Only Time Will Tell (A Luberto Story)

Authors Acknowlegement

On August 12th, 2021, I posted my first chapter in a Lucafic that I named "Only Time Will Tell." To he honest, I'm not too sure why I chose this title at first. I thought it sounded cool, and it had a nice ring to it, so that's what I went with.

Over time, I've realized that the title I chose fit the story more and more as I progressed with the chapters and how that progression was paced. The events that took place in this book were, in a way, based on time alone. Time was the only thing that could tell what was going to happen next, as there would have been no way to predict what ended up happening to Luca and Alberto during the summer. Truly, only time could tell what wacky event was going to happen in each chapter.

I'd also like to point out that the majority of these chapters were not planned AT ALL beforehand. I would simply sit down, open Wattpad, and start writing whatever the heck I came up with. It's actually kind of funny looking back at it now, and it was definitely a fun experience just writing whatever silly ideas popped into my brain. The only major plot event that I ever planned ahead of time was Bruno returning; that was the only thing I was 100% positive that I wanted to include before writing the chapters. Other than that, every idea and event was something I came up with during my writing. So I guess you could say that Only Time Will Tell is an accurate description of how writing this story felt.

There were definitely some bumps along the road (let's not forget the time I took like a month long break lol). But I never intended to abandon the book; I always wanted to finish it off with a decent conclusion. And luckily, that's what I was (hopefully) able to do. It took longer than anticipated, but here we are.

Before I move onto the actual acknowledgments, here's some fun and some maybe not so fun facts about this story!
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FUN AND NOT-SO-FUN FACTS:

- In the original script, Luca's grandma was going to die. Yep, that's right. I was going to add that into the story. Luckily, I very quickly realized that most people would probably NOT like to see that happen.
-Hey, guess what? More deaths! In the original script, Ercole was going to drown and die after he was pushed off of the cliff by Bruno. However, I thought that killing him off wouldn't make much sense for his whole redemption arc. Also, it would be a pretty anticlimactic way to end it off after Ercole was slowly staring to seem more like a decent human being.
-The "Mysterious Letter" that chapter 3 talks about was brought back in the last two chapters. This was basically a last minute decision. It felt weird mentioning this "mysterious" letter early on in the story without somehow bringing it up later. So, I decided to add it into the story last minute so that we could at least tie it all together in some coherent way :).
-Officer Benedetti's name was based off of an officer named Luca Benedetti who was shot and killed while doing a search warrant. This happened earlier this year in San Luis Obispo, California. The article instantly caught my attention, not only because of its devastating story, but also because he shared the same first name with Luca. Officer Benedetti was named in honor of this fallen officer who died while on duty. It's horrible that things like these happen quite regularly to not only good-hearted cops, but also good-hearted people in general. If you're interested in reading more, you can check the memorial here: https://www.odmp.org/officer/25277-detective-luca-benedetti
- Giulia was originally going to have a love interest in this as well. I read through these parts and overall I felt that the chapters were way too cluttered, and it was difficult to develop two relationships at once while also making sure they flowed together well. It just wasn't working for me so I ended up cutting it. Instead, I just decided to focus on Luberto mainly.
-Any other questions I would be happy to answer! Just leave them down in the comments :)

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Only Time Will Tell was originally something I thought I would rarely involve myself with. At first, I didn't see much value in putting so much effort into something that barely got any attention. However, I realized that I shouldn't be motivated by the view count I get. Soon, writing Only Time Will Tell became an enjoyable hobby for me, and it's definitely been one of my most enjoyable experiences this year. I was originally shooting for maybe 10-15 chapters, but at 37 chapters + the epilogue, you can see I got a bit carried away lol.
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