i've been writing since i was in kindergarten. i've obviously improved since then. (i hope...)

i used to use writing fiction as an excuse to do research on languages and cultures i didn't know about. now i tend to write about what i know. it's easier because i already know the little details.

when i write personally, i type in lowercase. this also applies to author's notes, non-professional e-mails and reviews.

author's notes:

glass - i started 'glass' when i was a high school junior in jersey city, and only finished it in 2007. the dates on the bottom of each chapter are when i first finished writing them. notice that there's a few years' gap between the twentieth and twenty-second recordings. in that gap, i lived in japan for a year, went to college in and moved to northern california, fell in love and got my heart broken. i changed and my characters have too. that's why i need to revamp the first half at some point. (check out the garasu pbwiki for extras, like character descriptions and the milky way members' back stories. i used the wiki for continuity checks while writing.)

bittersweet - i lived in paris for seven months in 2007 and wanted to capture both its beauty and its ugliness in a story before i left. (it was originally a manga collab with an artist friend, but the manga never got realized.) amboise is loosely based on a friend of mine; i made ladurée the setting 'coz it's his favorite pâtisserie. in the original version, the roles are reversed: ben is the one with the eating disorder, and amboise is the asshole. amboise was also originally 100 percent french. the artist suggested switching the two and making the new amboise german to further alienate him from everyone else. it was a good call, in my opinion.

juggernaut called time - it's not specified in the story, but the setting is based on lourdes, france. my parents made me go get holy water there before i went back to the u.s., so i spent a weekend all by my lonesome wandering around. i took a really nice nap in the lourdes cemetery, which has a stunning view of the mountains but isn't nearly as well-kept as the cimitières in paris. arianne's cemetery is a hybrid of the two: big and lush like père lachaise or montparnasse, but with an amazing view of the pyrénées.
note (september 2008): juggernaut is on hiatus until the weather in northern california once again becomes cold and miserable enough for me to think about stuff this depressing.

august august - this was started during the beijing olympics (hence the narration starting on 8/8/1908), mainly because i thought the title was funny, but also because i wanted to write something that totally deviates from my normal style, and i'm beginning to really like steampunk and vampires-- hence using a setting, voice, and genre i am completely unfamiliar with. (kinda weird though... it ended up sounding a ridiculous lot like bittersweet.) it was supposed to be hetero, but i kind of gave up on that. it was supposed to be funnier, but i kind of gave up on that as well. they might just not be my thing.
note: those of you who have reread this story since sept. 4th may notice that it makes a lot more sense now. i've been adding more things to the ending to tie up possible loose ends.
9/6: i just found out that there IS a 24-hour starbucks in san francisco, and it's like an 8-minute drive from sam and jack's mansion. (one day, when i've got 8 mil... o_o) i'm definitely heading over there one of these nights...

these stories are all m-fip: made for internet publishing. they were written to be read on a computer screen.

enjoy!