hi,

so here's an update a long time overdue. i guess a was a little busy, i guess was a little lazy, i guess part of me didn't want to say anything until i really had anything to say.

and i do now. that's a good thing. that's a fucking phenomenal thing. here we are. i've published a book. my first, original book. available now, for you to buy on amazon. in both ebook and paperback format. (the link is just posted on my message board)

its $2.99/£2.10 for the ebook, and $9.99/£6.99 for the paperback or whatever that converts to in your currency. i tried to make the prices as reasonable as i could while still making some sort of money, basically i get around £1/$1 for each book. also if ive made it so if you buy the paperback you can download the ebook for free, i dont know exactly how it works but im sure amazon explains somewhere.

so like i kind of don't know how to elaborate on that, because ive so normalised the act of writing books, i fucking do it all the time. ive done it all the time for years, but like, generally, widely, its much more of an achievement. and maybe i need to get out of my weird writing bubble and look at it objectively.

because it isn't perfect, because no book is ever going to be perfect, but it's my first, published original book, and i love it, and im proud of it. and im proud of myself.

anyway. the book itself is called Just Another Impossible Something, and i'm publishing under the name Peach Sefney. you can find it by typing that into amazon, its the one that looks like this

i designed that cover myself lmao. graphic design is my passion.

anyway, so Just Another Impossible Something (i'll refer to it as jais for ease) is a book about, mental illness, self-discovery, being human, being hurt, healing, amongst other things. but more simply, it's about a boy called Fin and the way his world falls apart. i suppose its a sad story, but what else did you expect. also like no one is straight because miss me with that heterosexual bullshit.

i started jais a year ago, it took me a couple of months to write, and then about 5x times that time for me and a couple people to edit. i've honestly read it around 20 times at this point, and still, theres gonna be like one tiny little error in there somewhere isn't there lmao. but my friend elsa, who is my main editor, literally the backbone of this book. i cant use punctuation. it would be a mess without her. but anyway, she made me realise the other day, that i have to let this book go. its never going to be perfect. and it doesn't have to represent me wholly as a human being. its the first book. and there are people that want to read it. so i should let them.

i would really appreciate it if you could pick it up and let me know what you think. it would really help me out if you could drop a review on amazon and/or goodreads as well (you dont need to write a big paragraph, just a rating would help loads). also recommend it to your friends, if you like it ofc. i mean if you hate it, you're more than welcome to start a hate account for it or something lmao. but if you enjoyed it, it would really help other people find it and enjoy it too if you could review/recommend it.

im not really on wattpad anymore, as you've probably noticed, so you can find my future book updates at peachsefney on both tumblr and twitter. i think i want to use that tumblr like a blog. ive realised recently that i have a lot of things to say, opinions to more formally express, i guess. so maybe thats something i'll find the time to do in future.

also since this is wattpad, and you're used to receiving my writing for free, and also as a thank you for being here and helping me get here, i'll give you the first chapter of jais free to read here, and if you decide you like it then you can pick it up. if not, no worries, maybe the next one, huh?

also i made an official playlist for jais, its available on my spotify cheekypastabake if thats something you're interested in.

also if you're not interested in a preview, then ill be giving updates about my future projects and general other stuff after it so scroll to the next bold.

[START OF CHAPTER]

Fin opens his eyes.

It's January 1st, two minutes past midnight. There is a boy, hopeless, alone, with his eyes to the sky, and no story on his lips. His name is Fin Placer. It's nights like these that he haunts the horizon between delirium and euphoria, unable to tell the difference between the two anymore.

He can't sit still, not that he bothers to ask his body to. But in absence of stillness, he sits silent among a dozen blurred faces, desperate but unable to make out their features, even with his eyes open wide. He isn't sure that his eyes are his eyes anymore. He isn't sure that his head is his head anymore. He isn't sure that anything in this world can be truly owned at all. He puts it up to the night, to the intoxication in the air, and the words thrown about as if they don't mean a thing.

Fin busies himself with drinks — he thinks it something normal to do at the very least. He thinks little of champagne, but drinks it nonetheless. The fact is that it's somebody else's house, somebody else's bottle, somebody else's party, and somebody else's good time he is having tonight. Fin convinces himself that he doesn't mind, and almost gets away with it.

The 'somebody else' in question is Alex. Part of Fin thinks he ought to hate her. It should be an easy game, a pre-determined rivalry, but Fin isn't like that. Fin's never had the heart for it, if he's ever had a heart at all. Instead, Fin's at his knees, looking up at the overhanging emotional debt held like a knife to his throat. He owes her everything.

