*waves*

Life is short and fickle, you know?

I got some terrible news yesterday, the kind of news that puts everything in perspective. The kind that rocks your little world for a few violent,  torrid moments, like you're the island and fate is the towering tidal wave. The kind that makes you spend a lot of time afterward grateful that you were only vicariously traumatized.

That you aren't the one having to live through that reality, right in the very thick of it.

What am I saying?

I'm saying that despite it all, despite the love or hate or whatever else, everything is so inconsequential when it comes to the world you create around yourself, for whatever time you have. And I let myself get so upset about these words I have collected here, just full of flailing and tears and anger, that at first I wanted to feel bad about that. How small and stupid and selfish of me . . . but then . . . the things that bring you joy, no matter how small or stupid or selfish they might be, are the only things that might make your time here worthwhile. The little things that you love are the things that define you and I'm perfectly content to let my existence be defined by my words.

The ones here, the ones still stuck inside me, the ones I haven't even thought of yet.

So, yesterday was a complete loss. I was worthless. I spent the time reposting chapters, getting frustrated with formatting issues, fighting against time and energy and real life and readers, who plow through words faster than I can put them up.

---> The Other Way is fully posted and I'm putting the final touches on the PDF, just in time for Christmas. (Because I'm mf'ing SANTA, ok?)

---> Chalk, Mind The Gap and all of the outtakes are up as well, PDF in the works.

In the meantime - My head is being eaten up with original work. I only say this because I'm at a bit of a loss when it comes to Double Struck. Floundering is what I'd like to call it, but it's really more that the spark was snatched away in all the dirty din and dizzy mess that sprung up around me like a goddamn swarm of locusts and I just have not been able to locate it again. Like searching down a long dark hallway with your arms outstretched because you know there's a light switch somewhere, you're just not entirely sure where.

I'm still fumbling.

Thank God for Hadley Hemingway.

And let's talk about her for a minute, shall we? Because after I got that terrible news yesterday, you know who I called? Her. Not my mother. Not my sister or my friends. Her. How did this happen? This random, fandom friendship we created on a fluke that has now become so important to me that I reach out to her in times like that? I'll tell you how:

Because we're soul mates, I shit you not.

How do I know this? I know this because I picked her name out of hundreds for a reason. I know this because we can talk on the phone for HOURS, but a lot of that time is spent in comfortable silence as we work, just like an old married couple. I know this because we think things at the exact same moment. I know this because I don't make friends easily and she slipped on just like that old favorite pair of gloves. I know this because we call to check up on each other and I start to feel funny if I haven't talked to her in a couple of days. Her family puts up with me, both from afar and in close proximity, and my husband always knows who I'm talking about even though I jump from her Hadley moniker to her real name and back again without even blinking.

She has my manuscript.

She also has my heart.

XXOO

HBM

Okokok,

*takes a big, big breath*

I'm trying to remember to do that. Breathe. 

First, I can't even begin to describe the amount of support that I've gotten in the last few days. Not only from readers, the ones I knew about and the ones I've never heard from until now, but from other writer's here as well. Inboxes flooded. A tsunami of love that I damn near got crushed under and I can't even begin to answer everyone separately. All I can do is say thank you. From the bottom on my mushy, fragile heart and from the very depths of my indignant anger.

I think we can all agree that as soon as you've decided something, you'll be shown the light. 

I decided (based on some sufficient fucking evidence, mind you) that the fandom didn't want me. Turns out the haters really are few and far between. Like crumbly little bits of mortar holding up a giant wall of bricks that all say something like "you can do this." 

"Please don't leave." "We need you here." "I need you here." "Don't ever stop writing."

When brick walls fail, it's not the bricks. 

It's the mortar. 

I've been Hadley Hemingway's neediest child this week, and even got her RL boy-child on the phone ON HIS BIRTHDAY because he's more of a tech genius than the both of us combined. That's love right there, I can't even explain. But she's helped me to come up with a plan, one that not only honors my fanfiction for what it is, an exploration and a minor side journey along the way to a much larger adventure, but also allows me to move forward. 


There are a lot of things I wish I knew about this fanfiction thing before I started. A LOT of things. I wish I knew about the love and the hate. About the veiled backstabbing and the downloading. I wish I knew that my words would be taken so lightly, so heavily, because I might have done it different. I might have been much more careful with them. But I did it how I did it and now I'm going to do it my way again. 

A little bit better informed this time:

I will be reposting my stories here, but they will remain here and nowhere else. 

