𝕥𝕙𝕚𝕤 𝕤𝕖𝕒𝕤𝕠𝕟 || 𝘢 𝘱𝘰𝘭𝘢𝘳 𝘦𝘹𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘢𝘱𝘱𝘭𝘺𝘧𝘪𝘤

merry christmas from a.b.

Dear readers,

The last 500 words of this story were incredibly bittersweet. On one hand, I'm finally done! I can go celebrate having written my first novella. On the other hand, I'm done. What should my next project be?

Most of us here are authors, and I think we can all agree on how hard it is to let characters go after you spent so many sleepless nights poring over their pages. Agnes Gaines, and truth be told all of these characters, will hold a special place in my heart forever. There were many things in this story that were incredibly important to me, and that will stick with me forever. I hope you found something in this book that will also stick with you. At the very least, I hope it sparked a bit of Christmas cheer in you.

As always, a major thanks to Sarah, who is always my biggest supporter. And to be honest, all of you guys were great supporters and I can't wait to spend the next couple of weeks going through and responding to all of your comments. I couldn't ask for better friends.

OK now that all the obligatory stuff is out of the way, let's get to the fun stuff shall we? I present to you, a list of my greatest posts and thoughts and stories about writing This Season, in no particular order:

- This would've been finished a day sooner, but my cat literally wouldn't let me remove my hands from his body to type. 

- There was an internal argument over what term to use for a buggy. I call it a buggy, some people say shopping cart, some people say shopping trolley. It was a whole thing. This legit set me back ten minutes.

- When planning for the end words of the tickets, I had ideas for the first trio. But then I lost them, so I had to rewrite for new words. I still, to this day, have no clue what the words were gonna be.

- Half of this was written between the house of 11 PM and 2 AM. I scanned through it but I am not editing all that out. You guys are smart, figure it out. 

- There was a moment where I almost invited the word 'peggings', as a combination of leggings and pants. 

- Alternate name suggestions for Felix Lamarie, as submitted by my keyboard and autocorrect: Feli, Feliz (that's kinda funny though), and Mr. Laramie.

- Half way through writing this, there was a centipede on my window sill where I had my desk. Set me back good hour, hour and a half as I attempted to kill it. Scariest thing I've ever done, not gonna lie. 

- Half way through writing this, I lost my smoke detector. 

- Most of what I listened to while writing this was either Christmas music or rock (Staind, Shinedown, Whiskey Myers). I blame this for the cardboard sledding scene.

- Chapter Four was my favorite chapter, I thought it was super funny.

I could honestly go on forever. It was such a trip writing this, and I can't thank any of you enough for sticking with me and trusting the process.

I just wanna dedicate this to Toby Stephens, he really just pulled me through on this, he's an amazing guy, he really inspires me and I just really want to make sure he knows that. 

Haha sike you thought (I love him, but his REAL dedication will be in one of my original novels, not a fanfic). 

For real though, this is dedicated to Sadie, my sister, and Tuna, my kitten. To Sadie: Fly high, sweet girl, Merry Christmas. To Tuna: I know it's been three months, but I still cry over you, and I always will. Every pet in this story made me think of you. Hope you're running alongside Artemis, catching mice to drop at her feet. 

Merry Christmas, you guys. 

A. Bradley