Beware the banana peel

The World Upside Down – Chapter 6

lisaseneque

13 juin 2020

Chapter 6 of The Imagined Ones – The World Upside Down is the last chapter currently translated so I’m afraid it’s gonna be the last one posted for a while.

If you’re not scared of french, the book can be found on here on Amazon.

CLAIRE

I went back to my obsession at fifty-five.

To be honest, it was never really gone. It had just remained stagnant for lack of leads. Four years of searching, investigating only to have the doors slammed in our face, begging and threatening in the darkest corners, and it was as if the kid had never existed.

It had been more than a week since the Imagined Collective improvised themselves filmmakers on the facade of one of La Défense’s largest buildings, and my husband was in a foul mood, complaining about everything to me like he was deeply convinced I gave a shit.

“I really need to file for divorce.”

The World Upside Down – Chapter 5

lisaseneque

5 commentaires

6 juin 2020

Chapter 5 of The Imagined Ones – The World Upside Down ! One of my favorites, ’cause it finally gives the general tone of the book (which is basically just a bunch of millenials running amok and not taking shit seriously).

IRIA

I decided the world was against me at twenty-three.

As usual, a performance that should have been perfectly executed, down to the second, had quickly derailed in stratospheric proportions. And I still firmly believed it wasn’t my fault I was locked in the broom closet of one of the tallest buildings in the North Ark with baboons on my tail, no matter what the imbecile I had on the phone had to say about that.

« Who the fuck has security guards in broad daylight?! » I ranted, as loud as I could without having them find me. “And weren’t you supposed to know?!”

“I think you’re treating my talent for information as omniscience, gorgeous, and it’s a fatal mistake. And they’re traders; the money in their account in Switzerland is only matched by their paranoia.”

The World Upside Down – Chapter 4

lisaseneque

5 commentaires

30 mai 2020

Chapter 4 of The Imagined Ones – The World Upside Down is now up ! 🙂

ELIAS

I relived the same nightmare at sixty-one.

I didn’t know right away. I only realized it afterwards, but the premise of what would be the most grueling year of my life began on March 10^th, 2015, nine years to the day after the death of my eldest daughter. Nine years that had been necessary to completely rebuild the Volques Bridge, nine years I’d needed to mourn, accept that my flesh and blood could never be brought back.

This March the 10^th was a Tuesday, and in the early hours, winter was still making itself known. Well after nine o’clock, the fog still permeated the area, and the few hundred people who’d came shivered under a cold, veiled sun. Lire la suite

The World Upside Down – Chapter 3

lisaseneque

5 commentaires

23 mai 2020

There you have Chapter 3 of The Imagined Ones – The World Upside Down ! It introduces a new character. I change points of view every chapter, and all the different narrators come back every few chapters.

CLAIRE

I lost faith in humanity at forty-six.

I was used to it. Eight years of med school spent in the confines of the morgue had given me an iron stomach, and after almost twenty years as a coroner my heart was made of steel. When I was asked to come and help with the bridge catastrophe, about two hundred deaths, I didn’t even blink. I sent a text to my husband and daughter warning them I most likely wouldn’t be back that night.

The succession of explosions, still unexplained, had begun around six that evening and stopped about twenty minutes later. I’d arrived at 7:30 p.m under a pouring rain and frightening lightning strikes that took us all by surprise, and was directed to the makeshift camp set up to deal with the wounded and the dead. Cops, firefighters and paramedics were trying to contain the growing panic of worried families and the invasive curiosity of the media. I left the living to them and went to take care of the dead.

The World Upside Down – Chapter 2

lisaseneque

5 commentaires

19 mai 2020

Here comes Chapter 2 of The Imagined Ones – The World Upside Down ! Once again, there might be mistakes 😀

(Links to the other chapters at the end)

ELIAS

I lost my daughter at fifty-two.

We’d fought over a stupid thing, nothing worth the last words we exchanged. Being herself, my eldest had defended her sister. I’d just came back from a day at work that, while having ended early, had started the day before. I was exhausted, I simply wanted to go home, forget work with my wife and daughters before getting a head start on a few cases I had in mind.

Saskia was twenty-two, arctic blue eyes and pale skin from her mother’s Scandinavian origins, jet black hair from my Latin ancestry, falling in elegant curls on a slender waist carried by long legs, and white elfin-like fingers that brightened everything they touched. Boys were falling at her feet. She was a porcelain doll, and she was my greatest accomplishment. Brilliant from the moment she started talking, she’d passed her high school diploma with distinctions at twelve, and was now working on her second thesis in genetics, on undiscovered brain capacities. Socially radiant, every person she met gravitated around her like they would around a sun, she attracted the world with a single smile. And for all that she was amazing and bright in society, she wasn’t any less of an extraordinary sister at home, who tenderly loved her younger sisters and always found time to spend with them. Lire la suite

Writing a novel when your mind’s a mess

lisaseneque

aucun commentaire

23 octobre 2018

Hello, people !

