Letter To Teen Me...

I was given this idea when I received an email from an author whose newsletter I am signed onto. Given, this post was supposed to be written on the 11th, I had a busy past 10 days dealing with work, lost luggage, planning for parties, and a Grandmother who was in the hospital. Whatever, it's here now!

Dear Teen Me,

It's okay to be different...like vastly different from your peers. I'm sorry I'm telling you this about 10 years too late but I didn't know it back then. You definitely should've dyed your hair the colors of the rainbow and embraced ripped up jeans and Converses instead of high heels and dark brown hair. You didn't have to change that because nothing was wrong with it.

It's okay to be into bands instead of rappers even though no one made you feel like it was (but I'm glad you met someone who did!). Liking rock music and being deemed as "emo" doesn't mean you abandoned your culture even though that's what they told you. I really digged the dark eyeliner and bright red hair...it was so...YOU!

No one had to understand you because you weren't meant to be understood. You were meant to be free and different. Your views matter and just because family and "friends" didn't share the same ones didn't make you wrong. You never had to fake what music you liked or the slang you couldn't speak. There's nothing wrong with saying "rad" or "awesome", it didn't make you any less black...it made you, you and you're pretty cool to me.

I only wish I told you this back then but I'm telling you now. Go ahead and be who you are. I love it. I finally love you.

Love,

24 Year Old You

• Please leave comments, share, and like. Repost with a letter to your teen self or leave one in the comments below. What would you say to yourself if you knew back then what you know now?

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Finding Yourself:Theme From RED

"I somehow managed to play the protagonist and the antagonist in this story"-Peyton Hayley Giordano (RED)

Last week I wrote about starting over after you already made those messy mistakes, dropped your ego and learned to forgive yourself and others. This week I want to talk about another major theme from RED: finding yourself. 

When you focus on starting over you have to also focus on finding yourself. After being dragged through the mud and experiencing disappointment after disappointment, you have to hit the restart button. Restarting also means that things are going to have to change. In the process of us being dragged by our hair while our face scraps against the cement we become someone different. We just have to find out who this person is. 

Finding yourself is critical in the process of starting over. If we don't gain a clear vision of who we are we'll just falter into another mess (and who wants that?). Not knowing who you are usually results in you falling for anything. Knowing who you are (and who you used to be) will help you stand firm in your beliefs, values, and follow the path ahead of you will little slip ups. 

In RED, Peyton is on a journey to find out who she is after never getting the chance to truly know her parents. All she has is her mother's journals and writings she kept on a flash drive to refer to. Her dad never got the chance to even know she was going to exist and her mom ended it all before she could even develop a memory. Most of us get the chance to learn who we are by reflecting back on how our parents were/are. Peyton never got that chance which makes her journey both difficult and interesting. She finds herself making many of her parents' mistakes but it's harder for her to deal with them because she has no idea her parents already went through it all. 

Peyton begins to find herself when she sees herself where she is. The quote above is her reflecting on her past behavior and mistakes after it all blows up in her face. This should sound familiar to most of us. We tend to find ourselves while we're attempting to start over after something blew up in our faces. It's almost like the wreck and disaster is what we needed to see clearly. While we're under water we finally make the decision to breathe. Peyton is no different. 

If you're currently in a situation that seems impossible, almost like you're drowning, I dare you to breathe. Open your lungs and learn something new; how to start over and find yourself in the process. Figure out what you learned and become the person you always wanted to be. Live like you're the person you want to be and soon you won't be acting anymore. We all make mistakes, we all have to learn when to drop our egos, we have to forgive ourselves along with others, we have to start over, and we have to find ourselves all over again. While you're becoming someone new you're going to get a lot of hate and judgment thrown at you but who cares? Well...judgment...that sounds like something I could talk about next week, doesn't it? Until then, keep on looking....

In the meantime listen to a song about finding yourself:

 

 

A Tragic Heart's First Anniversary! (Let's Celebrate!)

Wow! Time really flew by fast! On September 27th, my debut novel, A Tragic Heart will celebrate it's first birthday. I wanted to do something special for my baby's first year so I decided to discount the price of the novel for 48 hours. That's right! Starting September 26th at 12:00 am, A Tragic Heart will only be $2.99 on Kindle. The sale ends on September 28th at 12:00 am. It's a pre-birthday/birthday celebration!

The novel has seen a decent amount of success, moving over 400 units (not bad for an indie author of no primary status) since it's release almost a year ago. More importantly, the novel has been met with critical acclaim by both readers and book reviewers. In fact, I just found out that my novel has been illegally downloaded 815 times this week and it's only Tuesday! While that may not seem like something to be proud of, the fact that the average star rating is 9.4 out of 10 makes me proud. More than anything I'm happy that people actually enjoy something I created during one of the worst times of my life. At the end of the day, it's not all about sales, it's about knowing that I created something people thoroughly enjoy. So, thank you to anyone who bothered to read the novel whether it was illegally or not.

As a lot of you know already, A Tragic Heart is part of a 4 part series entitled RED Tragedies.Basically, there's a lot more to come and I hope you all follow me into the last book and beyond.

Welp! That's all for now. Remember on September 26th starting at 12:00 am, download your copy of A Tragic Heart for only $2.99 on Kindle! Here's the link: A Tragic Heart-Kindle Edition.

In the meantime, A Tragic Heart has also just been released on Kobo for only $4.99! Link here: A Tragic Heart-Kobo

RED Is Gearing Up!!!!!!!!

