[Saxony Tarn]

Ah, Starbreeze, you've hit the nail on the head there! Guess it really depends on what you consider a "normal life"!

Let me tell you what that pile of manuscript that i was writing back in school consisted of: From Monday through Friday, the classes my young characters were in, the things they had to deal with, and the falling bits of sky that made their secondary-school years just that much more surreal. "School as it was, as it wasn't, as it should have been, as it never should have been", i used to describe it (for example, Tama had it easy, just being "lavender" -- whereas Biffi was later revealed to be a lavender-skinned space alien, Barry whose Irish family lived at the end of Druid Wood Road (a real street in the real small town in New Jersey where i lived while writing it) and were all practicing Celtic magicians cast a few spells to save his and a few others' collective bacon, etc. It was the 80's, so leather jackets and switchblades were required armor and weapons -- firearms were always the province of the grownups, and even Jason (who was a few years older) when he picked up the bad guy's discarded gun, never fired it -- he turned it right over to the cops...

Even then, it is a sobering thought to note that, 20 years hence, were i writing this in a school in America today, i would be the first one sent to the principal's office, if not outright suspended and given thorough analysis. Zero tolerance, you know. But i'm sure the cast of "Wierd Things Happen In New Jersey" would have quite a lot to say about Columbine.

i'm just not about to ask them, at least not until my LOTR inspiration runs out.

|_|) <-- Skoal!

s.t.

[ June 14, 2002: Message edited by: Saxony Tarn ]