"Blooming Stone". Hey everyone, welcome back to another Heart of Horror. I am one of your hosts. My name is Bo. With me, as always, the abulient, the literary, some might even call bookish, or perhaps even sexy, librarian-esque. "blooming Stone". Kate Pollock. blooming? Stone. Um, thanks, sure, hi. Well, it's funny. It's kind of ironic that you called me bookish librarian, because the first word I don't know what it means that you used Right, I'm clearly not that bookish.
But no, actually it's funny that you mentioned that because I just got off interviewing another author for my new show, plug Plug. Yes, and what is that called and where can people find it? It's called Kate Anjou's book reviews. Ornju is about A-N-J-O-U it's my middle name because I just I don't know, I don't know why I just didn't want to use my last name on it and it. You know, I had this joke where it's like it sounds better than Kate Pollock tracks book bollocks.
But apparently everyone thinks that that's a better name. It's pretty good. It's pretty good. But no, I went with Kate Ornju's book reviews and I've done all the logos and I'm now like four episodes in. So it's that one, I'm afraid, guys, but my next one maybe I'll say Kate Pollock tracks book bollocks. But yeah, so you can find that. You can find that in pretty much all your normal places, but I also have a YouTube channel what what?
Yeah, so it's just Kate Anjou's book reviews and, essentially, if you want to follow me on socials Facebook, instagram and TikTok Instagram and TikTok have little full stops between each word, but it's just still Kate Ornju's book reviews.
So go follow me and stuff on there, because it's all about promoting and reviewing indie books, primarily fantasy and horror, although I'm open to most things, but like it's, a lot of the indie authors I know are in those genres and it's my kind of like favorite genre and I also interview the authors of the books. So yeah, so there's like two little episodes where there's one's a review and then one's like an interview.
So I just got off interviewing the lovely Seren Farangray who does dark fantasy romance. So lots of lots of spice, lots of gore, lots of demons. It's great. I think, most importantly, how do I get on that show? You ought to write a book. Have you written a book? You've written a book, haven't you, I have written a book. You haven't. You can go on and say it.
But it's been a long time and it almost feels like that would be cheating, although I've been you know, the itch has certainly been there of late and I think I may do that over the summer. I think that may be my summer project, just to write a novel. Okay. Well then, yeah, you have to follow me and shit, and then, you know, slide up in my DMs. Sure, that's. That's what I'm known for. You can just pop me a message and ask me like an old person. Yeah, yeah. Like you ask, you ask my kids.
They will tell you that I'm pretty much the sliding into DMs type. Oh, yeah, yeah. They're like look, we don't know much, we're still, you know, just young people, we're just ninth graders. Yeah. But one thing we do know for sure is that Mr Randsell is the coolest person. Yeah. That has ever lived 100%. I thought they need to know. They don't need to know anything else. You know information will see them through life.
Okay. So I you know I was making fun of myself, of course, because my kids think I am an old nerd and and rightly so. That's. That's not a lie, that's a pretty accurate representation of me. But I did have a genuine, like a moment where a kid was genuinely impressed by me and, at the end of the day, like you can't really give a shit because they're teenagers and they don't know anything. So like their opinion of you can only matter so much, otherwise you're, you're fucking finished.
No, I definitely seek validation from teenagers. I ain't going to lie. I do to an extent, but at but also you have to understand that they're fickle. Yeah. And so you can't like like a teacher goes through that thing that a parent does where the the teenager is like too cool for you. Yeah, but it happens all the time. Like it's just now and she's five. And it really sucks because you're like I know that you want to hang out and have fun and talk, but it would seem like you, you would.
You would seem unusual to do so. But the point being is that I'm at my desk today and a couple of the kids are doing some, some other shit nearby, like drawing on the dry race board and stuff, and because you know I don't actually teach anything, I'm just like, look, I'm just keeping you off the streets for 45 minutes, that we had had a lot of testing today and blah, blah, blah. So we weren't like it wasn't a regular class.
But one of the kids mentioned one of the girls, I will say for the time being and for the sake of argument in my class who recently came to me and was like hey, I want you to call me this other name because I'm kind of going through a journey right now and I was like oh, okay. Fucking whatever sounds great. I hope it's. I hope it's bringing you happiness and peace. Fuck yeah.
And so you know, I've been calling her by that name for I don't know, you know if you weeks now and she wasn't there today. But one of the other, one of her friends, was talking about about her and was like, oh yeah, they're not here today and and use, you know the new name, and so forth. And I was like, oh yeah, I've been meaning to ask about this because I suspected that this was the case. But is she now like, is she identifying as non binary?
And they were like, yeah, you know, at this point they preferred their pronouns to be they, them, they, them. And I was like, okay, got it. I didn't. I felt awkward about asking them directly, but now I know that and I got it, okay, registered, and it one of the kids like genuinely was taken aback by it and was like so, like you don't care.
And I was like no, no, no, whatever, you know, whatever makes them happy, then that's what, that's what we'll do, like, it's not my position to tell them one way or another. You know what their pronouns are, that's their business. And, and they're like so many of the other teachers were like Well, that's not what it says on your, your file, or whatever. And I was like oh, that fucking sucks. But it's also Tennessee and I get it. And but I had.
But it was a nice month where like a kid was like, oh okay, so not like I'm a cool teacher, but of like, oh okay, you're a decent person. Yeah, there's a respect. Right, yeah, it really was a nice moment of like oh, okay, so we're safe with you about this stuff.
Okay, good, that's so important for kids to feel that way about their teachers, Like it's more in fact, I would say it's more important than the educational side of things like, at least in terms of a child's wellbeing is just to feel like that they have that safe space, that there is someone in like outside of the family, that they can trust and talk to when they maybe don't want to talk to their family.
Cause, even if you have the best relationship with your parents, there's still something you don't really want to talk about with them, especially at that age. So the fact that you know you, you've displayed the type of person that you know they can, they can trust with that kind of stuff and know that they're going to be respected that's so fucking huge. Like, yeah, like that's so fucking huge, that's awesome. Yeah, I mean, look I, that's bare minimum shit, right, no it?
absolutely is, but unfortunately we live in a world where bare minimum isn't even being met. Yeah. So half the time. So you know, a little goes a long way. Yeah, yeah, and you know what? What you said is true. I think that, more than like all the grammar and shit that I try to teach these kids To varying degrees of success, but beyond that, it really is just about like, hey, here's how you be. Like, just not an asshole, yeah.
You know, like right now, you're at your ninth grader, you're a freshman in high school and you're an asshole, and that's not entirely your fault. Like that's hormones and so forth. Like there is a reason that, yeah, like there, there is a reason that you know, these kids are assholes for the most part. Some are, but, but most of them are you know, but it's that's just, that's fucking how it goes.