You know, I don't usually do this sort of thing. It's also awfully strange to be capitalizing my sentences when this isn't even a formal chapter, or anything, but hey. It makes me sound like the adult I am (I'm . . . twenty-one. I know. It scares me too). So, uh, here are the answers to your questions? I guess? Sponsored by the coffee I'm drinking.

☾ ⋆*･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ:⠀ *⋆.*:･ﾟ .: ⋆*･ﾟ: .⋆

GENERAL QUESTIONS

HOW DID YOU COME UP WITH THIS STORY AND WHAT WAS YOUR INSPIRATION?

          There was a wonderful day in July where I had the strangest dream. You know, like how Stephenie Meyer came up with Twilight back in the good old days. The big difference is that her dream was about the meadow scene itself and my dream was about me, sitting in front of my computer, writing a certain scene. It was a HP fanfiction. For the record: I don't support JKR or her endeavors, much less her views (trans rights are human rights).

          I don't write fanfiction (if you want to read HP fanfiction, check out Noelle hepburnettes and Simone's simonexsays accounts). I also don't ship the characters involved in that dream. When I woke up, I liked what I remembered about the plot; a canon couple had split up, like, four years after the war and half of it found another character at a muggle bar (I know, so original. Not) and they just made small-talk, but the way they spoke to each other seemed to point towards a previous connection. Long story short, Mime ended up being COMPLETELY different from that dream.

          Anyway. I had been meaning to write about characters who are older than me for a while (Finn from Triangle, for example, is a year older than me, being the youngest-oldest character I have, if it makes sense; however, she was born in December and I was born in June of the following year, so there are only six months between our birthdays. Since I don't have time to write that book . . . yeah) and I also wanted to try writing Chick Lit. So I took the plot from the dream and changed it all, but the thing about old flames remained.

         I like writing about writers. Really. There's Elliot (from avery./Until the Day), Lincoln and Rowan (from Counterfactual), but they're all different. Michaela was never meant to be a mean girl, especially not as an adult (she's 27 by the end of this book), but I wanted her to keep some of those traits from high school because, like she said, she had to grow up basically on her own. She didn't really have people to point her towards the right thing to do or the right way to act and, though people should be independent, she was . . . a little bit too much. I like writing about flawed characters. Michaela and Lincoln were flawed from start to finish and their relationship has never been perfect. Ever.

DO YOU HAVE ANY WRITING TIPS?

          You'd be surprised. I don't.

          I don't because, while there are some universal tips (i.e. READ A LOT, write small excerpts every now and then, make sure you have good grammar blah blah), the way I write might not be the same as other people do it. I just sit down and force myself to do it, which is something you definitely should not do.

          Still: WRITE ABOUT DIVERSE CHARACTERS. Write about diverse characters, not to fit a quota or check off diversity points from some list, but because the world is beautifully diverse; books have certainly gotten better in that aspects, where not every single character is white, cisgender and/or straight. Not all of them are super rich. Not all of them are healthy. And it's okay. Write about PoC. Write about LGBT+ characters. But do your research.

HOW TO STAY ON SCHEDULE AND NOT GET SUCKED INTO WRITER'S BLOCK? HOW DO YOU STAY MOTIVATED? DO YOU WRITE BEFOREHAND OR WRITE AS YOU GO?

          I force myself to write. That's it. It's awful, but I currently have four ongoing books so, if I'm not working on a specific one, I'm working on another one of them. I'm insanely busy with college at the moment, which is terrible timing considering Nanowrimo starts tomorrow, but I try to save at least an hour per day to do some writing.

          I stay motivated by writing about things I want to read. I like what I do, even if I don't want to follow a career in writing (dude. PSYCHOLOGY), and it makes it so much easier to write things you care about and genuinely like, which was the case with this book in particular. I love Triangle with all I have, but the chapters are MASSIVE (I know, my fault) and I just don't have time to write it at the moment. I know there are plenty of things that can affect your motivation and I know a lot of writers who have lost it despite deeply liking their work (i.e. thanks to plagiarism, which I've also been a victim of and ended up not writing anything for nine months over it back in 2014-2015), but I'm speaking in a more global vision of things.

          Honestly, it depends. If I'm motivated and have free time, I write and, therefore, end up with plenty of stock chapters; I had those for UTD because it was my Camp Nano project for July 2017 (my goal was 25k? 30k? I can't remember, but I finished July with 46k words), but it was rare to have them for Mime.

☾ ⋆*･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ:⠀ *⋆.*:･ﾟ .: ⋆*･ﾟ: .⋆

STORY QUESTIONS

THE FLOWERS

          I KNOW I'M SORRY I'M AWFUL FOR HAVING FORGOTTEN ABOUT THAT. Anyway, there's a pretty simple answer.

          The flowers are from Michaela's parents. They thought she knew they were the ones sending them, hence why they never signed the cards or ever mentioned it to her, but still. If you send flowers to someone, SIGN THE DAMN CARD.

          Basically, she talked to them on a Friday, mentioned she loved getting flowers from Barbra's team (which, at the time, still happened), and they thought "hey, maybe we should do the same to show her we care about and appreciate her"; the flowers were a way of them trying to make up for all the times they weren't there for her as she was growing up, like how kids get expensive gifts when their parents get a divorce, for example. Their flowers started arriving on Monday.