That night, he's a ghost in his movements, a martyr in his manners, and a liar at heart. Tentative, skittish, ill-mannered, he skirts the edges of the house. He knows the perimeter of the room like the back of his hand; to ensure he's able to find his way out when his head is left alone without his heart.

There are stories by the hundred here, etched into the walls of the house, resurrected in party-typical laughter and conversation, accentuated by the champagne fizz and the overbearing shadows of oncoming hangovers. This is a celebration, this is laughing and living and losing yourself to the gamble of impulse. It's a game Alexandria Henn plays well. Whereas Fin always finds himself on the losing team.

He's hidden away in the kitchen as she dances through the living room, conversing with everyone and everything in her sight; from the boy to her right to the potted plant in the corner of her living room. He spies her like a siren, like a girl projecting womanhood onto her skin, in the soft, subdued light, like a foe turned friend, turned forgotten face amongst a crowd, lost amongst everything.

Fin is kind with his silence, with his distance. Still, he can't help thinking of her as a friend. Sixteen years ago, hell froze over, just for a second, and from the ice and dust and ash, Alexandria Henn was born.

She's beautiful, with wine red curls, bronzed skin, and copper eyes set into her skull like ancient, prized jewels. Fin doesn't think much of it; he knows her beyond her smiles, beyond her lies, beyond her perfectly carved self. It means nothing to him.

If Alex has anything that night, it's control. It's evident even in her laughter, in her movements, in her smiles. It's clear to all that she commands the air, that she has the eye of all in the room. Fin thinks it a wonder that such power hasn't yet driven her insane. Fin wonders if it already has.

There's a boy under her arm, masquerading under a face that Fin doesn't recognise. There's a girl to her side, laughing, smiling; her name is Olivia Wilkins, and she too is beautiful in the way that girls are. It's information Fin doesn't quite know what to do with, but he admires her — they are both liars by nature, and there is an unbreakable camaraderie in that.

Olivia looks at him, long enough to break the moment in two, to turn the room cold, to turn everyone else to dust. He knows she can she it — the way he's falling apart.

Fin turns away, and busies his hands with the matter of loading party food onto a paper plate. Stuttered, desperate movements send him darting towards the sliding door. He struggles with it for a moment, before forcing it open and revelling in the freedom of the late night air.

At last, he remembers how to breathe, as he sits himself down by the patio steps, silhouetted in the light protruding from the house behind him. He's no stranger to living as a shadow, but it gets him every time — fading away so easily into nothing at all.

Tonight, the world is lit up with New Year's parties, commemorated amidst the ashes of firework displays, and at last, brought to its knees by kisses and promises. Fin feels a little too broken, all too fragmented, in all the wrong places, with all of his important pieces tied together hastily with string.

Nevertheless, he gives in. He busies his head with easy thoughts and simple lies and swears to heaven and hell that it's enough.

"I thought I'd find you out here."

Only, in the silence, in his solace, behind the trenches, the battle still rages on — there's that voice again. Like an omen, like a circling vulture, it won't leave his head.

Attached to the sound, is a boy with legs so long that he moves in skips and leaps; a boy with a mind so fractured it's always spiralling — at any time in either or in fact every direction. He kindly disregards personal space, and slots himself into place onto the patio steps beside Fin.

"Should've known." He's all dark, greasy hair falling everywhere, and words too loud and too much for his tongue to contain. "You running off and hiding from everyone. Very Fin Placer." He laughs. It feels empty, lifeless, but fitting.

Fin doesn't think that this boy has the right to talk like that, to decide what to make of him, but he's unable to disagree with him. Instead he watches, as this boy, eternal, uncontrollable, immortalised by the moment, simmers down into the silence, and lights himself a cigarette.

Fin remains silent, twirling his thumbs for the sake of something to do with his hands. He knows that he dislikes this kind of company as much as he knows that he needs air to breathe, but he still can't quite get the words out. He excuses it as a byproduct of the shift in time. It's a new universe, a new year, and he calls this the limbo phase; the transition, between worlds, between people, between realities.

"Tom..." He says at last. Something inside his head likes to think that in the light of the new year he is a reinvented Fin Placer, with a reinvented Tom Wilkins to his right.

The boy perks up. He's all eyebrows and inquisition and thoughts wasted on Fin Placer. Although, he's hardly angelic, even compared to Fin; Tom Wilkins is a boy masquerading behind an overdrawn caricature of a man, with morals twisted deep enough into the earth to find the heat of hell itself. He's the degenerate brother, but in a degenerate family, he is perhaps the best of the lot. Fin pities him sometimes, when hope gets the best of him.

"What has Alex had tonight?" He asks, hoping for some truth from him, but they are all liars here tonight, and that's what has always brought them together.

