A.J Riley

I've been writing my entire life (15 years at the least), and have never gotten anything less than an A on my writing assignments. I have won multiple small poetry competitions, and have participated in many writing events. I'd say I'm very advanced for being a teenager, and I'd also say I'm incredibly reliable to get jobs done on time, and with little to no mistakes. I take pride in my writing and will try my best to give you the most worth-while experience I possibly can offer.

Examples:

Excerpt from a short story: "I died in the most beautiful embrace of death. He smelled like gunpowder, felt like a bullet, and looked like the chamber of a colt my mother had kept hidden under the stairs. 
             Death was beautiful, the perfect one to meet at the end of such a murky, rusty life that left its imprints on the pills in my stomach and the bullet in my brain. 
            And while death was beautiful, he had his ways of making one hell into another."

Prologue from a story I wrote: "I was left to stare at a patch of grass, my eyes unwavering from the ordinary ground that lay beneath my feet for seventeen years. Every prickly sensation that brushed against my ankles was forgotten as my mind tried to draw an alibi for why I was standing near Kyle Sander's dead body and why Riley sat at my feet, holding his head in his hands and shaking, crying, spitting as he cursed himself for what he had done. I knew, my brain saw it, every motion, every hit, every bloodied knuckle, it was all stapled into my mind, glued to the back of my eyelids, leaving me to force myself not to blink. I knew what had happened, I just refused to believe it. But if there's one thing you can never forget, a memory that is so attached to you, that feeds off every horrible emotion you ever felt, it's that your best friend since kindergarten just took a life, and he expects you to save his."

Excerpt from a Non-Fiction I wrote, "Do Video Games Cause Behavior Problems?" : "To say that video games aren't involved in certain crimes is false, but to say they are the sole reason, is just an outright lie. In 1999, a very famous school-shooting, the Columbine Massacre, was blamed on video games, this was because the two shooters, Klebold and Harris, were large gamers and fans of some very violent video games such as, "Duke Nukem, Wolfenstein, and Doom," (Vgpwn "Do Video Games Create Violence?") This case even managed to get to court because of the parent's misery that their child had committed such a crime. According to an article by the BBC, "A total of 25 companies were named in the lawsuit and the group was seeking $5 billion in damages." (BBC, "Columbine Families Sue Computer Game Makers") Unsurprisingly the case did not manage to hold up in court because both, it couldn't be proven, and it was based on this statement from the lawsuit, "Absent the combination of extremely violent video games and these boys' incredibly deep involvement, use of and addiction to these games and the boys' basic personalities, these murders and this massacre would not have occurred."And if that were not enough proof that bringing video games to court is not admissible, "-a similar lawsuit filed in the wake of a 1997 school shooting was dismissed when it came to court in April." (BBC, "Columbine Families Sue Computer Game Makers") It is clear that there was a link to the video games since they did end up following it almost like a script, but to say that the game caused their behavior is completely arbitrary. A comment underneath The New York Times Article (Nizza, "Tying Columbine to Video Games") By Kris Jackson sums up the reasoning of the court fairly well, "Columbine was not the fault of video games, except perhaps incidentally. Other people get "hooked" on games or other activities, have them withdrawn, and live through it without killing people. Still others break a shoelace and kill people over it." which is a case stronger than the basic defense, “this inanimate object made me do it.”