“I think I’ve just matured overall,” he added.

The problem, for Krohn, is that he’s still that 13-year-old kid in the eyes of many. And that, he says, makes him “absolutely annoyed.”

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“It really has gotten cumbersome having to go through the process of telling people what I’ve done over the past few years,” said Krohn. “I’ve tried to tell people, but it’s not as interesting, apparently. People don’t want to listen to me tell them I’ve changed.”

Those old memories sometimes come back to haunt Krohn, as when HBO’s Bill Maher recently included Krohn in a biting bit about young conservatives.

“I have no problem with what Bill Maher said,” said Krohn. “He’s funny. But all these people took it seriously instead of a joke.… It hurt me in the sense that I was compared to some kid who said that Obama is turning kids gay. And that kind of stuff is what happens. I have to explain to people over and over and over again that I’m not a conservative and I have my own ideas and I’m not just agreeing to everything that every conservative said. It’s very hard to break a stereotype like that of yourself.”

“I’ve been trying to tell people,” he added, “but it’s a lot harder to get stuff out there when your mind changes on things because a lot of people who supported you when you’re on one side of the issue aren’t really going to help you get your changing ideas out there when people still think I’m that conservative kid. … People don’t realize I was 14 when I wrote that book. I’m 17 now. In terms of my life, three years is a long time in a 17-year-old’s life.”

Krohn’s move away from conservatism posed two risks: First, the wrath of his conservative parents. (That was quickly and pleasantly overcome: “Neither of them were overjoyed, but it didn’t really make a difference in their respect and love for me.”) Second, the discarding of a surefire path to success within the conservative movement.

Krohn said that family and friends noted “all of the opportunities” available to him in the world of politics, but giving that up “didn’t faze me because I really didn’t want to do anything that would compromise my beliefs as an individual.”

As for what’s next, Krohn says he can’t help but remain a bit of a political geek, but he’ll never write a political nonfiction book again. Instead, he’s hoping to spend his time at NYU studying philosophy and filmmaking, while occasionally writing political satire.

And that’s what Krohn seems most eager to focus on: What’s next. Not what’s in the past.

“Come on, I was thirteen,” he said. “I was thirteen.”