The New American Dream

Afterword And Acknowledgements

Hullo :D

It is I, the author.

Okay, I don't know whether that sounded as badass as I thought it did. Either way, hi.

So the story's over now, huh?

As I'm typing this I'm getting weirdly emotional about it. I've spent months on this, it's the longest I ever worked on anything and also the longest story I've ever written. Scrivener tells me it's just over 100k words and that just blows my mind. I wrote that.

I started writing at the beginning of May this year, the story formed in my head in the middle of April. So you could say I've been working on it for five whole months. That is crazy to imagine. Almost half a year.

If you're wondering, I've got a sequel planned. Some scenes I have even already written :D They popped into my head and I had to write them out, some of the groundwork for them was also laid here in this book. So I guess you could say it was good that I already wrote a bit of the sequel, that way I could subtly work that into the first book.

I don't really know how long the second book will be, I doubt that it will reach 100k words again but who knows.

I will give you a little teaser about what you can expect from the sequel. Obviously Allie still deals with her mental illnesses, that doesn't just go away as easily. We'll dive more into Allie's relationship with Dan, her sister, her family and the rest of her friends, things will start to heat up a little eventually >;) Also we'll find out a bit more about Dan, his past and his family, especially who his dad is. And then, obviously, there is the band. Will it succeed? Will it flop after all? Who knows? (I do >:D) Lastly, maybe you can expect the Homesick Soldiers to have recurring roles, to have more importance, but you'll have to wait.

The story largely already exists in my head, and I'm taking the rest of the year to write the first script. I don't want to rush myself in any way, so I'll leave myself the last three months to write it, if I need more time then fine. Expect the first edited chapters by the start of next year (unless I finish the first script way early).

But enough about that now, I will get to the acknowledgements now.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:

First and foremost I want to thank my tumblr friends for putting up with my endless posts about this story. I tried to keep them to a minimum, but hey, it's my tumblr after all ;)

(By the way, no one I'm mentioning here knows that I will do so, I hope it's a pleasant surprise :D)

One of the biggest thanks goes to my friend Vamp. They said they want to read the story, I'm not gonna be mad if they don't, but I want to thank them anyway for putting up with me haha. They probably got the most of my insanity about this, so like, thanks bruh :D Love you haha :3

The next big thanks goes to tumblr user hi-im-sorry for consecuitively reading, commenting on and voting for my story. Very much appreciated. They're also the first person to make fanart for this story, for any of my stories really, and I'm still freaking a little bit out about that. Thank u <3

Another thanks goes to tumblr user paypalroyalee, I know she also read the story. Idk how far you are and at what point you'll read this, but thank you for reading anyway :D

The last thanks to my friends will go to tumblr user x-ma-cherie-x, she told me she was gonna read it, thanks for doing so :D Again, no idea when and if you're gonna read this, but thanks for the support anyway :)

I really hope I'm not forgetting anyone here.

And finally, the last thanks I have to give out goes to the Palaye Royale boys, Remington Leith, Emerson Barrett and Sebastian Danzig (alternately Serotonin Boy™ or Serotonin Seb™ lol). If it weren't for them this story would have never existed. I got into their music at the start of the year and the story formed in my head around their music. As previously mentioned I based the Homesick Soldiers off of them, so yeah. If they weren't a band and wouldn't make such amazing music you'd have never read this.

Okay, this has been going on for far too long, I've been writing this for half an hour trying to find the right words. Writing is hard man.

I hope you enjoyed my story. If you've read until here: congrats and thank you for doing so.

This support means everything to me <3