Eliza Serena Robinson: Random Procrastinations, Persephone, Some Cool Links To Some Cool Things, And The Random Excuses For Why I Haven't Written In A While.

I have been meaning to write a blog for ages. I especially meant to write one on April 14^th or 15^th because they were the two year anniversaries of when I got the idea for CONSEQUENCE, and when I started writing CONSEQUENCE, respectively.

There are various excuses for why I didn’t write: I have to revise for my GCSEs which are two weeks away, I had homework to do, I needed to watch season one of Game of Thrones for the fifth time, I had to catch up on reading. The reality is this: *thinking* Ooooh look at this pretty picture of Ansel Elgort*! Facebook! Tumblr! Twitter! Travel blogs! Game of Thrones! John Green books! Shailene Woodley and Theo James should get together*! Emilia Clarke is pretty! I should reread Divergent! Game of Thrones memes! (And the list goes on).

In other words, I am an expert in the art of Extreme Procrastination. However (Oooh, I’m using connectives! My English teachers should be so proud!) I told myself I would write today, because it’s Persephone’s birthday. Or, at least, in 292 years it shall be. Tomorrow it’s 309 years till she marries the Tsar. It’s sad that I took the time to work that out. I did it in Biology this morning and wrote the number on my hand to remember it. The other things written on my hand right now are “Blog about Persephone”, “Egypt zombies” (book idea, don’t ask), “S. exam F change to H.” (Science exam Foundation, change to Higher), and, my personal favourite “Hide body in sewer”.

Yet when I went on the computer, I didn’t instantly start writing this. I didn’t even sign in to blogger (or click on blogger; I never bother signing out.) Instead, I started looking at all these interesting websites (http://www.readjunk.com/articles/pickuplines/game-of-thrones-pick-up-lines/ http://news.distractify.com/people/complex-humans/?v=1 http://onthenews.net/article/29-of-the-most-awkward-family-photos-ever/13), and then I went on twitter, and on my school’s twitter page I saw the link for these video things. My school has this TV show thing called Sounds of the Beacon that is shown on screens around school, and I have a book review show on there. I hadn’t really watched it properly at school, so when I saw the link I got distracted by watching them. ( http://vimeo.com/93615306 I come into it after about 12 seconds)

And I’m getting distracted by writing about stuff that distracted me. Typical Eliza moment…

I can’t actually remember the last time I wrote a blog, but I believe it was in February or March. I procrastinate too much, that is why I haven’t written, but I think I’m just going to blame it on my GCSEs. School makes it difficult to find time to read, let alone write, so my books and blogs have been neglected lately. However, I only have six weeks left till my exams are over, and then the 2.5 months of boredom before Sixth Form begin. 2.5 MONTHS! I get bored during a weekend, how am I going to go that long without school? I’ll go insane.

To be fair, school drives me almost as insane as Not Being at School does, but at school I have loads of teachers who adore me, so that stops me being insane. (Even my maths teacher, who wasn’t very keen on me at first, now thinks I’m brilliant, because I’ve gone from an F grade to a B grade in less than eight months. I think I have superpowers.) In terms of the whole Liking School thing, I think that just proves that I am as much of a weirdo as people say I am. (The downside of school: there are a large number of people who think that I am a total freak, and they love pointing it out to me. I’ve reported nine people for bullying in the last few months, but that’s a subject for another blog).

I should probably write about Persephone now, given the fact that she was what I had intended to write this blog about, because it’s 292 years before her birthday. (Implying she would actually be “born”, because, robot, ya know? Not to mention the whole She’s Fictional thing…)

My problem is that, as a result of 7.5 months of English lessons, I can no longer write anything about books without turning it into an English Lit essay. If you see the words “simile”, “Metaphor” “vivid imagery” “onomatopoeia” or “sibilance” in the rest of this blog, you will know that my soul has been taken over by exam practice. If you just see “metaphor” my soul will only have been taken over by The Fault in Our Stars.

So Persephone was the first character I came up with for CONSEQUENCE. She was tall and skinny, with green eyes and long, mousy-brown hair. Then my sister said that I should have a redhead main character because no books seem to have any these days, and suddenly Persephone changed appearance, and current Persephone formed. She now is meant to look like Molly Quinn (she plays Alexis in Castle).

