I JUST WANTED TO SAY...

Hello!

...to any readers that may still have this story on alert. If I'm lucky, there are still some of you dedicated ones who do and you get to read this message. I realize it has been FOUR years since this story has been completed. And while I have still kept to writing in my life, I haven't been writing as much as I used to. Not nearly as much as when I was working on these stories. It took me four years to realize that this saga, these four installments of a Skate story that began as a one-shot, became my baby. It is the only thing ever that I finished. And that is not an exaggeration.

In regards to my story writing, I can't seem to finish a thing but these stories I finished. So I started to try to refresh my passion for writing. I began to read a book about opening and releasing the writer within and how to not hold back and write more freely. Because in this day and age, being judgmental is a disease. And it's worse when you judge yourself more harshly. Of this, I am guilty.

Something that I've come to realize as of late is that I think I have lost touch with my passion. My passion for writing is what healed me and kept me sane. The last time I was so low in life, I came through it because I was always writing. (Writing these stories!) I wrote every single day – again, no exaggerations. Every. Single. Day. I never stopped to think whether or not it was bad. I never gave up on it. I kept going through. I would spend hours in my room working away, escaping everything. I was happy because I was doing what I loved and no one could take it from me. I was a writer. This was how I coped, how I fixed what was happening. All of my emotions would go into the stories I wrote, whether I realized it or not. It was my emotional release that kept my mind balanced just enough. I suppose that's why it got more angsty and dramatic at times rather than others.

Anyway, the point of all of this rambling is to say that I'm working on something. I started to reread these stories from a previous era of my life and I started to forget that I actually wrote it because I couldn't stop reading it. I guess I became one of you – one of the reviewers/readers. It was pretty awesome to read something that I wrote that way. Sort of built my confidence up again into realizing, hey! I'm not half bad at this. And also into realizing, hey! This isn't done yet. :)

So far, I've written a first chapter that is more of just a...preface or an introduction of sorts...to a new story. Yes, it is Sawyer and Kate. Yes, it takes place after "Baby Steps". Yes, I contradicted myself and began writing a sequel when I said I wouldn't, four years later. Yes, it is coming soon! Not to a theater near you! Haha.

Right now, a working title for it is "For Better or Worse" (although I have been toying with "After Shocks" as a title too). No, I won't go back on what I said a long time ago about Sawyer and Kate getting married. And I think that's all I'll say about the premise of the story. You'll just have to read it to see. While it is coming soon, I still have to write it so bear with me. I hope to get it started and running before Summer starts. Anddddd I HOPE to see some familiar faces resurface and if not, some new ones, or both. Or none. This is for you guys, but it's also for me.

Obviously four years has changed who I am a bit, and of course it's dramatically affected my skills in writing. I'm hoping that maybe this next one will be better, even the best of the lot. But that's where you'll have to come in. Once it's posted. :)