First of all, thank you! Thank you so much for reading Embrace the Sky !

I'm so glad I got to finish this, because by doing so, I was able to prove to myself that I'm actually capable of finishing a long story. Since last year (2020) I've given myself the opportunity to achieve that goal through the Open Novella Contest since it involves a heck of a lot less commitment than a novel, and it's only now that I finally got around to committing all the way to the end of a story no matter what, so believe me when I say I'm glad!

It's a relief more than anything else though, because I've been struggling since forever with finishing long stories, so this means a lot to me. It's also an honor to have done so with this story in particular since it's more or less a literary commentary on the relationship my mother holds with herself + the values of the people in my family. It's also the idealized version of the relationship between my mother and I. So this is personal to me, though there was a fine distance between reality and fiction that oddly enough, didn't get me attached to the characters themselves, but rather the message of the story.

This was the first time I outlined a story from start to finish before writing it out. I did it to challenge myself a little more, to see how I could benefit from it, and let me tell you, plotting is fucking insane. I respect everyone who plans/plots their stories ahead of time, before writing. The time and care put into planning is insane. It's so different from what I usually do and though it definitely helped me write this story out faster, I ended up tossing the outlines of the last chapters without meaning to. My go-with-the-flow method kicked in. Oopsies!

Embrace the Sky is also my first pure Romance story.... or rather, Chicklit... or Women's Fiction? 🤔

Anyways, compared to what I usually write, this was super light-hearted, so I'm not sure of how it might come off to readers. So... what did you think of the content? Was it dark in any way?

Which part(s) of Embrace the Sky did you like the most?

Did anything in the story surprise you? Concern you? Confuse you?

How do you feel about the ending?

And, lastly, how did you come across this story?

All in all, this was a nice experience that I learned lots from. Thank you for being a part of it!

♦♦♦

Original Author's Note Date: May 5, 2021.

The last edit for this section was on September 23, 2022.

;)