Why I'm hesitant...

Particularly since it was completed, I have had many requests and encouragement to publish M&A, and I appreciate every single one more than I can say. The support that story (and Winter’s Night) have received has seriously blown me away, and I sincerely hope Chase the Storm is as well liked, as the CtS boys are as dear to me as M&A’s Jasper, Edward, Riley, and Peter or the WN boys.

As for publishing M&A, I have always said it was too huge a job. Between its length, copyright issues with WoO (and that it is a fanfic), and alternating povs, the editing alone would take me a year. However, after going through the editing process with CtS, I have revisited my thoughts on publishing M&A, and I have realized another reason I am hesitant to attempt publishing it. As CtS has come back to me with edits, mostly grammar things, (commas, extra words, some sentence structure) but also a bit on characterization, I feel with each round of edits, I lose a bit of me in the story. It’s silly to say, and I don’t mean by deleting commas or the hundred extra ‘just’s, but to me some of the reworking of sentences, some of the deletions, took a bit of them away, and I had to work extra hard to be sure the characters thoughts, actions, and most importantly, their emotions, weren’t compromised. It is with their reactions and emotions I haven’t budged, which to me is vital to telling their story, and I honestly feel I have kept Chase and Elijah true to the men I originally wrote them as. To do that, to edit M&A for the thousands of errors, delete some duplications, and some scenes that a publisher wouldn’t touch (Jasper’s memories from the Home), would take away from them. Not that it couldn’t be done, with a lot of work, it is possible, and I’m certainly not saying I would never do it. Trust me, it is tempting. But at the same time, I think part of what makes M&A the story it is, is the rawness in which Jasper’s tells his story, and the awkwardness Edward feels throughout his.

That being said, I have to admit I have considered writing The Whore and the Gentleman for publication. I feel Riley’s story is important, maybe even more than Jasper’s, as he struggles with demon’s Jasper didn’t. Jasper was taken away from his parents, Riley was rejected by his. Riley had a childhood, he had food and shelter and friends, he knows what he missed out on while Jasper doesn’t. Writing the chapters I have of Riley so far (there are 5 completed), I feel his pain is more universal. Jasper still retained his emotional innocence through the story, but Riley didn’t, and discovering what made him lose that is fascinating to me. However, even more so than M&A, W&G has some very dark moments, and while those are absolute in telling Riley’s true story, they are not scenes most publishers would accept. Thus, W&G would have to be self-published, which is something I would consider.

I’m rambling now….

All that being said, on the read through I did of CtS late last night, I found myself surprising pleased with it. I realize, and need to accept, it will never be perfect, I will always want to change words, groan when I find a mistake, and read and reread certain scenes to make sure it’s exactly the way the characters deserve it to be, because they deserve the best effort I can give them.

So many of you took a chance on M&A, some even popping their slash cherry on it, I hope you give Chase and Elijah that same chance, and love them as much as I do.