I guess if you're intrepid enough to go about downloading each and every chapter separately as they post, then by all means, be my guest. Once the story is complete, a PDF will be made available here and you only have a very limited number of minutes in your lifetime. And when your minutes are up, that's it. No more. If you're ok spending a bunch of those precious minutes doing that sort of thing, that's your call. The same goes for the other stories, because as of now, the plans for those are the same. A PDF option and chapters to read online. I'm no tech-genius and I can't suit myself and my words up in armor, all I can do is offer you the versions I would like you to have and hope that you'll play along.

The bricks will.

The mortar won't.

But bricks are heavier and mortar is really just fine-grain sand if you think about it. 


So to you, dear readers: Be the brick. The bricks are what make this community what it is. The bricks make walls that hold up roofs. Hold down floors. Frame out windows and let the light in. You make a sheltered spot for us to keep our stories, away from the rain and the wind. Warm and dry and well fed. Without you, it would be a cold and lonely world for us writers. We love you and we need you to be strong for us. We need you to hold yourselves up high and support us because no matter what, no matter who we are or what we are writing, we are trying our best. And sometimes, our best is so hard come by, so hard to reach and we need a pile of bricks to climb on top of to give us a little boost beyond the self doubt and the endless shuffling of words. 

Seven in the morning, and I'm rambling about bricks.

The important stuff to know:

- I'm still here. I'm not leaving.

- I'm still writing. I'm never gonna stop.

- I'm posting Chapter one of Double Struck here today. I'll do what I can to post one chapter a day until I'm caught up, and then I'll try to step back to my once-a-week (or so) schedule. This story has been a rocky road to start with, but through thick and thin, it was just meant to be twific. It was meant to be here. I have got to finish writing it or I'll always feel like I failed it somehow. Once the story is complete, I will offer the PDF here, so again, decide what you want to do about your hourglass of minutes, ok?

- I'm gonna do the same for the rest of it. Pretty PDF and the entire story posted here. It's not gonna come all at once, I have a real life to deal with, but it will come. Be patient with me, and I'll be patient with you. I'll give you my downloads if you give me your thoughts. I need it, the outside perspective. Tell me how I'm doing, what moved you and what didn't, because it's so fucking hard sometimes when I'm thirty chapters deep and wondering if what I just wrote is even going to make sense to another person, much less make them feel something. I need to know from you if this is working. If the words are working. Please. Because otherwise I'm just in this for myself and even though that's some of the truth, the last week has shown me that it isn't ALL of the truth. 

Because you're here too.

If I could give the fandom a hug right now, I would, but y'all gotta hop in the shower first and wash off the mortar. 

xxxxoooo

HBM

Thanks for the tragedy. I need it for my art.

This was posted as a new story on my ff.net profile, only because it was the best way I knew how to reach the majority of my readers in one fell swoop.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This is my new story.

It’s a story about give and take. Push and pull. 

Puppy dog love and pit bull hate.

About a girl and her computer and her wild imagination, which will never just fuck off long enough for her to get a spare thought in edgewise. It’s a story about a joke, her first fanfic written in jest, then about a challenge. A sidestep. Stretching her fingers and her words for the pure fucking thrill of it. The linguistic exploration of it. Playing with plot lines like there was nothing wrong with it, molding characters into everything they shouldn’t be. 

She was pretty fucking brave there, for a while. 

Now, this girl, let’s talk about her. That’s something that should be done, given the conjecture, don’t you think? Let’s set the record straight. Yes, let’s. She’s a Pisces who lives in the mountains. A fish, surrounded by rock. She paints too little and smokes too much and covers herself in tattoos she doesn’t want to explain to you. She dreams in technicolor and her favorite words are the bad ones. She is married to her high school sweetheart and, yeah, they’ve tagged their fair share of walls together. She climbed rocks until she tore out her shoulder and quoted Fight Club at her wedding. She’s turning thirty in few months and still feels as soft and vulnerable as a baby most of the time. She grew up without a television, she hates peanut butter, and she likes to think she’s tough.

But she really isn’t. 

She didn’t really know what she was doing here so, she just went for it. Some might call that courage but, really, it was just dumb fucking luck. Or stupidity. Or genius. Who knows? All she knows is that she can’t stop writing. She’s always written, and she winds up a little crazy inside if she goes too long without stringing letters together like beads on a string. That’s definitely called a compulsion, she’s sure of it. She loves these stories, in ways that she can’t even express, in ways that no one will ever understand, because there’s too much of her in them to unravel the giant, tangled mess. Too much unresolved angst and tormented trauma that she’s pulled out from underneath her skin. Too much of her own hurt and anger and fear and curiosity taken out on words that she tried to pass off as fanfiction. 

