cool and unusual punishment

Well I Guess That's Finally Over

In a way, Deja Vu reminds me a lot of The Cities Have Fallen. While it was a lot less... on the nose than its predecessor, it's probably been SINCE The Cities Have Fallen that I've been so close to a story of mine. I expected to get over it as I moved into other projects, but to be frank, Deja Vu has been almost haunting me. The settings were heavily inspired by my hometown. I walk through those halls, past that bedroom (it's not mine, believe it or not), daily. I pass the church, the bike trail next to a highway, enter the school, obviously not everything is geographically the same, but I was really lost on how to write people so I drew heavily from my own experience. No one in the book is based on people I've known (for a change) but I certainly feel like I know everyone in the story.

I apologize for the rant earlier-- I've enrolled myself in a difficult curriculum and when compounded with writer's block, some serious social stress, and this gray fog that sets over everything at around this time this year, I find myself stuck with who I am and my expectations go to war with my utter lack of motivation. I write to escape this, in a sense, but also because writing makes me feel like I can be that person. If my characters can go through worse and make it, then I can push myself through whatever life throws at me. I only need to be so brave and when I come home, I'll always have this to prop me back up and give me something to fight for again.

It's probably going to take me a while to get over my first non-Dreamland original project. It's a big step for me--just over a year ago, I didn't think I was capable of writing an all-human cast. Just one year ago, I wrote a certain spoiler-y scene with Evan (252 Dunahan street) and knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I would be writing this book, but I had no clue when. Now that I've finished (the actual story was completed Labor Day, including the author's note, but I did a lot of editing), it's been just over a year since I thought, almost on total whim, about how great it would be to have this book where these two twins are trying to save the world but have no clue that the other is stuck in the same dilemma...

I hope more than anything to someday have the talent to rewrite this book, thread together everything the narrative dropped, and maybe have something, within five to ten drafts, that I could put somewhere. That person is probably years away from me, as I stand, but regardless of what happens between now and then I'm proud of this story, I love these characters, and I'm so happy to have had the opportunity to share them with you. 

Thank you for everything.