I'm Sorry
I'm an emotional woman.
I’m feeling very weepy today. I couldn’t cry all week for some reason. Then it happened today while I was watching the season finale of Love Island UK. My favorite contestant won. Well, I started crying before that when Mimi and Josh were reading their love notes to each other. Burst into tears out of nowhere. Didn’t help when Love Island showed the home videos of the final contestants’ families wishing them well from Whales and London. Continued to cry when the winners were announced, and for about five minutes afterwards. It’s great TV. Also, my hormones are raging.
I can cry freely since I’m single. I don’t have a boyfriend or partner anymore giving me a weird look asking why I’m crying and telling me how emotional I am. Rewatching Ned Stark’s last day on Game of Thrones? Cue the tears. Coming across Instagram videos of deaf toddlers hearing their parents for the first time? Forget about it.
I cried when I wrote the last chapter of Van Life, no surprise there. I was nervous to release it this past week. I thought, did I take it too far? The story. The outcome. Simply because I’m an emotional woman. If I were a dude, I don’t think the thought would even have crossed my mind.
It was easy to write the end. I could picture it so clearly. I wrote it the way it could have really happened, which is why it was so brutal. I tried to think of other scenarios, but the characters wouldn’t allow it. Reality wouldn't allow it. I’m not in charge of my characters or where the story goes. Once I’m typing, they tend to take on a life of their own. I think things will go in one direction, and they go in another.
I’m considering writing an epilogue for the book release down the line. Not your typical epilogue. I think Leilani and Tyler deserve that at least. There are a lot of layers in this book. Nuggets if you’re paying attention, even within the soundtrack I created along with it. Or maybe they’re completely obvious, and I’m too in it to tell.
Van Life will be up for a while and then I will be removing it from Substack, and eventually after I finish prepping Synth Noir for ebook and god-willing, paperback release, I will edit Van Life.
You guys got the first draft here. Normally, I would not be sharing first draft material like this (that was not the case with Synth Noir), but it had to get done. I didn’t want to leave you hanging for another year. A lot of editing needs happen. I’m not thrilled with a lot of the later prose as I was on a time crunch, but the basic grittiness of the story is there, which is what I needed at this point.
The finessing will come later.
Thank you to those of you that stayed for the entire novel, and those that came on board later. I hope you were entertained at the very least.
So what does this mean for my presence on Substack now that I will not be sharing any fiction in the near future? I’ve decided to make Substack the general newsletter for my author website. Newsletter as in what I typically write in these sort of life updates plus book release info, links to the blog, a humorous rant here or there, etc. I was flirting with the idea of leaving Substack (some technical aspects here drive me fucking up the wall) but right now it’s easier than dealing with MailChimp, or yet another platform.
At some point, I will be starting a new novel that I’ve had in my head for a while. I’ll be honest, I don’t think I will be sharing that one on here. It’s too much pressure time-wise, and takes away from the creative aspect. I need to be a digital hermit to get in the zone of writing a novel. The next one will be the third part, not in a series, but in a similar realm. Although Synth Noir and Van Life are unrelated, for me, the writer, they both come from the pain that was my 30s (please don’t take this too literally by what’s in the books—consider the novels long-winded metaphors), and this last one will tackle what I hope is, the end of this very difficult chapter of my life.
Anyway. I’m looking forward to having a newsletter on here and excited to actually publish a real book. Stay tuned for updates.