Her time here has taught her a lot. 

It taught her to write a story, how to round out an arc and how to dip her head into a character. It taught her not to be so damn stubborn all the time, to let the characters just run with it. It taught her to follow them, even when it was scary. Especially when it was scary. It taught her to breach her barriers and to connect with other writers, ones that she secretly and shyly admires and respects, all of whom are doing things here that elevate fanfiction to entirely new levels. Her time here taught her to lay it all out on paper but, she missed the class on how to bite her tongue, which may have been the most important lesson. It taught her that some people will just take and take and take and that nothing will appease them, not even her appetite or her sanity, and that she would wind up starved and insane if she let herself. It taught her to hold on tight to those who are in it for the good, and it taught her that she just cannot control everything.

Just enough that she can begin to feel ok again. 

She has been slowly compiling her fics into PDFs for a while now. Call them ‘ongoing projects.’ Mostly for herself. These copies include the beautiful banners that were made for her by people who are far more talented than she is. They include all of her selected outtakes and the other removed material she chopped at the last minute. The photos and songs that she used for inspiration. Scrapbooks, sort of, and they’re kind of beautiful. She loves them. And those are the copies that she wants you to have, not something you downloaded off ff.net with all the typos and weird formatting. 

Not a copy off a copy off a copy. 

Her version. In its full glory.

She can’t make promises. These are called ongoing projects for many reasons, and one of these is reality. Her blog, the space she’s using as a mid-ocean island pit stop, is where these PDFs will post, in whichever order she deems worthy because she’s fickle like that. At any given date, because she’s hard to pin down, even on a good day. She needs a little patience, mostly with herself, but Double Struck just might see the light of day at some point. Somewhere.

She gets it. 

These PDFs will eventually fall into the hands of people she doesn’t want to have them, the plagiarizers and the haters, but there’s nothing she can do about that. Nothing, except rest content in the knowledge that when they do finally sit down to read her fic, they’ll understand what all the fuss was about. 

And she shouldn’t tell you, she knows that she shouldn’t . . . but, fandom, her heart hurts. 

Maybe more than it should. Because she’ll kind of miss you, most of you, the ones who have followed her around from story to story. She’s sorry for being such a shitty player, for never really replying to your reviews and maybe she should have done a little better at that. But she read them all, each and every one, and most of you made her cry at inopportune times, or laugh out loud in public. 

Most importantly, above all else, above anyone else, this experience taught her that the only reason she started down this path some three odd years ago, was so she could eventually find Hadley Hemingway. Right now, in this moment and for the rest of the moments ever to exist ever, she is all that matters. 

Because there is a future. 

An HEA, even if she never was all that great at writing those. 

She’s still writing. She’s still dreaming, and she’s still taptaptapping stories, Hadley’s giggles and love and fancy red pen cleaning up her mess as she goes. She’s not sure how it’s gonna work, because she’s still feeling achy and violent and bruised all over and everything hurts if she moves too fast, so she’s moving slowly. Like a caterpillar. Cocooning. 

She plans to be brilliant on the other side. 

She hopes to see you there. 

XXOO

HBM

Could be a nail in my coffin and I don't need another one

Jesus. Fuck.

Well, today sucked a giant asshole. I cried fourteen times at last count, and most of that was as I slowly went through each and every chapter of each and every stupid fanfiction I've ever fucking written and demolished each and every single one of them.

Right down to the goddamn drabbles. 

Right down to the first sentences. 

Sobbing. 

Let the record show:

- I really liked it here. A lot. I had fun, for a while at least, but people ruin everything. Fanfiction is like communism: good in theory but totally fucked when people get their dirty little fingers all over it. 

- The fandom is a bully. There are bright spots, yes, but they are a little tiny fish outrunning a giant, moldy monster from the bowels of the scariest parts of the ocean. When it starts getting personal, when I'M the egotistical bitch who deserves a giant 'fuck you' for trying to protect myself and should just shit down, shut up, and stop whining -----> I'm out.

AND THE MOST IMPORTANT THING OF ALL:
- If I was going to put the time and effort it takes into publishing a book, the blood and sweat and tears (and that's AFTER the actual writing) I'D PUBLISH MY OWN DAMN ORIGINAL FICTION. DUH. There is much more of that in my computer, and it's better than anything I would ever consider putting the twilight stamp on. In complete layman's terms: If I'm gonna be known for my writing, it isn't gonna be for the fanfiction. 

Thanks for the final nail, fandom. 

It's been quite the journey.