Candor and Curiosity (A Slenderman Romance) [REWRITTEN]

Foreword

This foreword can be read by all readers, but is mainly addressed to those who read the first draft of Candor and Curiosity. However, you're free to skip ahead to the story if you wish.

After an ENTIRE YEAR of psyching myself out, I've finally managed to publish the first chapter of the rewritten Candor and Curiosity. Somewhere in January, I announced that there would be a rewrite and since then I've been working improving my writing so that this rewrite will be the final product-- I just don't think I have it in me to write this book a third time 😂.

Before I get anything else in this (hopefully) brief foreword, I wanted to explain why I thought a rewrite was necessary. 

I started Candor and Curiosity when I was fourteen years old. Crazy, right? Well, I'm an old bag now. I am nineteen years old and a college student as of September. My writing style when I was fourteen is hugely different from my current writing style. I felt that if I continued the original Candor and Curiosity, the inconsistencies would be really obvious. So I decided to just start over from scratch so that the book would be more uniform. 

The second reason I decided to rewrite Candor and Curiosity is because there was so much plot missing from the first thirty-five chapters I wrote in the original that it would seem weird adding them in later on. By starting over, I can now fully flesh out the plot the way I'd intended to. I can always introduce characters at the beginning that would've been forced to appear later in the original book.

The third reason why I felt I needed to rewrite Candor and Curiosity is that I started writing it before I moved to America, which meant a lot of the geography and culture was guesswork from my end. I believe in the original, Elizabeth once told her mother to take the exit on the left off the highway. Well, now I know that the exits are on the right! Ha. There are a few other mistakes like that in the book and they just really bothered me when I was reading them. Now that I've lived here for three years, I feel confident that I know all there is to know to not ruin your suspension of belief like that. And that brings me to my final point: the setting change. 

I thought it would be fair to tell you guys that I changed the setting of the book. Cheshire is no longer a city in Pennsylvania, but in New Hampshire (is anyone even surprised)? It took me five whole months to finally change setting. I was worried that it would've been too much of a change, and that I'd chase readers away if I switched states. But in all honesty, Cheshire is still the same. I just had to move it because it was in the wrong place. The geography and feel of New Hampshire was what I was imagining when I wrote the book the first time around. I just didn't know it at the time. I hope this is alright with you guys. 

I've moved the timeline up from the 90s into the 2000s, though it alternates back and forth. The book is now set in 2015. It's an isolated world though, meaning you won't find any of the real-life politics of that year in the book. 

The last heads up is the tense. After some deliberation, I've chosen to have the rewrite in the present tense. This might still be subject to change though, depending on how readable it is to you all. My aim is to make the story as enjoyable as possible for you all, since I've had it all to myself for four years.

All that being said, I really hope that this rewrite lives up to expectations. I'm not at the level of writing that I want to be as yet, but I'm trying very hard :) Again I want to thank everyone who's clicked on this book from the bottom of my heart. There'll be lots more appreciation to come.

So, without further ado:

Candor and Curiosity, Rewritten