May 10, 2026
Hi, I think I’ll treat this as a kind of postscript.
I hope you felt something reading this. I know I did while writing it.
When I first started, this was meant to be a full-length novel, somewhere around 90,000 words. It wasn’t until I was already deep into it that I realized the limit was 50,000.
I won’t pretend that didn’t affect me. It did. For a while, I felt lost. Not because I didn’t know how to finish the story, but because I knew I wouldn’t be able to finish it the way I had imagined.
There were scenes I wanted to sit in longer. Moments that were meant to echo back later. Small details that were supposed to grow quietly in the background until they mattered. Letting those go wasn’t easy.
But I couldn’t bring myself to go back and rebuild everything from the beginning. Not when the story had already started moving. Not when some of you were already reading it as it came together.
So I kept going.
What you’ve read is the version that survived that decision. Not the fullest version I had in mind, but maybe the most honest one. The one that existed in the time it was written, with everything it could carry and everything it had to leave behind.
That still stings a little.
But I hope something in it stayed with you anyway. Thank you for reading this!
