Final Author's Note

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Well, you've just finished Queen of Asgard and let me say, as a writer, getting here was quiet the challenging journey. Before I get into that though, I want to first thank you, the reader for getting this far. Whether you just showed up or were here when I started the story in 2016, thanks for sticking with Suzume and I, we're happy you were here for the journey!

I first began this story in November of 2016 under the title How To Love A God and started out with the intention to stretch my writing muscles. Romance and contemporary fiction aren't genres I often dabble in. Don't let the works on my profile fool you; I've had the most practice in high fantasy and I wanted to give something else a try. And besides that, I wanted a story that showcased a group of diverse women-not just women who looked different from each other, but who came from different backgrounds with different values, goals and beliefs. I wanted these women to compete but compete with class. To build each other up and respect their differences without looking down on one another for not being like them.

The reason I wanted that was simple; I felt it was really missing in fiction.Often when I would read stories that featured a large cast of female characters, I'd find myself running into mindset of "any girl who doesn't value what the strong female character does is weak and stupid" . This bugged me a lot as I've been lucky enough to grow up among incredible women, many of whom had different dreams than I did and truly, they were not less important because of it. So that was a big thing I really wanted to do here and I hope it came through. But even though I was so passionate about all the characters in this story, the story itself took ages to finish.Part of it was the creative challenge of reworking Loki's character arc (which majorly changed the entire story) but a bigger part was some personal struggles and I feel like you deserve to know why I took so long to get here.

 Truthfully, the last year has been very hard for me mentally. I made the choice to change majors and this, while the right choice for me pushed my education farther back. So, instead of graduating as I had planned, I was back at home again, working minimum wage jobs as I tried to stock up enough money to pay for an additional year of school. The stress of it didn't help my writing process, nor did the stress at home. My brother was home as well and he's had problems in his life, namely drug addiction and so his presence at home created a lot of stress as he struggles with his sobriety.

Then 2019 rolled around and that came with it's own set of challenges,  most notable was the loss of my infant cousin and having to end a four-year long friendship which while toxic in nature, was still really emotionally draining and hard.  After all that, things were normal for a few months until trouble things up again. December of this last year, my father was diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer right before Christmas. I don't think I need to explain why this was difficult. The start of January 2020 wasn't much better; my younger sister rolled her car and (thankfully) survived the accident but to say it was terrifying was an understatement. A week later, my 77 year old grandma who was staying with us over the holidays fell while taking a shower and broke her ribs on the tile three days before my father was due to undergo surgery for his cancer. As my parents were tied up with Dad's health concerns, Grandma's care largely fell to me as we got her transferred from a hospital to an assisted living facility as she was too unstable to go home.

Put simply, the recent times have been incredibly hard and it burned me out emotionally. There were so many days where I'd open my laptop and stare at a blank screen, scenes in my head and my fingers unable to convert them into words. I felt terrible letting you guys down, going back on the goals I'd set for myself but I couldn't find a way out of it. It was a struggle to even do things I needed to do, like completing tasks at work or washing clothes.

Now please, don't freak out, I'm doing okay. I've started to see a counselor and my loved ones are doing alright. Most notably, my dad's surgery was a success and he's cancer free now. Things still aren't what I'd call peaches and cream but  life doesn't have a pause button or a fast-forward. And it shows you how many wonderful people you have in your life. And you guys? You were some of mine. The patience, love and support you showed my writing brought sunshine into my life during some really cloudy days. I'd like to thank all of you individually but I'm afraid I lack that kind of time but even so, please, just know how thankful I am for all of my readers. Old ones, new ones, silent or active-you all made my life better whether you know it or not.

And I'd be a horrible person if I didn't include one shout-out in this, my OG Wattpad buddy, Sarah, a.k.a  _Palen. Sarah, you've known me since I was fifteen and were one of my biggest cheerleaders at the earliest days of my writing and in the years since, you've also become one of my closest friends. Your friendship, both as a writer and as a human being is one of the greatest blessings in my life and I'll never know what I did to deserve it but I thank God every day I have you.

Well, if you've made it to the end of this lengthy author's note, I'm really impressed you did and you deserve a sticker. So with not much else to say, I guess there's only one thing left:

Write on! :)

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