also contacted by an old friend from Nigeria whom I met in England, who I have not seen or spoken with for 8 years. As he told me he lives now in Cape Town, and invited me to visit, a very sarcastic smile came to my face. Cape Town happens to be the city were Venus was born and raised until she decided to start conquering the world. I now understand that one day I will visit Cape Town, even if I don´t know when or why.

I could go on and on about all those little signs that are meaningless for the rest of the world and keep popping up to me daily. To you they may not make sense; or perhaps you think that I am falling into the confirmation bias that I mentioned before. Rest assured that this idea also goes through my head every time I bump into one of those signs. Yet again, my Quantum Self communicates them to me as if I were picking up the signals left in my path leading me to my real achievement, even if I don’t know what that is yet. Like if you leave bread crumbs to find the way to your destination, and every bread crumb you find you know it means that you are on the right track to reach your goal.

And it all really exploded right after the house party I organised for New Year’s Eve, as until then I only had the suspicion that Venus would be someone important in my life. It all kicked when a song I had never heard before from Enrique Iglesias played a bit after midnight, when the party for the rest of the people was at its peak; because what that song said to me in that exact moment was too much to be explained by chance. The lyrics reflect very accurately the storm of feelings I was running through in the middle of the confusion of that party. Furthermore, the fact that it was Enrique Iglesias has a huge meaning in this context, as you will discover later.

Finally, it was in that moment where I realised, also pushed by the amount of alcohol in my organism, what I had to do next: cancel the party straight away and kick everyone out, as there was somewhere else I needed to go…

#QuantumPsychology #PositivePsychology #Positivism #Optimism #QuantumMechanics #Consciousness #QuamtumConsciousness #Physics #MyRealGoal #Science #SocialSciences #LifeSciences #Theology #MotivationalSpeaking #Philosophy #PhilosophyOfMind #PhilosophyOfScience #PhilosophyOfReligion #AtomicPhysics #Empowerment #SelfEmpowerment #Venus

[fashiontrendin-blog]

MR Book Club: 10 Books the Team Is Learning From Right Now

http://fashion-trendin.com/mr-book-club-10-books-the-team-is-learning-from-right-now/

MR Book Club: 10 Books the Team Is Learning From Right Now

Reading is one activity for which the phrase “in a phase” is not a signal of impending failure. In this case, it’s an indicator of tangible success. After a particularly fruitful reading phase, you’ll more than likely come away with imaginary friends made, lessons learned, seeds of ideas planted or, at the very least, some much needed time away from blue-ass screens. Perhaps I’m biased toward this approach: I tend to read in spurts, and as much as I roll my eyes at the arbitrary “fresh start” provided by a new year, it does seem a good a time as any to kick off a new book binge. (Also, it’s cold as hell and binge-watching TV makes me feel like a sack of potatoes.)

So, whether you’re in the midst of a reading kick yourself, or are rested and ready to start a new one too, below are ten recommendations to dig into this season care of team Man Repeller (with the added bonus of whimsical Freakebana-inspired imagery created by Emily Zirmis and Edith Young). The books this round run the gamut: We’ve got sci-fi, self-help, a coming-of-age tale, a cookbook and plenty more. Scroll to see them all and then, as always, tell us yours.

by Amor Towles

Recommended by: Harling Genre: Fiction Synopsis that won’t give away the plot: It’s a coming-of-age story intertwined with the tragic unraveling of a love triangle gone horribly wrong, set in depression-era Manhattan. What made her love it: True to the purpose of Man Repeller’s addicting books open thread, this novel hooked me from the very first chapter — a rare feat. The characters are all sad and satisfying and surprising at the same time, and the dialogue is witty in a way that is deliberate but not annoying. I started reading it during my family vacation in Japan over Christmas and finished it in two days because I kept sneaking away to my room to tear through a few more chapters. How she heard about it: Man Repeller’s addicting books open thread!

by Jonah Berger

Recommended by: Leandra Genre: Psychology (non-fiction) Synopsis that won’t give away the plot: We think we’re sooooooo individual and make sooooooo many decisions for ourselves based on things that genuinely appeal to us, and maybe that is true, but why do those things appeal to us, pray tell? INVISIBLE INFLUENCE. [Cue The Devil Wears Prada monologue on cerulean blue.] What made her love it: I’m a sucker for any piece of literature that will tell me why I am the way I am, but this one in particular is written with a tinge of a call to action as opposed to it just being swirly prose, so I found it really rewarding to be able to apply some of the learnings to the way in which I make decisions. How she heard about it: TBH, I judged a book by its cover when I was at a Hudson Newsstand getting a 32 oz bottle of Essentia water (my 2018 resolution is to be really, really thorough!) in the airport before heading to Palm Beach for Thanksgiving. I bought it because I loved the way the white and red magnet on the cover looked against the blue background. But I knew I was in for something good as I had read Jonah Berger’s previous book, Contagious. That book totally took the notion of luck out of the equation for me when it comes trying to figure out why some products succeed and others don’t.

