Lights Out • 1 • Formula One ✔️

Almosts - Author's Cut

Alyssa's journey on the motorsport road is far from over. After all, she has yet to win a world championship - why stop here?

When I hit 100k on this book (I'm so fucking grateful for all of you for reading BTW), it was suggested that I compile a list of things that I almost made happen that would contrast the storyline I have now. Some of these won't be much of a shock, whereas I'm hoping that some will surprise you.

I've only made a list of ten here and there are certainly many more 'almosts' but these are the biggest ones that I can remember/find. Let me know your thoughts to each one!

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1. I was originally planning on making Alyssa start her season at Toro Rosso.

I'm really glad that I didn't or else you wouldn't have seen the fierce rivalry between Max and Alyssa throughout the season. Also, I wanted to put Alyssa in a car that had the potential to do well and it didn't make a lot of sense to have the sister team of Red Bull beating an actual Red Bull. There was also the argument that everyone on the team would know her identity, and therefore Max and Dan would, too, which would ruin the whole dynamic for what I initially had planned.

Obviously I've had to greatly improve the performance of the FI car in this alternate timeline, however this is kind of explained in the description of my story. There wasn't enough stories surrounding the team in my opinion and I used to really support them... until Lawrence Stroll, but I'll get to that later.

2. Max and Alyssa were supposed to be friends for a while.

This is probably one of my biggest regrets when writing this book. Obviously there was the flirting in the first chapters, however I had initially planned to keep them as 'just friends' until the Monaco weekend at least. This changed simply because people wanted to see Max and Alyssa together as this book was intended as a Max fanfic. I gave into your suggestions and rushed things which, as you can see in later chapters, was ultimately their demise as a couple. I'm not blaming you, if anything it's me for not being able to follow through with at least one plot. Max and Alyssa deserved better. Trust me - it isn't over between those two.

3. Alyssa was supposed to have the pregnancy, not Kudzai.

This one might be a bit of a shocker for you guys. In my first draft of my plan, this was one of the major plot points. It would've definitely thrown a spanner into her work and people's opinions on her would've certainly changed. I would be forced to have my character decide between her child and her career, which would've ended up being her career. When it came to writing it down as a chapter, something didn't seem to fit and so I altered it to Kudzai. I found it much better to deal with all the issues and stigma surrounding unplanned pregnancies. It also brought up several other potential plot points, hence the whole 'when do you want kids' conversations and the need to provide.

I think Alyssa has had her kid-filment for the book. To make up for it, I included her babysitting Teddy, her brother, and also Daisy. I'm sure when Kudzai's baby comes along she'll be babysitting them, too.

4. Marcus was initially intended to succumb to his injuries.

When I was doing all of the research around all of the brain injuries and reading up on some reports on similar injuries sustained, the survival rate wasn't in Marcus's favour. I was debating over this for weeks before eventually deciding that he was going to be okay. In a way, I regret this. I feel like I could've portrayed the true dangers of motorsport and how they impact the people around them. It wasn't explored in enough detail as I would've liked and I can only apologise to you. The main reason why I decided to change it was because I couldn't deal with the consequences. The pain of losing a loved one would've impacted so many key characters in my story and it would've been difficult to write them all in the stages of grief. It would've especially impacted Alyssa and her performance and I simply wasn't prepared as an author to carry that pain into the next book and beyond.