Afterword

If you got this far, first of all thank you, and I love you. Even if you didn’t, thanks for giving my work a try, and I love you all the same.

My original plan for this book was to write a bunch of Sapphic/Lesbian and Transgender short stories, in a vein similar to some Yuri anthology manga I have read. ‘Longing’ was going to be the title of that collection, and the original title for the story you have just read was ‘The Phoenix’. It was the third of the stories I had started, but by the time I was finishing the first draft, unlike the first two stories, which had potential for being expanded but I had not fully fleshed out anything, with this story, things just kept coming to me; the story kept growing as I considered new ideas, and better ways to fulfill the promise of the what I had originally written.

Honestly, even though this wasn't my original plan for this book, I think it may well be the most fulfilling writing experience I’ve had in a long time. It was interesting because, in a lot of ways, this book felt like a homecoming for me, and at the same time it was filled with firsts.

I only started writing things again in the past few months after taking an extended, about 4-year-long break due to burnout from the first proper project I was working on but was never able to finish, depressive episodes and figuring out I was Transgender along the way. Through all that, one light at the end of the tunnel I saw as I got better and happier was being able to write again; this book ended up being that light.

It is the first book I have fully completed, with a beginning, middle and end. I have written other works and books, but as mentioned, one was a project that went unfinished; I do plan to go back to it and rewrite it, and the rest were simple shorts or ideas for books I have yet to develop fully. This was also my first attempt at writing romance. It is my first novella. My first purely Sapphic/Lesbian project. And it is the first thing I have written that has truly felt like me.

I hope you enjoyed reading, and I hope I didn’t make too many mistakes, and that my lack of experience in certain areas didn't affect or ruin the book or your experience reading it too much.