Bursting Box Publishing

Oh, university life, how I missed you. I never wanted to go back to high school life, but I did want to return to university–specifically, to get my Masters in English from Cambridge. But God said no. Instead, I got married and focused on writing, so I’m not complaining.
Chapter 5 of Don’t Date the Haunted is a brief summary of my college life: professors with high expectations and game nights with my roommates.

In the beginning…

Poor Pansy has it a bit rough. Her bed’s next to the toilets, and her plumbing screams in the morning. The screaming walls scene actually based on a real experience of mine. I’m not a morning person, and I require a good two hours to wake up. Thankfully, I didn’t break any walls.
Originally, this scene didn’t happen until the morning of the masquerade. I decided to move it earlier as part of Pansy’s wake up call to Romance.

“College wasn’t even on my mind…”

Growing up in the middle class (poor enough to get subsidized lunches, but rich enough to attend the state’s best public high school), I always expected to go to college, and I gave that expectation to Pansy from the start. Then, one of my dear writing friends did an alpha read. My friend explained to me that when you live in poverty, you don’t think about college. It’s not even a consideration. You’re too worried about making it day to day.
Reflecting on a time in my life when I was without a home, job, and school, yeah, I didn’t even see the point in general hygiene.

That mindset became my inspiration for Pansy’s life in Horror. She was raised in orphanages and foster care, surviving day to day . . . until Sean.

Sean (being a native Romantic with professor parents) was the reason Pansy made goals beyond graduation from high school. I have so much to say about this pivotal decision that I’m writing a complete story around Pansy’s experiences with Sean (a prequel short-story to Don’t Date the Haunted).

Classes

Pansy’s official schedule looks like this:

Mon, Wed, Fri classes	Tues, Thurs class
Nutrition 3010 @ 9AM	Latin 1020 @ 11AM
Nursing 2270 @ 10AM	Pathophysiology @ noon
Novel History 1501 @ noon

Her Nutrition and Latin classes are each 4 credits, so she had a 17-credit schedule. Hank’s tip that “grinning disheveled professors love their subjects” was actually a golden nugget from my mom. I found it true during my time at university.

Student Housing

I had the best roommates to glean from personal experience. We didn’t have weekly luncheons, but my roommates sometimes shared their bounties. This was nice, because I couldn’t cook to save my life.

We also had regular game nights.
We’d invite boys over from nearby apartments to play “States,” “Fruit Basket,” and sometimes “Baby, I Love You” (if certain boys attended). Some of my favorites were Mafia (the Werewolf game before it became official) and Ninja (our name for the turn-based game of hand-tag).

Being at BYU (the nation’s #1 Most Sober University), we never had alcohol and kept the strict midnight curfew (1 AM on Friday nights). We proved every night that we didn’t need alcohol or drugs to have a blast. We also took our activities outside (even in the snow) if midnight was too early to say goodbye.

This lifestyle is one reason why I gave Pansy the sober background from her parents. I also snitched the standard from my family history. My grandpa was once an abusive alcoholic, leaving my mom with no desire for the stuff.

Truth Locke

It’s not in Pansy’s character to tell everybody about her “tragic life story,” so I had Truth Locke tell it for her. Truth is actually a bigger character in my head than she is here. She’s technically based off of a character I created in “The Sims.” Yes, as in the FIRST “The Sims.” For her full (and fully insane) background, check out my section on Meet Truth Locke.

Truth Locke had her own Private Investigator novel brewing four years before I even thought of Pansy Finster. I still hope to write her story someday.

Theo’s Glance…

This section includes Minor spoilers for Don’t Date the Haunted!

In case you didn’t catch it (because it might not be understood during a first read-through), I’ll explain Theo’s glance between Emma and Hank, then confusion at Pansy.

As Pansy suspected, yes, he did know what happened between Emma and Hank at that moment: love at first sight. He knew, because he’d witnessed it before with his eldest cousin, and recently experienced it himself . . . for Pansy. But not with Pansy. His love at first sight was one-sided, leaving him confused and a little discouraged that Pansy didn’t instantly feel a connection with him. Hence the “touch of sorrow” in his eyes.