"i am tangles, and for you to get tangled up in me is a bad idea. i am imperfect, so utterly damaged. i am annoying and obnoxious, and i keep change in a plastic jar that counts it for me. i am enthralled by collarbones and hipbones and scars with interesting stories. i am a music elitist and i represent preteen america because i am a sucker for a catchy chorus and guitar solo. my eyes are always too hot and my hands are always cold. i hate my body but love kinis. i write coils and coils of words and for what? i'm exausted-exausted-exausted and i nap/sleep/gointocomas in a dry bathtub best. my pets are prickely and so am i, we've got the right idea. i am frumpy and awkward and always drowning in doubt of the self variety. i procrastinate and i'm a terrible dancer. i don't have freckles that people trace into perfect freckle constellations. i find myself attracted to fictional men more often than is normal. i have tons and tons of plans on how to care for kids i'll never have, and everything i am do say think contradicts myself. what i can say?"

I wrote that a year ago on my xanga. I am still the same girl; I'm still awkward, still clumsy, still inadequate in so many ways, but I'm growing into my skin. I'm still not a good dancer; but I'm not a terrible one. I'm still spending all of my time coiling words around, but it makes me happy. And I am. Happy, that is. I am confident and laughing and I twist in the sun, sprouting up and angling my face into the light like a morning glory. Honestly, I like myself. I'm sixteen, a high school grad, a writer, a talker, a reader, a tumbler. Hi, my name is Kate, and I'd love to meet you.

This is what I work on now, and this is how it started:

I have an entire universe of stories set in the Nolanverse. I call it that because I have a special affection for Nolan Shape, and also, he was the first. I had a dream, once, about a mathlete who worked in the laundromat in the ghetto, paid in free rent (living in the single back room, sleeping in a dry bathtub) from the drug dealer who needed a legitimate business front. I fell in love with him as soon as I started telling his story, about his days and this yearning for his Sunflower Girl, so named because she refused to give him any kind of handle, who sat on washing machines and avoided his eyes. (Misshapes.)

Then, of course, there is soil-smudged Zia, a gardener and his best friend, who brings him eight or ten newspapers a week, minus the crossword puzzle. It's in those that he finds an ad for a new reality show called Misery Business, which is designed to break up couples by making them miserable, informing her that if a particular relationship wasn't particularly real, they'd just have to fake it as well at the beginning as at the end. She does so, with new friend, amateur actor Elliot Coyne, who is going through a long tooth and nail court drama over his inheritance, and is thus, at the moment, completely broke and completely willing to try to be Zia Mikal's Fake Beau. (Play For Keeps)

While Zia is on the game show, her story separates from Nolan's, and he has adventures with Noble Walsh, the city's resident graffiti artist and mute enigma. (The Secret Keepers Secret)

My current project, as in, what's getting my focus right now is the one I've posted, The Sunflower, the Seed, and the Scarecrow. It basically has all of my energy right now.

Anyways, I just thought I should give an overview, because Sunflower might as well be a sequel, and I don't want people to be too confused to follow. I'll try to work in the backstoryish details that are most important.

I love to talk to people, and I love to talk about writing, so PM me, visit my xanga, (I'm always on there.) or IM me. I don't bite.