Persephone’s personality changed when her appearance changed. Original Persephone was kind of feisty, whereas current Persephone is more…laid back (or kind of dazed, to be honest.) My greatest regret about Persephone (other than, you know, killing her and all that) is that I never recognized her true potential as a character until it was too late. I only saw the surface of her, I never went deep enough, I never saw the core of who she is. Looking back retrospectively at my books, I don’t know if I understood any of my characters until about half way through TRANSCEND.

The character I came closest to understanding was Phoenix, because she shares many personality traits with me, and so it was easier to get into the Phoenix mindset. However, Phoenix and I are not totally alike (I’m less violent, for example), and there were still elements of her that eluded me.

The error in my understanding of Persephone was that I viewed her as basic, and never considered that she went deeper than the surface. Phoenix is like a tornado, and Persephone is a spring breeze; it’s only natural that I saw Phoenix as the complex one…

It was only when writing TRANSCEND that I began to explore the true motivations of all my characters. Persephone’s main motivation is to protect the people she loves. This is a pretty basic goal, but Persephone is basic, but not, however, because she has no depth.

Persephone’s main goals and emotions are simple because she, despite appearance, is not human. She looks like a human, and she is pretty much a human in every sense, and this makes it easy to forget that, in Phoenix’s words, she is ‘Basically, a robot.’

Persephone is designed; she is the Tsar’s experiment. Let’s not forget to mention that the Tsar was a child prodigy who created a fully functioning “human” when he was eight years old. (My storylines aren’t exactly credible, are they?)

Persephone is the person Haden wanted her to be, and then some. *Exclusive information not previously revealed on my blog or in my books* A few months prior to the Tsar’s creation of Persephone, his mother died. Haden’s siblings were much older than he was, and his father was generally absent, so the only person who really cared for him was his mother. Haden created Persephone to fill the emptiness in his life, but he soon realized that a small baby was worthless to him because she was way too young to fill his mother’s place, so he sent her to live with his brother and sister at the vineyard in Greece, hence Persephone’s place of residence at the beginning of the novel.

When creating Persephone, Haden gave her some of the personality traits he associated with his mother – who’s called Rhea, by the way, as in mother of Hades, Zeus, and Poseidon in Greek mythology – and these traits were loyalty, stubbornness, trust, and a deep caring for family. The connection to his mother is one of the reasons why Haden is so obsessed with Persephone (not in a Freudian way, just in a He Misses His Dead Mother way), however this changed once he actually married Persephone. Before their wedding, Haden’s view of Persephone is *mostly* platonic. But when she kisses him on their wedding night, his view of her changes, and he sees her in a different light.

There are three main reasons why he changes his opinion of her – a) he now sees her in a more sexual light, which is a contrast to the extreme innocence that Persephone exhibits at the beginning of the book, b) I can’t go into details for spoiler reasons to do with the epilogue of TRANSCEND, but the Tsar isn’t really into the idea of marrying Persephone/being married to Persephone, because he’s kind of torn between two very different things, and he hasn’t quite twigged that he isn’t one or the other, but rather both, and c) by kissing him, Persephone is breaking away from the skeleton of traits that her personality is built upon. She is becoming bolder, braver, more than just this robot that he created. By kissing Haden, Persephone is showing how truly human she has become, and this terrifies the Tsar, and it surprises him, but also it excites him, because he has created a freaking miracle of nature and oh my gosh it’s kissing him without him designing it to. Hence the fact that he pushes her away – he’s totally freaked out by the whole thing.

I’m kind of fascinated by the dynamic between Persephone and Haden at the beginning of CONSEQUENCE, and I really wish I had written more about it, because it’s so forming for both of their characters, and I think it has a significant effect on the way the books ends.

On a completely different subject, happy birthday to the beautiful amazing gorgeous Emilia Clarke, who plays Daenerys Targaryen on Game of Thrones; she is 27 years old today. Isn’t she pretty? I spent ten minutes scrolling through my Facebook newsfeed trying to find a picture of her before I remembered I had loads of them saved on my laptop. (Speaking of Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Amend/448189008611171?ref=hl https://www.facebook.com/pages/Consequence/280153012094930?ref=hl https://www.facebook.com/pages/Eliza-Serena-Robinson-Author/455752114469506?ref=hl)

(Facial expressions I can actually relate to ^)

Speaking of birthdays, my beautiful cat William turns eight tomorrow. I searched all over my computer for a picture of him, but I couldn’t find one, so I looked through my old Facebook pictures for one. These are some of the beauties I found during this search: