About the Author

Avatar made in Papa's Cheeseria

Charli Keniley is an eighteen year old writer and artist who currently resides in Springfield, Missouri with his father and two dogs, Marmie and Romo. Charli has a strong passion for design and plans to pursue a higher education for a career in this at OTC and MSU. His favorite genre to write in is fantasy/fiction, especially horror-themed, psychological thrilling short stories.

Books for Kids!

The book I read in the library was The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams. 

The book has 55 pages. 

Key characters include: The velveteen rabbit, Skin Horse, the boy, Nana, the doctor, the fairy, and the real rabbits. 

The main settings in the story are: The toy chest, the boy's bed, the garden, the burn pile behind the chicken coop, and the woods. 

3 sentence summary: A boy is given a toy rabbit for Christmas. He takes it everywhere, and sleeps with it every night, until he becomes very ill with scarlet fever and a doctor says all of his toys must be burned to make him well again. A fairy saves the toy rabbit from the burn pile, and with the power of the boy's love she turns the toy into a real rabbit to happily live in woods for the rest of forever.

The book includes animal characters and does not use rhyme.

"Once you are real, you can't be ugly to the people who understand." -Skin Horse

Child's Play

The actions that make me feel the most nostalgic for my childhood are visiting places from my childhood, sorting through old, printed pictures at my mom's house, and playing video games that I used to share with my older brother.

When I was a child, my parents fought a lot. I don't remember the arguments in excruciating detail; only that they were very violent. Things got better for us after my mom left.
My dad has eight brothers and sisters, so family reunions for the Kenileys are always intense. Before my Uncle Marty passed, the entire family would throw huge barbecues at his house because he had a backyard pool. My papa would work the grill, while my cousins and I swam in the water until our fingers turned to prunes. Then we'd play Foosball in the basement until our parents dragged us out.

When I was a kid I had a few years where I had intense, out-of-the-blue nosebleeds. They would start out of no where, and blood would just continually pour from my nose for a good few hours before it would finally stop. Our family doctor excused it as allergies. Eventually I grew out of it.

Keeping it Real (Like Dan)

Three tips I would give to the parents of teenagers are:

1. Do not go through their room without permission. Just don't do it. You might find something you wish you hadn't, and your teen will be eternally ticked that you violated their privacy. 
2. Give them their space. If something seems off about your teen, and they're not being especially open with you, just give them some time to themselves. They may come around to sharing later, or they may not. An important part of forming strong trust is them not feeling pressured or forced to tell you everything.
3. Set limitations, have clear consequences. Make sure to have regular conversations in which you compromise on things like: curfews, date rules, check-in-times, and chores. Also in these conversations make sure you're clear on potential consequences for breaking the rules that you set.

Someone is a "hottie" when they can make me laugh, make me think, or bring something fun and interesting into my life. I'm a sponge when it comes to new experiences and love to be surprised. 

Something most people don't know about me is that I'm the caretaker of a disabled veteran. My father served in the Navy in Desert Storm. He broke his spine while serving, and as a result he now spends his days in a wheel chair. He and his last wife separated in 2012, and I'm his only child that still lives in Missouri. So I'm in charge of caring for him.

Some of the best pickup lines I've heard were: 

• "I'm not a photographer, but I can picture you and I together." 
• "Do you have a band-aid? Because I scraped my knee falling for you." 
• "I wanna live in your socks so I can be with you every step of the way."

Movie Quotes

(In reference to the increasingly gender ambiguous club-scene style) "1,000 years from now there will be no guys and no girls, just wankers. Sounds great to me." -Mark Renton in Trainspotting

"When I'm around you, I kind of feel like I'm on drugs. Not that I do drugs. Unless you do drugs, in which case I do them all the time. All of them." -Scott Pilgrim in Scott Pilgrim Vs the World.

Relationship advice to Juno from her father in the movie Juno.

-Julian "Frankenstein" McGrath speaking to the character Sonny Koufax in Big Daddy

"Reel" Life

I cannot pinpoint my favorite movie to just one. It usually varies between a select few depending on my mood. A few movies that I have consistently enjoyed over the years include:

• A Clockwork Orange
• Trainspotting
• Scott Pilgrim vs the World
• Big Daddy
• Blue is the Warmest Color
• God Bless America
• Juno
• The Outsiders 
• The Fundamentals of Caring

I don't usually care for sports related movies or modern Adam Sandler comedies.
My boyfriend is a manager at Vintage Stock, so we get free movie rentals. We watch a lot of movies.
I'm not picky about my environment for movie viewing, but I can't stand it if people talk or are on their phones the entire time.