Tom sits and thinks. He's hesitant, wavering, torn and fractured between a dozen allegiances. Tonight, Fin isn't the only one unable to live freely. Although, Tom's debts tend to be more of the material nature.

"You know that's Tony's business?" He turns his head to the ground. "I don't... I don't sell people drugs, Fin, I—"

"Don't say you're better than that." Fin shakes his head, disbelieving. "And you know. Don't try and convince me otherwise. I know that you know about him—"

"Shut the fuck up." Tom is quick, abrasive, tense. There's a sense of impending doom rushing through his veins. Even now, Fin dares enough to pity him.

Yet he doesn't apologise. He waits for circumstance, for inevitability to see this one through and heal their wounds. Tom waits with him too, though it seems like they're waiting for the face of the man in the moon to step out and smile at them. Hopeless, that's one word for it. They are waiting for the truth from a liar.

It's 0:30 when Alex stumbles through the sliding door. She's got a glassy kind of faded look in her eyes, yet still they brighten as they fixate on Fin. He draws out a sigh, forces his plate of half-eaten food onto Tom's lap, and gets to his feet, following her back inside.

It's a decision that he regrets immediately; the music is too loud, his head is spinning, and Alex is hanging off him like a precariously balanced ornament on a mantlepiece. But Fin's ego leaves no room for self-pity.

Nevertheless, he does his best to herd her through the crowds, searching for a quiet corner, desperate to sit her down and look her straight in the eyes, if only his eyes wouldn't work against him. In the end, the best he can manage is the upstairs bathroom with the door slammed shut behind them.

Taking a breath, Fin revels in the momentary interlude of quiet, or at least the best substitute for 'quiet' they can get. He catches his reflection in the bathroom mirror for the briefest of moments, yet upon meeting with a face he can barely recognise, it's decision he comes to regret.

The face in the mirror is all dark hair, messily cut short, and eyes a somber shade of uneventful brown, framed with eye-bags that seem painstakingly permanent. He doesn't think of the bruises upon his skin with any sense of meaning or purpose; he's instead consumed by their colours, with the way the blood vessels feather and burst beneath his skin. He regards them, in all of their shameful glory, as a simple reminder that he's still here, even if just for the moment.

Alex slumps down against the floor, with her legs sprawled out against the bathroom tiles. Fin eyes her from the bathroom wall, and wonders what part of his heart he might have to give to her to fix this.

"Are you okay?" The words fall short before they even leave his lips, but he doesn't have the heart left to hurry to stop them. It's a dreadful question, perfectly fit for a dreadful situation.

At the very least, Alex humours him with a response.

"Realistically, no, but right now I feel fucking fantastic." Her laughter, even as it bounces eerily off the bathroom walls, is intoxicating.

"Do you need to leave?" He tries again, doing his best to hold her gaze, well aware that he's playing a losing game, yet nevertheless determined to see it out until the end.

"Fin." There comes that laughter again, grating down at Fin's bones, having sliced straight through his flesh. "This is my house. I can't leave, I—"

The door opens, and a surprisingly sober imitation of Olivia Wilkins stumbles in. Tonight, she's all brown curls and falsified sophistication. There's a bright red lipstick stain on her cheek; Fin doesn't want to ask where it came from, but part of him thinks he can already guess. Intrigue alone propels her gaze back and forth between Alex and Fin, keen to unravel the state they're in.

"Hi." Alex grins up at Olivia. She's pretending again. Lying. Liar is her name and Fin wants only one day to grow the guts to call her by it. But in that moment, Fin feels anchored to the bathroom floor, as he labours over the notion that in truth, January 1st feels no different to December 31st at all.

"Olivia." Fin turns to her, desperation piquing his pride. He hopes only that Olivia Wilkins has enough kindness in her eyes to spare them something enough to get them through the night. "Can you keep an eye on things for a little bit? We're gonna go for a little walk around the block. I think she needs to cool off."

Olivia is reluctant, chasing comets turned stars across the piece of universe that haunts the empty air of the upstairs bathroom. She looks between the two: Alex and Fin, Fin and Alex. Fin thinks it only a matter of time, before the universe itself snaps, and they are all swallowed up by another black hole.

"Fine." Olivia Wilkins eyes them as they leave. Fin tries not to wonder whether she really believes that they'll make it back in one piece.

-

Alex is twirling, dancing off the pavement, as if she believes she is at home amongst the stars in the sky. She's swallowed stardust whole, and is yet to bring it up again, but Fin isn't naïve enough to yet believe it to be a miracle.

Fin isn't completely sober; it's fair to say that he's had a few glasses of champagne, but next to Alex's dizzied stupor, he feels nothing at all. Nothing, at least, besides the sobering ache of the asphalt beneath their feet. Beside him, Alex moves as if she's dancing the line between reality and dreams, as if her veins and made of nothing but stardust. Fin almost pities the illusion, instead of the girl under its spell.