For a long time, I couldn’t finish a single one of my stories, diving into them without a precise plan of attack only to see them go down the tubes.

Then, college getting in the way, I had to put my novel fantasies on hold while I worked on my thesis, and it was actually the first time I succeded in finishing a work over a 100 pages. And to do so, I had to do an outline.

So I decided to do the same for the tetralogy I had in mind, and in this article, I explain exactly how I did that.

Writing a novel when your mind's a mess | Beware the banana peel | lisaseneque.com

Écrire un roman quand sa tête est en bordel

lisaseneque

4 commentaires

16 octobre 2018

Bonjour, les gens !

Pendant longtemps, je n’ai pas été foutue de finir une seule de mes histoires, me lançant dedans sans technique précise pour les voir plus ou moins vite partir en cacahuète.

Puis, études oblige, j’ai dû mettre de côté mes envies de roman pour faire mon mémoire, et ce fut la première fois que je suis arrivée à finir un travail de plus de 100 pages. Et pour ce faire, j’ai dû faire un plan.

J’ai donc décidé d’appliquer la même technique de travail à ma tétralogie, et j’explique dans cet article exactement comment je m’y suis prise.

Ecrire un roman quand sa tête est en bordel | Beware the banana peel | lisaseneque.com

That Blank Page

lisaseneque

aucun commentaire

30 septembre 2018

Hello, people !

Here is a short text I wrote almost ten years ago (I’m not old, I’m precocious, it’s not the same). I wrote it in one go at almost one in the morning, only way to stop a coming panic attack, and promptly buried it for years in my hard drive.

My anxiety coming back to life lately, I thought it would be the perfect time to dig it out. You can blame the lack of logic on my emotional state back then 😀 (student life…).

Quick French lesson! La « page blanche », which is translated word for word by the « white page » and actually means the « blank page », is a metaphor for « writer’s block ». Hence the title of this text and why the blank page is mentioned a lot.

Forgive any potential mistake. Translation is an entire job for a reason, and this is just amateur work on my part.

That blank page | Beware the banana peel | lisaseneque.com

It woke me up again in the middle of the night, it was now two minutes to one and I was reliving an old night terror that came with half-conscious delusions since I was old enough to wonder. Sadly I was precocious, and had been confining myself to a hell of rhetorical thoughs for fifteen years.

La Page Blanche

lisaseneque

aucun commentaire

24 septembre 2018

Coucou, les gens !

Je présente ici un petit texte que j’ai écrit il y a presque dix ans (je ne suis pas vieille, je suis précoce, c’est pas pareil). Je l’ai écrit d’une traite à 00 h 58, ce qui a été le seul moyen de calmer une crise de panique, pour ensuite l’enfouir pendant des années dans les confins de mon disque dur.

Mon anxiété refaisant des siennes ces temps-ci, je me suis dit que c’était le moment parfait pour le ressortir. Vous pouvez blâmer le manque de logique sur mon état émotionnel à l’époque 😀 (Ah, la vie d’étudiant…).

La Page Blanche | Beware the banana peel | lisaseneque.com

Ça m’avait encore une fois réveillée au milieu de la nuit, il était maintenant minuit cinquante-huit et je revivais une angoisse nocturne qui avait toujours accompagné des délires à demi-conscients depuis que j’avais l’âge de me poser des questions. Malheureusement, j’étais précoce, et me confinais donc dans un enfer de pensées rhétoriques depuis près de quinze ans.

Writing a male-female friendship

lisaseneque

aucun commentaire

19 septembre 2018

Hello people !

For my first (real) post, I want to talk about something we’re starting to see quite often in YA novels, and that I’m not exactly being secretive about it since it’s all in the title : male-female friendship.

Writing a male-female friendship | Beware the banana peel | lisaseneque.com

First thing first : YES, I BELIEVE IN IT.

I indeed think it is possible for a boy and girl to only be friends. I’ve been friends with boys all through my childhood, as have many of you I’m sure. Still to this day, working in a mostly feminine environment, the collegues my age I am friends with have a penis.

I also think that boy-girl friendship is rarely as complicated as books and movies make it out to be.

And today, intersex friendship in fictions is in fact what we’re talking about. I love it, this is something I enjoy seeing or reading. But it is often explored only superficially or, in this day of everything romance, is just an excuse to introduce a love triangle (which will probably be the object of another post) when its relevance is sometimes questionable.

And IT ANNOYS ME !!!