Before I start, know that I'm really sorry to tell you this.
The hard drive of my computer crashed a while back, presenting me with the Black Screen of Death. I begged for my dad (a mechanical engineer with loads of experience in computer science) to do what he could, but apparently the only real remedy for this type of computer tragedy is buying a new hard drive and reinstalling all programs. Essentially it'd be better to buy a new computer if the hard drive is expensive. My dad put his best efforts into recovering all my thousands of document files on my computer before replacing the hard drive, but found there was probably nothing he could do.
You have no idea how much pain it causes me to say this – but years and years of my hard work in writing has been wiped off the face of the planet. Sure, I backed up many of my files on flash drives and the internet, but there were many things that I wasn't ready to share with anyone just yet. As it turns out, I will never be able to recover them and share them now anyway.
I thought I would finally tell all of you, because you deserve better than a blank silence on my part in regards to this story. I lost a lot of research (a full summer of individual work and two high school classes worth) in regards to mythology and folk tales, as well as all of my plots, character backgrounds, and notes of my ideas to this story and more. I was taking a break from TSoN fanfiction for a month or two before now (I was halfway through chapter nine), so I don't remember much of what was going on. I'm telling you this because I don't think I have the willpower to re-do all of that research and remember every tiny detail of the worlds that I've lost. I might be able to remember a lot of it, but it just wouldn't be the same.
And while all of this is bad news, I figured I should tell you anyway. But don't lose hope! My dad is still working on that old hard drive, trying to glean any bit of my old files off of it, and in the mean time, I might work on the last two chapters of my TSoN AU. It would probably be completely off-the-cuff, so it won't have the depth and thought that I normally put into anything I write.
I'm telling you so you can choose whether or not you want to keep anxiously waiting for the next chapter, reading it when it comes out, and realizing that it falls flat of your expectations of me, or if you want to cut all ties with this fanfiction. Whatever suits you. And please tell me in the comments section so that I can see what I ought to do with this.
Regretfully,
Lee