          They didn't know the flowers from Barbra had stopped coming, as Michaela was still getting flowers anyway, and they thought she was getting two bouquets at a time. They just thought it was a nice gesture and the dates matching was a coincidence (but stranger coincidences have happened, I think). 

THE BABY

          Ah, yes. The Linchaela baby.

          Michaela wanted to name her Brie for obvious reasons. Lincoln feared they might get sued.

          Since both their names are sort of long, it made sense for them to pick an equally long name because of consistency. You also have to remember their upbringings; glazings and I were talking about it back on chapter 28 and realized this is going to be a really spoiled baby—look at her parents! And grandparents! And aunts! And godparents! With that being said, the Tate-Calloway baby has to have a fancy name. 

          Elizabeth Tate-Calloway just sounds nice.

WHAT HAPPENS TO MICHAELA AND LINCOLN?

          A bunch of good stuff because it's what they deserve.

          Lincoln has just published 4W and has to go on book tours to promote it, but Michaela has her job at Serotinal Magazine (not to mention she's, uh, pregnant) and doesn't join him. They keep in touch while he's gone, obviously; the book sells well, fans demand a sequel, he refuses (mostly because it would mean he'd have to throw Michaela and, to an extent, Beverly under the bus but also because Dylan and Vanessa's story is over) and he eventually comes back.

          You bet they get married. Absolutely. They have their issues, but they're never serious enough to make them go their separate ways all over again (please no I can't deal with the angst) and, besides, they know better now. They talk and know how to ask for help from the outside when it's needed instead of relying on it to patch them back together if anything happens. They learn how to deal with each other and themselves, especially now that there's a baby involved (note: they're not staying together just for the baby!!! They are very much in love and want to stay together because they're good for each other).

          Long story short, they have their happy ending together. They could, obviously, get their happy endings while not being together, but that's not how I wanted their story to go. To me, it felt right to have them end up together, after all they've been through and after all the character growth.

          Lincoln's cat belongs to his mother. He just baby-sits for it every now and then.

WHAT HAPPENS TO GINNY AND ROYA?

          I like to think Ginny sorts things out with her parents, especially with her mother. Mentalities are hard to change, especially when they've already grown roots all over the brain (and it's not even a matter of first impressions . . .), so their conversations are long and frequent because Ginny has done nothing wrong—she's in love with her roommate, who happens to be a girl.

          Roya tries to not get involved, unless Ginny specifically asks her to, because things can get ugly really quickly in these cases (speaking from personal experience), but you bet they have each other's backs through thick and thin. I said this was a fluffy, cheesy romance story and I want everyone to be happy at the end! So these two also have their happy ending together (so do Lennox and Jillian) and travel around the world every now and then.

WHAT'S THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE PRINCESS SAVING HERSELF LINE? HOW DOES THAT TIE IN TO MICHAELA'S STORY?

          For starters, that particular line was originally inspired by a book called The Princess Saves Herself in this One by Amanda Lovelace. I've always thought that was a fantastic book title and, if there's anything I love writing about, it's about people who save themselves. Really. My book avery. revolved around that, with Elliot tattooing 'save yourself' on his arm (even though he died at the end anyway). I then decided put a twist on the 'you're going to have to save yourself' saying (not the title of Amanda's book) to make it more personal and to fit into the story (if you have known me for long enough, you know how much I truly love that saying, with it being the official tag line for avery. and, partially, for my own life in general). There are two paths:

          Dylan from 4W (Lincoln's novel), whom you met on the epilogue for this book, as it was the epilogue for that book (after Lincoln mailed it to his agent), was a video game designer. You did not know this because you never got to read 4W, but it doesn't matter. So, my dude had played loads of video games, especially those of the Super Mario sort, and he met Vanessa while standing in line to buy a video game on release day. She was the one who told him someone should design a video game where everything happens as people think it's supposed to, with the hero fighting monsters while looking for the princess, but they only find out she's the real hero all along at the end of the game.

          Except there's a game which is sort of like that (Super Princess Peach for the Nintendo DS). Nevertheless, Dylan took her idea and decided to work on it, much like Lincoln decided to write a book about Michaela.

          Michaela Tate was born with a silver spoon. She did what people expected her to, often coming off as arrogant (though we all know she's the softest thing ever as well) and seemingly giving off an aura of superiority. Though she carried some of these mean girl traits with her to her adult life, being treated almost as a modern life princess (think *sigh* Blair from Gossip Girl but on a much, much smaller scale) because a) her parents are who they are; b) she has always had that power and c) she made a name for herself, she underwent a lot of character development throughout the book.

          She quit a job she hated, deciding she was done with proving a point to her parents as the only reason why she worked at UD—besides that internship—was because they thought she deserved to have more and better opportunities that anyone else just because of her last name. She could have had so many things handed to her thanks to her last name, but she said no and fought for everything she wanted—getting into Yale, getting an internship at UD, landing a job at Serotinal, building a friendship with Lennox, repairing her friendship with Ginny, having a healthy relationship with Lincoln, making sure her daughter is healthy and taking care of herself.

          You know Michaela has a tendency to do things by herself. Hell, she almost decided to raise her daughter on her own (which wouldn't be entirely fair to Lincoln, but that's another story). It was only natural for her to patch herself up after the break-up, after the fall-out with Ginny, after the Beverly 'scandal', after finding out she was pregnant . . . you get the point. Though she's much more willing to accept help now, she saved herself. She's the princess and she saved herself.