In Real Life ✓

AFTERWORD

August, 2019

Hey everyone! :)

As usual, I am here to give you my final thoughts on the book. Long story short, I originally wrote this story back in 2017, right after I was done with the original draft of I Still Need, and it was originally only 15 chapters long. I wanted it to be a short story; to give Eve the final word, thinking it was going to be the one and only spin-off to I Still Need... well... (I totally didn't end up writing two more spin-offs haha what)

Anyway, the original draft of In Real Life was way too rushed, and I was overall not very happy with how it was written. Eve and Gilbert did not have the chemistry they deserved, and Felicia didn't have the proper redemption arc she (desperately) needed, for example.

I decided to rewrite the book when I got the time for it, and I'd decided to use NaNoWriMo to get it done, so November 2018 was gonna be the month! The original was around 30k words long, but NaNoWriMo's goal is 50k words, so I figured that would be a good indication for how long the improved version should be. But I don't know, man, something went wrong, so it took me a little longer lmao. I finished writing the final version in May.

So what did I change?

A lot of things in the original draft were very shallow and even more meaningless. The fact that Eve is asexual was already an integral part of the book before the rewrite, but I didn't really feel like I went into what it actually meant for her (and Gilbert) and kinda brushed over it, so I did even more research than I'd already done and wrote several chapters about Eve's view on it and how they came to a conclusion together.

I also took some time to delve a little deeper into Eve's friends and their lives, and Gilbert's Tragic Backstory™ hahaha—No, but in all seriousness, Gilbert's parents didn't even appear in the original, and Gilbert never really explained why his relationship with his parents was so bad, so that whole subplot felt... pointless. (Fun fact: most of the stuff about his parents, the house and the drugs was actually based on the life story of a friend of mine. I was very intrigued by the fact that I was not allowed to know anything about their parents, so I got inspired to write about it. They also can't cook for shit. They once somehow set a frying pan full of butter on fire???)

On another note, Felicia was a bitch for no reason at first, to be honest. After the issue with her brother and boyfriend was resolved, she kind of disappeared from the story and that wouldn't do, of course, so I gave her some relevance and involved her later in the story. Let's hope she's learned from her mistakes and doesn't go back to her old ways...

Also, I kept forgetting that Travis existed. I'm sorry, Travis. #PrayForTravis

And last of all, Leslie was originally not gay. The whole thing with her and Tony felt suuuuuper forced (I honestly don't even remember why I added it), so I went with it and made her come to the realization that she was only talking to him because it just happened to be that way—not because she actually liked him—and then I realized that Leslie the lesbie (which is Dutch for lesbian) sounds too ironically beautiful to ignore jjsdkfjJKJSFDK SORRY LESLIE

The next book, Faceted, is about Hugo's and Floyd's roommates, Mason and Kenny (and a bunch of other people). Hugo, Floyd and Dylan play a role in the story as well, so you will get to see them there, but I regret to inform you that Eve will not be returning... I'm gonna miss her too :')

I hope you enjoyed reading and thank you so much for all the likes and comments! See you in the next book!

Love,

Glyn

P.S. In one of my older author's notes, I said "my heart swells every time you asexual readers say that my description of asexuality is accurate/relatable. It's very hard to write for me (can't relate lol), so thank you for the kind words!" and that makes me laugh so hard now, because, all that time, I think I had just been... in denial or something? I don't even know. I actually related to Eve a lot, and it only took me approximately a million years to understand that I'm also asexual. Not that anyone cares lmao, but yeah, I am still so very grateful for all those messages! So thank you, and aces, unite! 💪