Not Another High School Love Story

A/N

Hey, guys! It's me again. Feel free to skip this long-winded A/N where I'm pretty much just gonna ramble about questions/comments/parts of the book I feel compelled to address/expound on.

First off, let me say how immensely proud I am of what I accomplished with this book. If you've even taken a peek at my profile you'll see that this is not the kind of thing I would usually write, so I was very apprehensive about going so far outside of my comfort zone to write teen fiction, but man, I'm so glad I did.

And I have to say I achieved everything I set out to do: the one thing I most wanted to portray in this book was the grey are between right and wrong, and I think I nailed it. I am so amazed to see how you guys interpreted the story—from those of you who understood Jonah and cheered him on, to those of you who thought he was too flawed and unrelatable. To the people who thought Grace was justified in how she acted, and those that thought she had stepped over the line. Some of you never really trusted Brent again, while others loved him. For every conflict in the story, there was someone on each side of the argument, and that's exactly the story I wanted to tell. Why? Because it's like Ms. Montgomery says to Jonah in chapter 27: "It's nobody's fault. We're all just people, doing the best we can."

I love that. It's so easy to tell a story where there is a winner and loser, where there's someplace undisputable to assign blame, but we all know life's not like that at all. It's so much harder, and so much more rewarding, to tell a story where there are no villains, only victims. I mean, hell, some of you even found ways of humanizing Marcus and sympathizing with Madison, and I think that's great. Still, there are a few things I wanted to touch on, so here goes:

CHARACTERS

Lilah: Nothing really important here, I just wanted to put in my two cents that Lilah is my absolute favorite character. I thought she was a superstar even before she took Jonah in. I mean, come on, she's like this wise old jedi who sees everything and makes it all better. She was actually the very first character I created/fleshed out for the novel, and I had such a clear vision of her in my mind, which is probably why she has a bit more detail than most of the other supporting characters.

Marcus: This one took me by surprise, and I'm so glad it did. When I sat down to write teen fiction, I was so afraid of perpetuating clichés that it seemed impossible to find a place to start. So, inevitably, I realized I could just lean into it, I figured I could use clichés as a nice set up to draw people in, while be able to maintain this air of dry satire throughout the story. That said, I based Marcus off of a typical bully; he's mean because he wants to be, unreasonable, seizes any opportunity to hunt his prey, etc. Somewhere along the way, I guess something must've changed, because the general consensus ended up being that most of you felt there were some underlying reasons for his actions. Like I said, I never considered it, but my favorite part about being an author is how my own creation—though fastidiously outlined and mapped out—can surprise me. I like the idea that Marcus is struggling with his own demons, namely the surfacing of bisexual feelings. If we see his character again, I would love to dig deeper into it.

Queen: Alright, so I have a lot to say about our arrogant, self-entitled, little twink. First let me point out that his very rough, base model was molded after...me lol. In high school I was very much like this; I dressed fabulously, was very straight-laced, had a wide friendgroup that was unrivaled in its diversity, and I even had the same sort of 'safe zone' mentality. I wasn't called Queen, but I did actually have a nickname that I started getting called by almost constantly—Denmother. Idk it was just a cute little concept that I liked that I felt would parlay well into a story. But unlike Queen, I was not out at the time, and I certainly never tried to out anyone else, but lets talk about his personality, because I know it might be a little difficult to understand.