Before I leave for camp, I'm coloring and uploading a series of drawings called "High School OCs."

What in tarnation is that, you ask? Or didn't ask? Well, it all started after I finished this book, High School Confidential by Jeremy Iversen. In this nonfiction book, this 24-year-old guy poses as a high school senior in order to write about it. He transfers to a school in southern California in the middle of his "senior" year, gets accused by the other students of being a narc, and basically just snoops into his friends' lives and devotes several chapters to them.

By the way, I hate the general American high school counterculture. I'm just reading books like these this summer because I want to see if other people have the same opinion I had about high school.

As for my OCs, they come from a series of fantasy novels I'm writing that are not public domain because I might actually want to do something with them one day. These novels take place in northwestern Europe (think the British Isles and Germany) around the year 1450. Charlie McCormack, the clueless magic-prodigy protagonist, Keene Crippin, the wisecracking part-hobbit sidekick, Brigid Lachlan, the sarcastic tomboyish love interest, and Mildreth Flynn, the shy "sister" to Charlie, all star in these books.

Well, I got to thinking, what if they existed in our times? It made for a good character-building and drawing exercise. I recommend it.

Unless, of course, you hate high school.