Authors in the Corner: Guest Blogging with Tera Lynn Childs

Happy Birthday! WOO!

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Today ... is my birthday. At precisely 10:52am (Central Time) I will be thirty-mumble-mumble. Okay fine, I’ll be thirty-two. Not the end of the world. Right?

It’s a little scary, though. I mean, I’m now officially twice as old as when I got my drivers’ license. (Actually, since I failed the test on my birthday and had to take it again the next day, I’ll be twice as old two days from now.) I’m more than three times as old as when I had my golden birthday, when I turned ten on September 10. I don’t even want to think about how many times older I am than when I had my first real birthday party in first grade.

But the thing is ... I don’t feel old.

An old person doesn’t watch Disney Channel or read Gossip Girl or listen to Kid Rock. They don’t play Neopets or spends hours upon hours watching marathons of Buffy or Hannah Montana. They definitely don’t buy High School Musical water bottles and spiral notebooks.

I was watching an episode of Buffy tonight (the one where Willow casts a spell and everyone loses their memories of everything about themselves) and there was a part where Buffy called Dawn a kid and Dawn said, “A teenager.” And that got me thinking: How did Dawn know she was a teenager? She had no memory of how old she was. She had no ID. She couldn’t see herself. How did she know she wasn’t twelve or twenty.

Think about it. If you closed your eyes and forgot how old you were, could you guess? With no other clues, could you ... feel your age? Would you be right?

If I close my eyes and forget that I’m thirty-mumble-mumble, my brain short-circuits me right back to high school. I might as well be that seventeen-year-old, ready to graduate and take on the world. I still feel that fear and excitement and absolute belief in the future that I felt fifteen years ago. (Only now it’s kind of blurred by the fact that I have to pay bills and act like an adult ... most of the time.)

Maybe that’s why I love writing teen fiction so much. I get to indulge that inner teenager who hasn’t realized that she’s trapped in a grownup’s body. I hope she never does.

Keep your eyes open later this week to learn some more about Tera!

Quote of the Day:

I put my faith in you,
So much faith and then you
Just threw it away.
-- Paramore, For A Pessimist, I'm Pretty Optimistic (Riot!)