Sometimes, I imagine my work as published pieces. Imagining them fresh on paper is surprising. The results are different. They help me come up with numerous ideas I myself would never otherwise have come up with. It is a form of habit, per se. In times of need. Inspiration doesn't come like the strike of lightning and thunder. A ironic as it may sound, inspiration can be habit. It is a habit of mine to be inspired by the mundane things around me. And perhaps that is how creation may work.

Leroy and Vanilla are the kind of couple I've never thought I'd be able to write in terms of strength and power. I feel as though they are sometimes very different from the ordinary portrayal of couples, or at the very least the kind fiction tends to favour. Even in their disagreements, they fight like fire and ice.

The monologues in chapter 58 was my attempt at adding colour to thought that would have otherwise been inserted into the ordinary POV narrative I write, but would not have stood out stylistically and created the impact I was going for.

Leroy and Vanilla's monologues, because similar and yet so different, were meant to be printed side by side on paper. Leroy's on the left page and Vanilla's on the right of the physical book. And readers could read left to right or downwards; reading Leroy's entire monologue first and then moving to Vanilla's and then reading both at the same time.

I am extremely fond of style in my writing, and that not only applies to the kind of characters I am fond of creating, but the way I choose my words and the way I put them on paper (or in your terms, on the digital device you are currently holding onto). Leroy has his form of loneliness, in which he hopes to be filled with something that isn't cooking. Yet, the paradox is present; of cooking and all things culinary being representative of his relationship with Vanilla and how (if) he is able to detach himself from that sort of relationship and be the individual that he wishes for himself to be, independent of the pressures to perform as a chef.

I like to think that Vanilla and Leroy are individuals living lives that are parallel to each other, but are willing do whatever it takes to make them meet. And that is the truth of some things in life—that no matter how much we'd like to rely on all things above, be it characters on their writers, humans and their supposed creators, we like to think that there is something beyond us that can perhaps write our stories.

It is times like that that I check myself as a writer; If I should be writing something with the power that I have, and allow them the gift of the creator that is kind and generous, or if I should continue to let them grow through hardship. I sometimes think that all creators have a purpose of creating both the good and bad; which is perhaps one thing I'd never quite understand about modern-day thinking; that perhaps we were meant for greater goods and that everything in this world that was good was created by someone necessarily good and that everything bad was necessarily created by an evil entity when it could, perhaps, very well be that all of it was created by the same person for the same purpose—of futhering our humanity. That, without the pain and suffering in the world, we are perhaps as empty as when we do not have joy and happiness.

It is for this reason that I do not think that I cause my characters to suffer more than necessary. That I end up having climaxes in every novel I write revealing something so strangely tragic and yet add so much value to a character's life and their individual, parallel paths. Not without literary meaning of course.

Every symbol, imagery, theme and illusion will have significant importance in the continuation of Leroy and Vanilla's story. It will explain the decisions they make in their time apart, and the way in which they develop and grow as they age. I am especially pleased with the concept of 'opposites attract' in which SeeSaw practically embody, from their very first meeting at the seesaw and taking their places on opposite ends, to their colours, to their personalities and elements and dialogue—while, at the same time, being nuanced in a way that draws the pair so much closer with every bit of difference between them.

Sacrifice, however, was the ultimate card I had up my sleeve; sort of waiting, waiting for the time it was meant to be dealt. Unlike Chip and Xander, Blake and Ace, SeeSaw is, quite literally, a story of two opposite ends. And as I have always mentioned in the imagery of 'seesawing duties' in which one must go down in order to propel the other to greater heights before waiting for the other to do the same, this concept is, too, mirrored in the art of their elements: fire and ice.

Without sacrifice, no flame can exist in a snowstorm; no snowflake can survive a forest fire. Because Leroy had always been the necessary candle holding itself back so as not to burn that in which he truly cares about, Vanilla finally comes to realize that it is his turn on the seesaw—to fulfil his duties. It is essential to their story, the knowing and understanding of something as mature and complex as sacrifice in a realm of selfish love, that sacrifice can co-exist with a desire to further one's self and retain one's individuality.

Vanilla and Leroy have both always understood the need to have their own dreams, goals and 'being' beyond their romance, and while Vanilla has been more successful in that aspect (Leroy struggles more with that because he's been homeschooled and hasn't been able to be influenced by any other dreams except the one his father had for him) but it is precisely Vanilla's recognition and determination of chasing his own dream that finally allows Leroy to realize one of his own, and admit that, even with or without Vanilla by his side, he must necessarily search for a path of his own.

Vanilla's short essay on Sacrifice is something I wrote in a matter of thirty minutes on a high, ironically produced by a low. Some of you who follow me on Instagram may be familiar with a matter of great importance currently going on in my personal life. The one true being behind my very conception of the entire Baked Series and how I had, in the first placed, even considered the idea of writing as a part of my healing process... well. He's back.

Some of you may also recall from the final author's note in the Baked Series, 'Why I Write', that what happened to Chip and Xander incredibly resembles him and I. Although he'd gradually taken a back seat in my writing career, giving way to my service of the readers and my true purpose in creating and authoring, I was never quite able to forget him. When I started writing Baked Love, it had been three years since I last saw him. Now, it is ten.

Exactly ten years later, our paths cross once more. And if there should be someone authoring my story right now, I'd say they had to be someone exactly like myself. To be exacted upon the complexity that I attribute to my characters is something I never thought would happen—a reunion so unlikely, so incredibly heartbreaking and beautifully painful sounded to me, quite unrealistic.

And there I had been, for the past ten years, thinking... writing something of the exact same nature.

You may wonder: why does she make them leave in the end, all the time?

I ask myself the same question. It has never been quite clear to me what it is about leaving that has become so ingrained in my psyche, seeing as I do project my fear, pain, and tragic appreciation for it in all of my work—whether it is a physical departure or a mental one.

I have conjectures. It is in the act of a reunion that I long to craft, long to write, long to author and project in them, the hope and silent longing for one of my own. Years of writing, years and years and years of authoring reunions and the reconnecting of hearts, the crossing of paths and finally, I had it in me the strength to search for one of my own.

Vanilla and Leroy's story is perhaps my final attempt at a work of romance; if you haven't realized, every single one of my romantic works contain or revolve around the concept of reunion. The Baked Series. Crash, where Blake and Ace meet again after years apart, and Human, where Suoh rediscovers the one being he could never forget, locked away in his father's laboratory.

I daresay that most of my loyal, dedicated readers are as appreciative of tragedy and complex grief as I am, and for the lack of a better word, are quite masochistic indeed. Well! This is what you've come for ;) I'd say you saw this coming a mile away. In fact, I'd planned this very moment between Leroy and Vanilla from the very start of the book! Ah, departures. Ah... how intrinsically, painfully beautiful they are.

As promised, I will be continuing Vanilla and Leroy's story in a next section of the book. I am, still, unsure if I will be creating an entirely different book or if I will merely be splitting this book sections with just an empty chapter separating part one (just finished) and part two. It is upon the completion of part one that I will be taking a short break and updating Flight School. The short break may last for a month or so. I have been observing a recent rise in FS appreciators :') and it warms my heart incredibly, and I can't wait to return to the island that is dark and deep and sings from under the window, by the oak, watching blades of grass swaying in the wind.

The sound of company is akin to the gentle hush that is prevalent throughout Baked Love. It is these images—sounds, even—that I am fond of allowing the reader to subjectively hear as they read the words across the screen. A sort of quiet that is sublime, romantic, and possibly one that we yearn to hear in our heads as we breathe in a world that is falling apart.

-Cuppie.