In this mock blog, serial novella, narrator Elizabeth Harper takes her audience through a few memorable anecdotes of her life, in a conversational, good-natured, sometimes goofy (if a little vulgar) style. Stories were originally released surroundin...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
My name is Elizabeth Harper-Baxter 3000HP79erQ. I am a cybernetic organism. Living tissue over a metal endoskeleton. Or at least that's what I'll say to Natasha's great-granddaughter at her college graduation when I return to the past to save mankind from space annihilation in my brand spankin' new Kraang body...aaand the thought of a female Kraang body replacing my female human body just made me shudder a bit. I think I might actually be sick if I focus on it too much longer, so I'm gonna drop this bit before I can't stop myself!
Christ, all I can think of now is that meme with Honey Boo Boo's Mom.
That poor fucking kid.
Besides, this is supposed to be about adulthood, and society has conditioned us to believe that once you become an adult, you have to become bitter and start hating fun with a fiery passion. I say 'pfft' to that! I'll like and talk about stupid shit until I fucking die, and that's that.
And, now that that's out of the way...
As I said last time, I went full-bore into investigative journalism in college, working toward the end goal of making Jack McGee look like a chump. Which, honestly wouldn't be that hard, because he was about as useless as a plugged asshole on the back of your neck. He had, like, 56 episodes and a movie and he still couldn't fucking figure out that—SPOILER ALERT—David Banner was the fucking Hulk THE WHOLE TIME!
I reiterate; Mr. McGee was absolutely useless. I mean, Banner transformed right fucking next to him one t— Sorry. As a real investigative reporter, I get a little salty about Hack McGee. Though Jack Colvin was awesome in the role.
I'll happily concede that.
Anyhyoo (you say that like Donahue), I did all that, but kept working on plotting/writing stories of my own any chance I got. My real passion was, after all, still fiction writing, and it was actually in my last year at Adelphi that I had my first Roger Hartley novel—"The Body of Heather Yorke"—published. Christ, I was putting the finishing touches on the main draft of the second one!
Parts of that book were not-so-loosely based on the case Dad worked that ended up taking Mom.
I was kind of uncharacteristically insecure when I'd talk to people about it, but all of that went out the fucking window, landed in a pool of gasoline, and combusted when I finally let Dad read it. As I said before, he was always a huge proponent of my writing, even on the rare occasion I'd doubt myself.
My Daddy loves me!
When I gave him the completed draft of "...Heather Yorke," he went through the whole thing in one sitting...we're talking 400+ pages here! He loved it, and not just because I'm his kid. My Dad's never been one to sugarcoat anything, even with me.
So, when that man feeds you praise ya' fucking savor it. It means you're on the right track.
Within a couple of months, I sent the manuscript out and already had five generous offers. Of course, I turned them all down and ended up taking one a few months later that gave me the most control over my shit as was humanly possible, because I'm not a desperate fucking moron. As a result, I and I alone own my characters and their universe until I am a worm's version of Golden Corral.
