"For those of you who don't know, my name is Abpektr Conrad, and I can do whatever I want.  And get away with it.  The rest of you would do well to remember this."

I just finished writing the first complete draft of The Books of High Noon, which I have been working on for... as long as I can remember.  Draft after painstaking draft until I finally got the right storyline.  And now, amid that sense of completion, joy, shouting "I did it!!!" as I dance around my room, I don't think I have ever missed anything more than those characters whose lives I just finished creating.

Now it's on to the revision phase, the next book, the next poem, the next short story.  Wherever life takes me.  We'll see.

Writing is ... well, pretty much my life.  I mean, I make time for friends and family and school and all that, but when everything cools down and I have a second to break free, I sit down in my room -- or under one of my favorite trees and just write whatever comes to mind.  Sometimes I draw scenes from the story.  Sometimes I just sit there and listen to trees whispering in a soft autumn wind.  And then it hits me -- the most brilliant idea I've ever come up with!  So I write.

My main focus is my stories.  I came up with my first idea in second grade when my teacher started reading Harry Potter to us in class.  Somehow, I got the lofty idea in my head that I wanted to write a book better than hers (I still love those books).  I started with a wolf/girl named Summer.  But that was 9 years ago.  I'm 17, now, and I've honed in my writing skills considerably.  Then again, I write (literally) every day, I've changed the plot around multiple times during the years, found new main characters, had many disputes over names, settings... everything.

It's been quite a journey.

However, I'm not saying I don't like poetry -- I love it; I write it when it comes to mind, I like to read a good poem whenever I see a promising title or excerpt, but it's my characters that I truly love, the way they can suffer and laugh and love and seem completely real and... well, human.  The way they show us that normal people CAN have such a huge impact.  How they seize the story you think you're in charge of and make it their own.

And in the end... well, we'll see.