After finishing the first book in the Terrible Time series I started to plan out numerous other topics to tackle. I decided to take a story from my childhood and make a book around it. Well, to be fair, it wasn’t from my childhood but rather, from a friend’s. I was story-adjacent.

At any rate, I remember this particular event causing my friend quite some distress and, though I’ve changed the details of the event, the main thrust of the story and its eventual resolution remain mostly the same.

The second book in the Terrible Time Series is ‘Mary’s Terrible First Kiss’. It relates the story of a young woman with a massive crush on one of the boys at her school. During her grade 7 year one of her classmates throws a party that Mary is invited to. As youths that age do they start to play some kissing games like ‘spin the bottle’ and ‘7 minutes in heaven’.

Through the intervention of her friend Mary finds herself in 7 minutes in heaven with her crush. She feels a rush of excitement as the unbelievable happens – he starts to kiss her! Mary feels a rush of euphoria as she gives herself over to the moment…but the moment doesn’t last. As they kiss the young boy slips his tongue into her mouth. Mary, extremely surprised, has a completely normal, if unfortunate, response – she bites down.

The boy runs out into the main room and exclaims that he’s just had his tongue bitten. Mary is extremely embarrassed and runs home. Dealing with the fallout of her disastrous first kiss requires the help of her mother and thinking outside the box.

I chose this topic because it is such a vivid memory in my mind of my own youth. First kisses can be great, terrible, unexpected, difficult, exhilarating and life changing. Sometimes all at once.