The online survey said that I am:

• 33% Extroverted
• 33% Agreeable
• 50% Conscientious 
• 8% Emotionally Stable (Yikes)
• 58% Open to New Experiences

It also said that my reasons for watching movies were:

• Artistic: 85%
• Pleasure Seeking: 80%
• Socialization: 80%
• Boredom Avoidance: 70%
• Sensation Seeking: 65%
• Escapism: 60%
• Information Seeking: 50%
• Catharsis: 45%
• Aggression: 35%
• Nostalgia: 30%

If my life were to be made into a movie, I would want Brianna Hildebrand to play me, because I think we kind of look alike with my new haircut. A few major plot points would be:

• Jumping around from place-to-place as a kid because of my dad being in the Navy.
• My parents divorce and my mom moving half way across the country.
• Chopping off all my hair for the first time.
• My month long trip to France.
• Finding my dog in a parking lot when she was a puppy. 

I'm still not sure how the ending would go.

Extraordinary (Scare/Share)

She didn't ask me out directly. Her friend did that for her; the one with the blonde ponytail and the bouncy tits. "She says you're different from the other guys or something-" She fidgeted on the heels of her sneakers in the impatient way that girls like that do, "No offense, but I don't see it... So you'd better be a complete gentleman when you take her out. No creepy stuff."

Jennifer was a pretty girl, but only a few social connections away from being considered a plain Jane. She didn't have a lot of substance to her despite her studies and her mannequin-like looks. It was easy to tell her cliche romantic history from a few conversations with her. She always went for the bad guys - the chiseled jawline - no wonder she called my slightly pot-bellied stomach cute. The girl was desperate for a turn around.

A few days after we first became acquainted, I drove Jennifer a few towns out to a popular Hipster date spot - the drive in theater. The night autumn air was crisp, and the theater was playing a "Monster Mashup" the entire month of October. Nosferatu was playing the night we arrived.

As the movie drudged on, Jennifer and I would occasionally make chatter about how aged the production was or how the song on the radio would never quite match up with the scenes on the screen. 

"Do you think a vampire would really look like that in real life?" She suddenly asked, as Count Orlok made an appearance in a narrow doorway.

I just smirked at the absurdity of the question. "No. Of course they wouldn't."

Jennifer's interest was perked by the confidence of my answer, "Oh, no? and why not?"

"They wouldn't be that ugly." I quickly chuckled, "Haven't you seen Twilight?" I added, making more fun of the situation. 

Jennifer crossed her arms and gave a mock pout. She was obviously displeased with my dismissive response. "Well, I think a vampire would be a very ugly thing." She said with an underlying tone of seriousness, "Anything that sucks the life out of the living has got to be gross looking."

I raised an eyebrow, but sat in silence for a moment. 

Only the slightly off-station radio sounds filled the void before Jennifer cleared her throat. "Uhm..."

"Well what if you were on a date with a vampire?" I finally asked, "And you just didn't know it?"

Jennifer's eyes widened, but finally her face settled into a small smile. "Well... I think I would know if I were dating a vampire..." She whispered playfully, "Nosferatu has some pretty gruesome fangs."She leans into me suddenly and wraps her arms around my neck, "It'd be hard to kiss you."

I suck in a sharp breath, as my lips curl into a smirk. "See, Nosferatu and all these classic movies all have their unique twists, but they all share one similar assumed inaccuracy..." I lean in closer to her and whisper into her ear, "We don't feed through our heads."

At that moment, the giant mouth on my stomach opened up and ripped a chunk out of Jennifer's torso with it's rough, sharp teeth. 

Diamond (Photos of the Millennium)

It was a busy week when the wave came in,

Half the city was destroyed,

Half of the men didn't show up because they'd lost someone,

Mourning tends to drag down work ethic in that way. 

It was so strange,

Seeing street corners I'd known since I was a child,

Reduced to piles of salt stained rubble. 

We dug through the debris for days,

But rarely found bodies,

Let alone survivors,

We wondered how many had been swept out to sea.

It was on the fourth day,

When our moral was drained, 

And our arms were tired of digging through the building remains, 

That we heard you cry.

I thought it was a trick at first,

But as the other men began to take notice, 

We all jumped up and began to dig. 

When we found you, 

Nestled safely in a pocket just under a few rocks and a piece of ply wood,

You looked untouched,

It was remarkable,

A little diamond in the rough.