by Adam J. Kurtz

Recommended by: Emily Genre: Advice/Self-Help (non-fiction) Synopsis that won’t give away the plot: During a time of peak media saturation, Adam’s book is the visually digestible, non-intimidating treat you didn’t realize you needed. What made her love it: You can read it section by section or even page by page. The bold color palette contrasts the simple white-lined notepad paper on which he has inscribed life advice and tips in black marker. Section titles range from “Embrace Yourself” to “Nobody Cares,” and it’s highly relatable and will make you laugh, cry and feel less crazy than you think you are. You’re actually fine! How she heard about it: via Adam’s Instagram! Which I highly recommend following if you don’t already.

by Leo Romero

Recommended by: Kate Genre: Poetry Synopsis that won’t give away the plot: The collection of pieces follow Celso from child to old man in his rural town. The stories are simple and vivid and witty and sad and magical and stick with you. What made her love it: The first piece I fell in love with is, “The Dead Have No Eyes With Which To Cry,” but each time I re-read the book another story stands out and I think about it for days. It’s filled with skeleton people and shadow gardens and bags of kittens. Sometimes Celso seems wretched, sometimes I pity him, sometimes I laugh with him, sometimes I see myself. How she heard about it: My partner and I have been visiting Leo at Books of Interest in Santa Fe for years before finding Celso there; for all the hours we’d spent pouring over rare books and finding treasures on the shelves, I had no idea Leo was a writer. N.B. to anyone near Santa Fe or passing through, I highly recommend a stop at Books of Interest. Tell Leo I say hi!

by Esther Perel

Recommended by: Haley (me) Genre: Sex/Love (non-fiction) Synopsis that won’t give way the plot: In Mating in Captivity, author/sex therapist/dream human Esther Perel explores the common belief that passion tapers off over the course of sustained, long-term monogamy. But the book’s not really about marriage, it’s about sex, love and all the ways modern culture bring them together. She weaves in tons of patient anecdotes and shows the cracks in our culture’s logic. What made me love it: As I mentioned in this piece about “keeping the mystery alive,” Perel’s thoughtful and critical commentary on today’s sexual culture made my stomach drop over and over. She is somehow both bitingly honest and gentle all at once, turning over stones I’d never thought to look at. It’s a quick and easy read, but it definitively changed the way I think about sex and love. How I heard about it: Through Esther Perel’s podcast, “Where Should We Begin.”

by adrienne maree brown

Recommended by: Patty Genre: Non-fiction Synopsis that won’t give away the plot: In adrienne’s words, “Emergent Strategy is how we intentionally change in ways that grow our capacity to embody the just and liberated worlds we long for.” What made her love it: It’s teaching me how to learn with enthusiasm, and how to follow questions with more questions. To start small and go deep. How she heard about it: After listening to adrienne’s interview on The Call with Erica Williams Simon, I began listening to her podcast “How to Survive the End of the World” (HIGHLY recommend) with her sister Autumn, and ordered this book. I feel like I’m following a curriculum of sorts, with adrienne’s kind but powerful guidance.

by Octavia Butler

Recommended by: Patty Genre: Sci-Fi Synopsis that won’t give away the plot: Dana, a black writer living in Los Angeles with her husband, is repeatedly pulled back in time to save her ancestor Rufus, a white slave-owner in the antebellum South. What made her love it: I’ve never experienced writing like this or storytelling like this. I couldn’t put it down, and I was completely transported as soon as I began reading. How she heard about it: Part of the curriculum from adrienne maree brown that I mentioned in my last recommendation!

by Brit Bennett

Recommended by: Ashley Genre: Fiction Synopsis that won’t give away the plot: The story follows two unlikely friends through the summer after high school, into college, and through their adult lives. It explores their relationships with their mothers, the church mothers who are always around, and their own feelings towards motherhood. What made her love it: This book is able to capture so much of the emotion and uncertainty that comes with early adulthood. I was most enthralled by the main character’s tether to her hometown combined with her desire to see the world. How she heard about it: I was at the airport and I judged the book by its cover.

by Otegha Uwagba

Recommended by: Amelia Genre: (Creative-leaning) Career Self-Help Synopsis that won’t give way the plot: The book offers bite-sized bits of career advice, from productivity to salary negotiation to freelancer-specific tips. I would give this book to a college graduate who’s looking to enter the “creative field” or a friend making the switch from full time, on-staff employee to that freelance life. What made her love it: Chapter 5, which is about getting paid what you deserve, and Chapter 6, what Uwagba calls “Freelancer Finances”: these are the kinds of things I wish I had learned in college before entering the workforce. How she heard about it: The author, Otegha Uwagba, writes for Man Repeller!

by Rupi Aujla

Recommended by: Jasmin Genre: Food, Wellness, Science, Life Advice — the whole shebang Synopsis that won’t give away the plot: 100 healthy recipes that actually taste good! What made her love it: Well firstly, my brother wrote it, and there’s a marinara sauce recipe named after me so what’s not to love? On a genuine, semi-non-biased level, it’s an incredibly thoughtful account of how to truly view food as medicine and the importance good nutrition plays in our well-being. I’ve seen the effects of it firsthand with both my mum and brother healing themselves from very serious illnesses through a complete overhaul of their diets, routines and overall lifestyles. It’s also packed with very delicious recipes and I know they’re good because I taste-tested a lot of them before they went into the book.

How she heard about it: Some guy with the same surname as me mentioned it once.

Photos by Edith Young. Freakebana by Emily Zirimis.