Thread:GokūBlack10/@comment-1149803-20140807001342/@comment-28861328-20140807023428

Yes, I want to be an author and teach literature at the college level. For awhile, i thought doing something medical was my thing, but I was lying to myself. Reading and writing are my passions and always have been.

I don't have a title for it yet, since I suck at naming things. Right now its has a working title, "Across the River". Its set in a fictional country, which is divided, almost down the middle, by the namesake of the book: a very large river. On either sides of the river are two feuding nations, which have venomous hatred for each other, and that forbid their citizens from associating with anyone on the other side. War is expected to break out literally at anytime because the people of both nations have that much animosity towards each other.

Into this setting the story begins:

The story is about two boys who grow up in villages on opposite sides of the river. As children, they often ventured out, as boys do, and played on the shore of the river; which is how they got to know each other. Even though their parents warned them of associating with anyone from the other side, the boys, in their childish innocents, eventually end up bending the rules and become very close friends over the duration of their childhood. That all changes when their parents discover that their children have been sneaking around behind their backs and playing with one another by the riverside.

You can see how the story goes from here.

Both sets of parents forbid their child from ever going down to the river again, and, for the main character, Jonah, it seems as though he has been forced to lose his best friend. That is until war finally breaks out between the two nations and the two boys, now teens, meet each other for the first time in a long time, on the battlefield. From there, the story follows how both former friends deal with the ideological divide that separates them. Are they still friends, or do they allow the hatred from generations past dictate their actions now?

The story explores how societal norms affect the upbringing of a child, how it affects friendship, and the moral of the story is that just because society says its okay to hate someone, for any reason (in this book, its an ideological divide), doesn't make it right. Simple, but society these days still hasn't gotten that.

The main character is Jonah, who is born an only child, to impoverished parents. His best friend, later turned enemy, is named Kade. Kade is the oldest of five siblings and, in stark contrast to Jonah, brought up in a very wealthy family, which only serves to further the divide between them. The story is centered on them in their quest to find the reasons that brought them together in youth, rather than focus on the differences they've allowed to push them apart.

Cheesy, I know, but I've enjoyed writing it so far :3