Sorry.

The following will be about me and this book. Just a little behind the scenes action. If you don’t care about any of that, then this chapter isn’t for you. The story is over.

This is L. A. Sirius. Well, not really. That’s a lie. Of course that isn’t my real name. I’m a bit similar to Sarah, and I need to work on that.

Well, this certainty was a journey to write. Man, I hope you liked the story. It wasn’t happy and it didn’t leave either of us with a good feeling, but I enjoyed it. It’s my first book so I made a million mistakes and then some. Sorry about all that. But, personally, I’m proud of it. It came along nicely despite some writing flaws. I think the general story, plot, and characters turned out nicely.

When I came up with the idea for the story, I really wanted a way to use word play to explore deeper into a character's mind. I thought the idea of having ‘Delusions’ was quite nice. It’s an interesting concept I wish was explored more.

Me and my friend have very conflicting ideas on our taste in entertainment. I really like psychologicals and sad stuff, but he likes to have lots of fight scenes and just awesome stuff. I hope this story was able to effectively combine the two.

The characters I made are relatable to me and I hope you can relate to at least one of them too. While my life is very different from hers, I related with Sarah a lot on an emotional level. Because of my connection with the characters, I was genuinely sad writing the ending and the events of this story. From the beginning, I had decided on how I wanted it to end. I knew exactly what the final scene would entail, yet I still felt terrible writing it on paper. I nearly changed the entire story towards the end because of my attachment to the characters. I hope I could inspire the same feelings in my readers.

From the beginning I wanted my audience to relate to flaws in the characters and sympathize with them so that I could end it all in tragedy. That’s just how I like my stories, sadly. I feel that when there’s a happy ending with a lesson to be learned, nobody will take it seriously. Although it may just be seen as edgy nonsense, I really want to push the different themes by making you yell at the mistakes each character makes. I feel that it’s much easier to take a message to heart if it hurts.

I’m so sorry if you don’t like that type of thing, though. I hope that you don’t hate the story because it was sad. Even if you did hate it for that reason, I’m glad I could invoke the right emotions.

My one regret with the book, other than average mistakes a first-time author would make, I wish I had explored a few of the characters more. I cut them out of the story before developing enough. The book definitely could have been longer, but what can you do?

I may as well mention why the last chapter was delayed so long. Sorry about that, I had trouble getting myself to finish the story. If I didn't have a deadline of May 5th for the contest, it may have taken me even longer to write. I'm a big procrastinator. I felt that when the story finished, it would all be over. Towards the end, I started to feel pressured into writing the chapters too. Despite having so few viewers, I felt I'd lose them all if I took too long. If I write another book on this site, I'll be sure to finish it before posting any chapters.

I don’t mind bad ratings, I actually love them if they are accompanied with criticism. So, if you dislike my story, please write me a little review. It would mean the world to me. If I decide to continue writing, it’ll help me out a ton in my new projects. And, if you did like my story, a review highlighting your favorite parts would also make me happy.

Anyway, that’s enough rambling, thank you all for getting this far. It means a lot.