The world is all out in colours and sparks; everywhere he turns, there is a celebration, a party, something. The realm of possibility is no object tonight, as the moon regards her subjects with a knowing smile. The dizzying, drunken night is inescapable; there is nowhere to lay a head to rest at 0:43 on January 1st.

Alex has always been a victim of her own mindless curiosity, and the reigning queen of her own manufactured narrative. As such, she extends her grasp out towards Fin, "What were you doing outside with Tom?"

Fin's astonishment is earnest. He's unable to believe that she'd been sober enough to notice, especially behind the hazy fog covering her eyes, surrendering the world to shapes and colours. He wonders at last, if this is all just another layer of the facade.

"I..." Fin stammers. Tom is a long string of questions to which he doesn't quite know the answers. He'd like to imagine that someone like Alex would understand that better than most, but she's a girl that Fin has never once managed to unravel.

"I think he likes you." She laughs, like it's a joke, like the possibility itself doesn't send a dark cloud looming over Fin's head, threatening to tear him to pieces.

Alex stops. Something within her snaps like an elastic band. "Shit." Her mind clocks in at last.

"You haven't told him, have you?" Her expression is indiscernible, lost to the darkness swarming in quickly around them.

"No." Fin draws out a sigh. He kicks at the midnight nothingness, trying to dislodge a rock or a stone, or perhaps to unearth anything at all. He wants something in the world to bend, to break, to abide to his will. But nothing does.

It's hard to feel real anymore.

"You need to do that." Again, Alex moves and dances with her whole body, from her feet to her fingertips. "Talk to people."

Fin makes a face. Sometimes it's impossible.

"But Tom's not..." He bits his lip. There's a right way to word this, and it's something that's escaped him, as the evening wanes away around him. Still, Alex watches him. She's purposeful, expectant, waiting. It's his turn.

"Tom's Tom," Is what he settles for in the end, hoping Alex will pity him enough to fill in the blanks for herself.

Alex's eyes sour. Her mouth dries. There's something like the feeling of a knife twisting through Fin's gut. He calls it guilt, but knows it has to be something worse hidden under a disguise.

She watches him through kaleidoscope eyes; inside of her still, everything is bright lights, and endless drinks, and mindless celebration. Fin thinks of the scene back at her house, of Olivia, of Tom, of everyone insignificant and in-between. He misses it, in retrospect, almost dearly.

"Tom's a dickhead, anyway." Fin draws a line under the situation. It's the easy way out, but Fin doesn't see any reason in making this hard for himself, self-pity hasn't yet deserted him completely.

Alex laughs. It's what she does best. She laughs and dances and jokes, and lives her life cooped away from hard feelings. There isn't a day that Fin doesn't wish he could do the same. Although, there isn't a day that Fin isn't glad he stands in his own shoes and no one else's. It's a frightful, weighted kind of conviction, but one he's learning how to deal with.

"Maybe you are too." It's a retort, by any means, but she smiles as she says it, seemingly rendering the sting non-existent. Fin aches inside all the same.

"But it's my business, really." Fin can settle with that, at the very least. "It's not up to you to decide who I should and shouldn't tell that I'm asexual."

Alex shrugs, like she's already forgotten what had been said. "Fair."

Within seconds, she advances along down the street ahead, once more, laughing, singing, living. She makes no haste in leaving Fin behind.

There are fireworks again, as the clock strikes one, but the streets look just the same as they did before. Even the air feels like December.

[END OF CHAPTER]

okay so. Just Another Impossible Something available now in full on amazon. it's like 230 pages long. its got words and chapters and everything. please drop a review if you pick it up and read it.

firstly i just outline my projects

Just Another Impossible Something — completed, available to buy

The Queen Of All Broken Things — 2nd draft, editing

Comorbid — 1st draft, editing

Because You Are Me — 2nd draft, editing

The Universe And All Of Its Constellations Stopped Shining For Me — 1st draft, editing

Summer, And Other Places To Hide — 1st draft, unedited, just finished

so you might say, thats a lot of books, and yeah thats a lot of books, and what i learned here, is that writing books is the easy part, editing them is the hard thing, but im going to focus on getting some more books out, because i really fucking love these stories and worlds and characters so much. they are so important, and mean a lot to me. and i want to share them with as many people as i can.

sorry if this is annoying being posted on multiple places, but i think you can understand that i want as many people to see this as i can.

thank you for supporting my writing, thank you for caring even just a little bit, without all this i dont think i would have gotten here.

bye again for now,

sef.