I remember my inspiration was watching some movie where the war nurse fell in love with a patient or something to do with a nurse at least (I really have no clue what movie it was, but it also may have been Downton Abbey, I don't know), and going "oh NO," and then I remember writing most of it in a haze of way too much research and also lack of sleep. Also, I HATE cliches. Spite and rage at grand cliches absolutely fuel my creative process.

An Expectation was I think the first and so far only thing I've written about WWI, or that has a male protagonist. It also was where I first covered sexual assault in something other  than implication.

Like Chasing Rose, An Expectation also had elements of my actual love life, but I assure you this one turned out very differently. If Marion is me and James the boy I was interested in at the time, that's really the only parallel between fiction and reality. The boy in question was intimidated by me and we disagreed on a lot of things, even though there was nothing necessarily wrong with him, so we split without ever really being together. Also, he got mad at me for cutting my hair. James Abbot would never do that because he is a precious cinnamon roll, too good for this world, and I firmly believe he supported the suffragette movement. That is all. Thank you.

The friendship between Martha-Grace and Marion is literally one of my favorite things to exist. It's just... so easy, so casual, and they read letters from boys in the same way modern girls read text messages from boys, they talk about boys and about life in serious and joking ways, they work together and tease each other and it's really wonderful. Martha-Grace Fielding is one of my favorite supplementary characters ever.

Also??? Marion and James??? I absolutely adore the letters and stories he sends her. He's so vulnerable and caring without losing a sense of humour, but he's also very human. This story feels like flowers to me. I know there's dirt and muck, but right now all I can see are roses and daffodils and aren't they lovely? The little stories were fun to write, too. The dress that the princess sews was based on my prom dress I wore at 16 on my very first date to the boy James is partially based on. It's a little cringey now I think on it, but who cares? I didn't keep up much of a journal at the time, so I'm going to just say that this is the best chronicle of 16- year- old Megan.

On an entirely different note: this story was meant to evoke a horror of war. At least in the US we have a truly disturbing cult of hero-worship centered around war, with loads of stuff about "thank you for your service" while still completely screwing over veterans (yay, the healthcare system which is of course PERFECT) and going into SO MANY unnecessary wars. Americans really forget the awful things suffered in war. Although I know I've led a really sheltered life, I did a great load of reading on WWI and was horrified, rightly so, by what I read. Here in America we don't get a lot of that. Especially when talking about the World Wars, Americans are basically always taught about the glory of war rather than its human toll at home. Although I know I did PTSD absolutely no justice, I really tried. I read so many accounts of "shellshock" and so many reports of the horrors in France that I couldn't just stay silent. I think it was about this time that I learned the song "The Green Fields of France"-- and even if I didn't learn it until afterwards, it's a very relevant song.

It's also funny to note how my take on feminism has changed since FCP-- being that now I am absolutely a feminist. In Chapter 5, where Stewart, after assaulting Marion, asks smugly if she feels threatened, and she responds by saying she's threatened by the invasion of her space and not her job, it's a pretty clear reference to my support of the TimesUp movement. My brother is very fond of "not all men" and this scene was sort of my response. Nursing, like men, is not what Marion and I dislike. 'Nursing' is not the problem. The problem is that Stewart took advantage of what he thought were her weaknesses as a woman, and then decided to view the situation and her response as her  fault. Men are not the problem, the things they're allowed to get away with are. Marion shuts him down. I really, really like that scene.

I think the best of those stories James wrote— although oddly enough I have no recollection of writing it and I forget it exists every time I reread— is the one about the young girl who wishes to see the castle. Does this prove further that I'm too in love with dark endings? Yeah, probably. But it's chilling. She did indeed get to see the castle, but it wasn't what she expected. Gah, that gives me chills. In many ways this story is light- hearted. It's a silly sort of love story on the surface, but if you look further it's so, so dark. Darker than I meant it to be, really. It's a critique on war, for certain, but also on toxic masculinity in more ways than I ever intended. Lewis makes the assumption that because he is good, and he defended her, that he is entitled to her. If nothing else, he thinks somewhat that she just has to fall in love with him, because he's such a Nice Guy, isn't he? And yeah, Lewis is a good guy, genuinely. But after he realises he wants to be with Marion, and she effectively rejects him, he sort of becomes less nice. He gets entitled and angry that she doesn't want him that way; he thinks she is just a dumb woman who hates him and all men and he forgets that she's completely capable of her own choices. Marion has her own agency and responsibility, and it's not her fault that she was already somewhat in love with James! Lewis made too many assumptions and hurt himself, while I believe Marion to be almost perfectly innocent. To her Lewis was just another patient, and her passing attachment to him was a product of her own insecurity and uncertainty about James. Lewis was, essentially, a rebound.

On my afterword at the end, I just now spotted a comment saying that that person liked happy endings because they give hope in a turbulent world. Valid point. Not my style. Also, the person said that women writing erotica objectify people way more than men?? The point of erotica is to objectify people, that's why I don't read it! And I really, really hope we understand the difference between "this story is meant to be sexy and literally nothing else" and "Everyone Must Read This As A Critical Work Of Literature Even Though the Rapey Overtones Are Freaky and Make Everyone Uncomfortable."

That's it. I thought this story was pretty good. Not the best I've written, not the worst. It's got a lot of nuance to it and a lot of discussion points, but I don't know if I'd recommend it to anyone looking to get an idea of my writing style.