Shower Stories

Fun Facts

Hey, readers!

If you've managed to get this far, I applaud you. Especially since this book is especially cringey for me. I included the date the piece was written with each chapter, and honestly, some of these stories I can't even read anymore without either feeling embarrassed, or like the whole thing just needs to be set on fire.

Anyway, to thank you for managing to get through it all, here are fifteen fun facts about the stories themselves.

Enjoy!

1. I wrote Daddy's Girl after a long car trip with my mom. It was the first time she'd really talked about my dad without animosity in over two years. She gave me the idea after she told me it was okay to be mad and still have a relationship.

2. Twelve Reasons, The End, The End of the World, and The Foretold Summer were all written for assignments when I was in high school. I memorized and retold the last one in front of the entire junior class and all their parents. I don't remember the grade I got on any of them.

3. Light Shower was actually something that happened when I was around eight. I really had woken my mom up, terrified that the balls of light were bombs. But she stood there amazed, and held me up to the window, telling me it was a meteor shower. Today, she has no memory of the event ever happening.

4. Memories is a story I wrote for my grandfather. He was driving my siblings and I home from school one day, and I started bragging about how I could write a story about anything. So, he looked at me all smugly and said, "Write about a stop sign." So, I did.

5. Dearest Quentin was written based on the rocky relationship I have with my younger sister.

6. Kinemortophobia was written about a nightmare I'd had. I couldn't go back to sleep afterward, so instead, I wrote.

7. I read Nightmares to my entire school (it was K-12), and scared a bunch of kids. It was unintentional, but it still happened.

8. My Broken Promise and At Night the Monsters Come Out were both poems written for the same story.

9. I wrote Of Orchids and Sunshine for my mom, so she'd lay off me about all the dark stories I was writing at the time. It was also written on an old typewriter.

10. If Only... and Love Worth Dying For were both written and submitted for contests. I didn't even come close to winning. I never do.

11. In Which Trinket Befriends the Ice Queen is actually one of my favorite stories in this entire compilation. The character of Trinket is one I'd come up with back in the late '90's before I was even out of first grade. She went through a lot of growing up over the years, yet she's still the same character.

12. Dreaming and Screaming was a poem I found scrawled into the margins of one of my school notebooks.

13. Deserted was written in the garage that my brothers and I had turned into our own little hang out. When they weren't around, I'd sneak out through my window and go inside, lighting a crapload of candles and either watching animes on the projector, or writing. This was written during one of those times.

14. A Snowy Prison was written during a night camping in the Rocky Mountains in the middle of winter. I was inside a Quinzee (a snow cave) that I'd built with some kids I went to school with. The rest of my classmates were all sleeping, but I was wide awake. So, I wrote it by flashlight in my sleeping bag.

15. I cried while writing most of these stories. My only hope is that some of you felt the emotions I did while scribbling the words in margins or notebooks or on sticky notes.

Once again, thank you for reading!