"Ego. Our ego is who we are. It’s the part of our functioning mind that is stuck between the id and the superego. My ego is who I am. It balances out my subconscious mind bringing me back to reality whenever I fall victim to my id or superego. My ego is nervous. Anxious. Guilty. My ego is red."-RED

 I'm happy to say that RED is going to go through the editing process starting July 1st! The novel is pretty long so it'll take a while to edit but I was told the latest I will have the manuscript back in my possession will be December 1st. This means that RED won't be able to come out in the Fall as I originally planned but it will be available by the Winter of 2015. 

As I mentioned before, the novel may not be as emotional as A Tragic Heart but it does have a lot of twists and turns. The plot is a little riskier and it continues to touch on major issues during teenage years.

SPOILERS! PLEASE DO NOT CONTINUE IF YOU HAVEN'T READ A TRAGIC HEART! SKIP TO NEXT SECTION!

For those of you who read the first novel, A Tragic Heart, you all know that part of the ending resulted in Taylor having Peyton's baby long after he's gone. RED follows the life of Taylor's daughter who is named after her father. Peyton (the daughter) is all grown up (the novel starts when she's 16, just like her mom) and she's being raised by Mason and Adayln (you all should remember them). Peyton has a lot in common with both her mother and father and the novel follows her struggle to grow up without them in her life. She's carefree and loves to take risks but many of her choices can seem less than desirable to others. 

Spoilers Ended! 

 

A lot like A Tragic Heart, RED is told from multiple point of views which means that everyone has a story and everyone has their own drama going on. I believe that it can be hard to tell a complete story from one point of view because realistically there is always more than one side to a story. People constantly make the same mistakes and it usually takes us more than one time to learn from them. RED is all about making mistakes, learning from your past, and moving on with life the best way you could. Sometimes we're ashamed of who we used to be but the important thing is to remember that we are not those people. We are who we think we can be and that's a very important theme in RED.

I'll start revealing character names soon. Maybe a write up on each character until the release of the novel...that sounds tempting enough!

 -S. Elle Cameron

No One's THAT Beautiful In High School!

 "Perfection is a disease of a nation"-Beyonce (Pretty Hurts)

This may come as a surprise to some of you (the high schoolers out there) but no one looks the way the high school students in movies look! Okay, so maybe you sort of knew this but I want to put things in a realistic perspective.

So, I was hanging out with an old high school friend last night (the only person I still talk to from high school) and we settled for watching movies from Redbox at my place. We decided on This Is 40 and Carrie (the remake). The movie I would like to talk about today is Carrie and the portrayal of young adults in high school.

First off, no one looks that good in high school! Like, seriously, come on! These kids had flawless skin, bleached white teeth and everything was tight and proportioned. Who looks like that in general but in HIGH SCHOOL?! It was something that we both had to point out and talk about throughout the movie. We reminisced on how awkward everyone looks during those years and the people who we thought were good looking was well....not as good looking as they are now (just a taste of honesty).

I'm not writing this to judge but I am writing this as a way to shed light on something: teen movies and shows are fake! Just like the rest of Hollywood. Thinking back during my high school years when I watched One Tree Hill and other shows that were targeted toward teenagers, everyone was gorgeous. I mean, did any of you go to school with someone that looked like Sophia Bush or Chad Michael Murray? ...Didn't think so...

The portrayal of teenagers onscreen are so unrealistic, no wonder why so many young adults have self-esteem issues. I hated everything about the way I looked because I thought I was supposed to look like Brooke Davis or Peyton Sawyer. Now that I'm out of high school (almost 5 years now), I'm able to see high school students clearly for the first time. They all look like kids trying to transition into adulthood. They have acne and glasses and braces. Their bodies aren't fully developed and looks like they could use a couple of more years of growing. This is what you're supposed to look like in high school. These movies and shows make us believe that we're supposed to be supermodel status by the time we're fifteen. NEWSFLASH: NO ONE IS SEXY IN HIGH SCHOOL!

The ones in the movies and television programs who look like normal teens are always the ones who get teased or bullied. They're known as the geeks or outsiders. Realistically, This Is 40 had a more accurate portrayal of a teenager. Although the children were only in middle school, it seemed more likely. That's what I remember everyone looking like growing up.

Let me give you a run down: Pretty Little Liars is fake! One Tree Hill...fake! The Vampire Diaries...uh uh! Gossip Girl, Mean Girls, and all the rest are just a load of BS!

I'm here to tell you all that no one looks like Regina George, Elena Gilbert, Aria Montgomery, or Brooke Davis in high school!  Now college...that's a different story!

Teen Issues!

 I did things a little differently this time around. Instead of posting on my own log, I guest blogged for a fellow author who goes by the name Kelly Martin. In this post I give advice to teens dealing with certain issues while bringing awareness to some serious situations. Click the link below to read more:

Teen Issues

YouTube Links!

I feel like A Tragic Heart has so many themes that one focus isn't enough to give you an idea on what the novel is about. I will be making trailers throughout the week based off of the many themes of the novel. Here are two links to two of my new book trailers on YouTube:

Self Harm Theme:Trailer #1

Love Triangle Theme:Trailer #2

MORE TO COME SOON! MEANWHILE PICK UP A TRAGIC HEART HERE: http://www.amazon.com/Tragic-Heart-S-Elle-Cameron/dp/1489591060/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1390613250&sr=1-1&keywords=a+tragic+heart