A Guild of Moonlit Shadows (A KOTLC FanFic)

Our Homelands PART 2

Before we start the one-shot, I want to explain why it is so late. There will be some darker themes in my explanation, so here is your trigger warning. If you want to skip this and go straight to the one-shot, I won't be mad.

First off, the following two parts are the size of three big chapters, and that takes more time...

But the real reason is that I'm struggling. If you have followed me for a while, you may know I suffer from clinical depression, PTSD, anxiety, and more. It comes mostly in waves, and sometimes things trigger it, sometimes it just happens naturally. I was going through a really rough patch for a few weeks, and I learned something a few days ago that stopped everything for me.

I learned that on November 16, 2020, one of my childhood friends took his own life.

He was the kid everyone knew, who made everyone smile. We had an inside joke that I could never pronounce his last name correctly, and when I had no friends, he sat with me in the library now and then, just to make sure I was okay. I lost contact with him when we went to high school, though I knew he was still in the area. We saw each other at the occasional football game or party, and it was like nothing changed. But then I learned from a phone call a few days ago from one of our mutual friends about his decision. I never even knew he was struggling, struggling in the same way I do.

I've dealt with grief before in my life, but this is something I can't even properly put my head around. IRL, I struggle to emote properly and let people know just how much they mean to me, and I have that nagging thought that keeps gnawing away at me.

If I stayed in contact with him, if I let him know what effect he has on this world, could it have changed the outcome?

I hate the feeling of being powerless, of not being able to help or change something. But I know life is all about being powerless sometimes. A lot of my struggles goes into my writing. One of the ways is with Sophie. Last chapter, Sophie had a major panic attack.

That is because I write my characters as if they live and breathe just like us, and Sophie has been through shit. But in the original KOTLC books, she never showed any signs of her PTSD, and I grew tired of it. All of the characters just feel like cardboard cutouts. I want characters to scream and cry, to be angry, and have people around them who know how to help and heal each other. Because that is what real people need. And though my friend had that, it still wasn't enough to make him think he deserved to stay.

I'm still going through denial and this has only worsened my depression. Not only is one of my childhood friends dead, but I'm burnt out and tired from school and my home life. And I don't want to go back to the dark places in my mind that I fought out of. This story makes me so happy, and so do all of you. You have no idea how much I love to see you all enjoying the story of Amalia Hera Morretti.

 I see almost every single one of your comments and questions, and I try to answer all of them. Your theories make me smile as you all try to figure out the mysteries of this world I created. So you can imagine my surprise when when one of my readers contacted me, asking to create an AAD community book. It's called AAD and GOMLS Community, Assemble!  Which is the snazziest name I've ever seen. Though I won't create an AAD community book myself, this reader took it upon themselves to create one! So don't only interact with my book, but theirs as well!