Something New: September Takeover #1!

Wednesday, September 5, 2018

A/N: Hey everyone! September is here and while everyone's working hard at NaNo (or school, or both) I thought it would be fun to do a "character takeover" for the blog.  This month, characters from the Mount Sterling series will be taking over the weekday blog posts.  Fun, right?  (What?  You say I'm going too far, I say I'm being fun and imaginative!  Tomato, tomatoe) 
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Credit: Spider-Man: Homecoming //Giphy
And I have an announcement: a writer friend, H.S. Killian (of The Writing Worm) and I decided to make our own hashtag on Twitter and we'd love everyone to participate!  I'll let Joanna here give you the down-low about the specs, but make sure to jump into the conversation on social media with #countercultureliterarymovement today and invite your friends!  
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Alright, everyone.  I guess what the author is trying to say above is "I'm too busy with college to bother coming up with anything original so I'll write generic stories in the blog instead," but whatever.  It is the senior year, after all.  Oof.  I suppose I can't judge too much, at least not aloud or in front of you all.  I suppose you don't know who's talking either, right?  Well, it's Joanna Taylor Larkin.  You probably know me as Joanna Markus, but life happens.  And suddenly you're marrying your grade-school nemesis and turning over new leaves right and left.  Not a bad deal, just incredibly ironic.  If I could travel back in time to tell my younger self this story, she'd probably try to yank my arm off and beat me with it.  (Walter's reading over my shoulder and would like to add that he's been threatened with that exact occurrence more times than he can count.  The fact that he's talking in the present tense rather than the past tense can probably tell you what today has been like.) 

What's up today, you might ask? I was forewarned to not say much about the newest chronicles of our life because of spoilers or whatever, but I think I've already done so by giving you my married name...or maybe you already knew about that.  Oops?  Anyway, it's safe to say that the lovely little dump of a place fixer-upper we purchased as our home has sprung a leak in the roof.  As in...I have a waterfall in our bedroom right now because it's raining.  We took apart this whole place and put it back together again and never thought to check on the roof's integrity...but we are now!  We can't work on the roof until it stops raining, though, and Walt's friend who is in construction, Travis, is out of the state this week, so who knows when we'll get that fixed?  That aside, it's a good day to stay in the living room, change buckets underneath the leak about a zillion times so the floor doesn't rot out (AKA the last straw), and try to ignore the upcoming roof expenses.

That aside, I have instructions to introduce you all to the #countercultureliterarymovement "mission statement" that was mentioned above.  Basically, a couple of writers are really tired of reading unhealthy relationship roles in stories, ones that are praised and then leech into reality, making folks gauge their own relationships off of these poor measures.  These writers are sick of reading about relationships, romances, and other human interactions that are based on lust, selfishness, and disloyalty (or even plain filth or abusiveness as seen in Fifty Shades books...from what I've heard) and actually seeing them being praised and encouraged.  Tired of seeing society's gender wars leeching into books: men who are holier-than-thou and women who are either "100% kick-butt" or "100% damsels in distress," creating flat or unrealistic characters just for the sake of saying they wrote about them.  Why not write about and celebrate purity, healthy relationships, and complex characters that are real, that don't need to fit molds because people don't need to fit molds or labels.  Have a female character take care of herself but have a good cry too.  Have a male character sit down and play with a puppy instead of "mansplaining."  Write about pure, unselfish, true love instead of the complete trainwrecks-of-relationships presented in secular fiction today.    If you want to see more of that in the books you read, spread the word and get out there on social media!  Promote the wholesome fiction you love reading,

Anyhow, with that rant over -- and I could go on, but then you'd be in for an hour-long rant about my former college dorm-mates.  But they've turned leaves over just as I have, so I suppose I should just go...dump some buckets of rainwater, probably.  Talk to you later!  Next week, I think Walter's going to be writing -- just so you know.  Head on over to Twitter now, or whatever social media accounts you're on, and get that movement rolling!  I would if I could, but...you know.  I'm just the figment of someone's imagination...or whatever.  

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