hello. it’s me, Sam Markum. and I wanted to tell you all that... I have a book coming out! so if you’re still around and you liked Intrinsic Gray, consider maybe marking your calendar for winter 2022 and adding my book on goodreads!
it’s about a girl named Doe, a senior at an all girls’ boarding school, and her war with the boys’ school across the road. it’s got a great friend group, big rivalries, fake dating, and lots of schemes and pranks.
I’m really proud of it, and more than anything I wanted to share it with the people who have always boosted my confidence in my writing. I started writing Intrinsic Gray during one of the hardest periods of my life, and I’m so grateful to everyone who read it and gave me so much support back then. so thank you!
um also i’m going to collect letters and things to take to the service so if you would like to write something and send it in a submission i can print it and take it. i won’t read things you don’t want me to but i just want to help people who can’t be there. and we know how much she loves good words
We wanted to let all of her friends know that Julian was killed in a traffic accident this past week. More information about the funeral etc. can be found on her Facebook.
We will be closing down a lot of her accounts soon. Thank you for your prayers for our family.
You made me write fic again after five years of telling myself it wasn't important anymore. Best of luck with everything and thank you x
Ahhh this makes me so happy! Honestly writing is such a great outlet, so even if you don’t post it for anyone and just want to write for yourself, write about anything, do it often, and enjoy it! I hope you’re doing well!
Sam I am so fucking stressed about college I have like 3 weeks to decide and I didn't get into my #1 school and now I have to decide if any of the other schools I got into are a good fit or if I should go to community college and transfer to my #1 because if I don't get in the 2nd time I'll die I am just so stressed and I want to cry all the time
(I’m going to put a lot of this under a read more because it ended up being v v v v long.)
Honestly here’s what you have to tell yourself about college, and really about anything in life: whatever you decide is what you’re meant to do. Seriously. If you close your eyes and pick one. Whatever it is, whatever the outcome, it’s what you were meant to do and the path you’re meant to take. If one just feels more right than the others, go. If you want to stay and try a second time for your #1, you can do that too. And if you don’t get in the second time, you’ll go somewhere else. This is the best advice I can give you almost three years out of college now. No matter what you end up doing, where you end up is where you’re meant to be. There will be bad times, and there will be really awesome amazing times. And the bad times will always pass.
When I graduated college, I moved straight to New Jersey with Whitney. We spent over a month living in a tiny room together in this woman’s house while we waited for our apartment to be ready. I found a job right when I got there as a super super part time personal assistant, and at my interview they asked if I’d be willing to help out with nannying while they looked for a nanny. I said yes, and after about a week, I was like, “Well, I could just do this too.” So I became their nanny. Then Whitney and I moved into our apartment, which was this awful basement apartment with no kitchen or anything, and almost no windows. Two weeks later, I kid you not, Hurricane Sandy rolls through. We lived at the bottom of a hill, and when the power cut, the pump that moved water to the top of the town shut off, and we flooded with sewage water. We had literally just moved in. Within fifteen minutes, the water was up to my thighs--and that’s outside!
So our place was destroyed, and we lost everything except some clothes we were able to wash, our cars, and a few knick knacks. We really didn’t walk away with much, probably even less than you can imagine, because water went up about four and a half/five feet in our apartment. We ended up moving into the attic of the place where I was nannying. And while we were there, I started writing Water and a Star, which turned out to be the most therapeutic escape I had from all that had gone wrong. We were looking for a new place to live, but I’m sure you can understand we’d both hit a wall. We were living in the same room again, and while we were getting by, you can imagine how we were struggling emotionally after dealing with all of this bam straight out of school no parents no support no other friends even, just each other and the family we were living with. They were great, don’t get me wrong. We literally couldn’t have asked for better. But eventually we ended up going home--except my mom was living back in Missouri, and her family, of course, was in Florida where we went to school and grew up.
Now, I move home, and I write 1999, I start IG. Like writing is really rolling for me, which is so important because sometimes you get writer’s block and think it’ll never end so to write this much in such a short time was really a miracle to me. And then I moved to LA, down in the South Bay which is technically LA but it’s more suburban than the west side, which is where we are now. And LA is huge. There’s the Valley, Pasadena, downtown, the east side, the west side, Koreatown, south central, Long Beach even if you’re getting technical, and the South Bay, which is Manhattan Beach, Hermosa, Torrance, and Redondo. I was in South Redondo with my cousin. Whitney moves to LA to stay with a family friend, like ironic enough that we both have people to live with in LA, although she’d always talked about coming out here and I only did because my cousin told me I should. So Whitney moves out, and where does her family friend live? Manhattan Beach. Of all the places in LA that she could have ended up, and she was a few miles up the PCH from me.
Likewise, in February I had this huge fall out at my job at the kids’ store. My boss told me she was cutting my hours. Then she said I should get a second job. Then she affirmed I needed to get a second job--not another job! a second job! work two jobs with your college degree because that’s all you’re worth after 35k of student loan debt!--so I immediately started looking for a job as soon as she cut my hours because there was no way I was staying. Then, because I was upset that she cut my hours and I was having a hard time being chipper at work, she fired me. This all started on a Monday. They fired me the next Sunday. Monday morning I landed an interview. Tuesday I went in, nailed it. I started on Wednesday, and now I have a real job with a salary and a desk!!! And I’m actually really good at it, which is a really cool feeling.
So basically what I’m trying to say with all of this is that every shitty thing that happens is a door. You didn’t get into your #1, and that sucks a lot. I feel for you, because I know what it’s like to have this grand idea of what you’re going to do with your life and then have it totally crushed. The best thing you can do is just trust your gut and remember that whatever happens and wherever you end up, this is what you’re meant to be doing and there’s always something on the other side of the bad that could turn out to be the best thing in the world.
I just wanted to let you all know that I’m taking an extended hiatus. I’ll be checking in occasionally, so if you have any questions, you can always drop me a line and I’ll be around at some point. But other than answering messages sometimes, I probably won’t be back.
I’ve left all my pages up so everything is still available. I wish you all the best.
je t’aime. aujourd’hui. ce soir. demain. pour toujours. si je vivais mille ans, je t’appartiendrais pour tous. si je vivais mille vies, je te ferais mienne dans chacune d’elles.
i love you. today. tonight. tomorrow. forever. if i were to live a thousand years, i would belong to you for all of them. if i were to live a thousand lives, i would want to make you mine in each one.
But I’ll tell you what hermits realize. If you go off into a far, far forest and get very quiet, you’ll come to understand that you’re connected with everything.
hey i saw you reblog that jenny han book and i was wondering have you read her summer trilogy? it's soooo good!!
I did, but I wasn't a huge fan. I also read the burn for burn series and wasn't a huge fan of that either. But yeah the summer I turned pretty was the first book of hers that I read. I'm just not really into the whole brothers in love with the same girl thing. Like the first one was good but once it got into that, my interest sort of dropped off.
my favourite thing about this generation is that I can persuade someone to watch a show and tell them there’s only two seasons with like thirteen episodes each
Favorite Books/Series [4/20] : To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before by Jenny Han
I don’t want to be afraid anymore. I want to be brave. I want…life to start happening. I want to fall in love and I want a boy to fall in love with me back.
Some people theorize that one extra factor that made the Titanic sink was added weight from loads and loads of time-travelers attempting to prevent it from sinking.
