Here are my responses to the submitted questions! Thank you so much to everyone you submitted something, I loved answering your questions. And make sure to enter the one shot contest!

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Q: [Submitted by YaWeirdo] Did Nora actually die or did she run off to become a spy? I have seriously been contemplating this I thought it would be a huge plot twist that she would come back and be like bam and Jules and Eli would be like "ahh should we break up?"

A: Sadly, Nora actually did die. But I do love the idea of that plot twist. I might actually write a short story about that someday. Like a parody of that part of the novel. Hmm... I really do like that idea.

Q: [Submitted by broodingunicorn] How did the book or the idea of it start?

A: My junior year of high school, I was a TA (teacher's assistant) for the drama teacher. He was my absolute favorite teacher but this would (end up to be) his last year of teaching and he had become very depressed. As a result, he didn't do a lot of teaching which left me without much to do. I would work on homework when I had it but it was an hour every day and I had bad phone service so I needed something to do. I always typed down bits and pieces of conversations or descriptions in my phone when they came to me and with my free time I was able to expand on them. Pretty soon I was writing conversations and stuff for that purpose and I started thinking of the dialogue as dialogues between two specific people. I didn't have names for them yet but I imagined the girl as me and the boy as a kid I knew (he's an absolute horrible person but is sadly great other than that so it's easy for me to imagine him as different characters). Pretty soon, I had an idea of what I wanted the story to be about (which was the long story of two people's relationships). At the time I didn't know how I was going to format it, I knew I couldn't write it as a regular novel, but I knew that I had something I wanted to write. And that is how JTH was born.

Q: [Submitted by omgpenelope] Was Nora ever jealous when Julie came back into Eli's life (she seemed super cool with it but she knew when she met Eli he was in love with Julie)?

A: I think Nora was never a jealous person so she was naturally pretty okay with Julie showing up again. Maybe if Julie had shown up sooner or if she had seen firsthand what their relationship had been like (remember how many girls were scared off during in high school and college because they saw Eli and Julie together?), she would have been sort of jealous, but I don't think she was. By the time Julie had shown up Nora and Eli had had Ava and they had been married for a few years so Nora was pretty solid in her position that she was the one Eli was in love with. I think if Eli had given her a reason to worry, like a solid suspicious reason, she might have been upset but I don't think he ever gave her one. She respected that Eli and Julie had a history that she didn't understand but she also knew that she and Eli had a history Julie would never understand. The fact that she knew that kept her from being jealous, even if she had wanted to.

Q: [Submitted by omgpenelope] What exactly where the reactions of family and friends? I'm sure they knew it was coming, but was anybody's reaction unexpected?

A: I haven't really put much thought into people's reactions but I think that everyone was just sort of "so you guys finally got together." Maybe some people were surprised but I think the overall feeling was happiness and relief.

Q: [Submitted by omgpenelope, ByEmilyJason, indefinitelyamminco, and just_a_reader19] Did Eli and Julie have any more kids?

A: At the time of the epilogue? No. But yes, I do believe they did. Originally I had put in that they were trying to have another kid, named either Casey or Nora (I don't think they actually would name a daughter Nora, it would be too hard, but they would be considering it) but there was no good moment to put it in. It was hard enough to fit in that Casey and Grace had two kids, Jack and Mason (twins). And the only reason I awkwardly squished that in is because two of my friends are named Jack and Mason (they're inseparable) so it was just a funny little Easter egg for me.

Q: [Submitted by KangarooAsh] What's your favorite chapter?

A: DON'T MAKE ME CHOOSE. For some reason I really loved writing the Jelliot fight chapters. I'm much better at writing fight scenes than sappy ones I guess. So I guess my favorites would be dialogue chapters 116, 154, 156, and 240.

Q: [Submitted by turtle-ing] How do you make your characters REAL? It's hard for me to come up with characters who have multiple dimensions.

A: If I knew, I would be very very rich. For JTH it was easy because I based so many of my characters on people I knew. But I don't know what I'm going to do for future stories because they're going to be less based on people I know. I guess I would just say that to make your characters real, do two things. One, anchor the characters in your real life. Give them some connection to you and some trait you're familiar with, it helps you do number two. Two, know your characters inside and out. Make them almost like a costume you put on, it makes it easy to write scenes for them because you're just thinking about what you would do. Does any of that make sense? I hope it does. And happy birthday!

Q: [Submitted by -electric] How did you get over writer's block?

A: It depends on the day. Sometimes I can just take a walk or a break and then I'm fine. Other days I can't write at all. In the end, what it takes is taking a breath and just getting over it. And the way to get over it is waiting. There haven't been times where I've had writer's block that a good night's sleep can't fix.

Q: [Submitted by HeyIAmK8] Are your characters inspired by people you know?

A: Basically all of them, yes. At least when I first come up with them. At their very cores, all my characters are based off of someone I know. But then I take that core, which is usually what someone looks like or a certain quality they had, and expanded it into a real character. Usually, if I did my job right, the character would be different from the person I based it on. The only way a person might know who it was was if I told them that it was in fact based off a person we both knew. Eli was based off of someone I know but he grew up and away from that person as time went on. He's almost completely different now. The guy I based him on is actually someone I base a lot of my characters on. He's someone I don't have a solid connection to so it's easy to imagine him as the character I'm writing, no matter how different he may be from the actual character. Imagining people I know as my characters, almost like dolls in a twisted way, helps me write more easily.

Q: [Submitted by PastaLaVistaBaby] Did you ever have multiple endings for the book in your head and you decided which one you would go with? Or did you have one ending and one ending only from the very beginning?

A: When I outlined the book, Eli and Julie were always endgame. Having the story being in the context of Eli and Julie telling the story to someone else was always endgame. There were times where I considered making them not be endgame and instead having them be best friends (which also would have been awesome), but I decided not to do that. The story had always been about Eli and Julie and I couldn't lose sight of that. The one thing that did change was who the story was being told to. Initially it was going to be that some author (possibly even me) was writing a story about modern relationships (specifically romantic ones) and how they came about in society today. It was the plan right up until when I was writing the chapter with Eli and Julie on the bench. But then that line where Eli said "we'll just tell her the highlights" popped into my head and I knew I had to change it. Instead, they were telling the story to Ava. There are a few older chapters that I cut stuff out of (and also need to cut stuff out of) to make this work but I'm happy with the result.

Q: [Submitted by Gratified523] If you were to form a band with your friends, what would you name it?

A: I really have no clue. What sucks is that the day the story ended I actually came up with an idea but I can't remember it now.

Q: [Submitted by lemontasthick] Who's perspective did you love writing in more: Eli's or Julie's?

A: It really depended on the chapter. When I started writing, I liked Julie's perspective more. But by the time they reached college and Eli had reached full snark levels, I liked writing for him more. In the end, whoever's perspective I was writing in was my favorite.

Q: [Submitted by Perlal01] I don't really get why Eli and Julie think that telling Ava their story is traumatizing and horrifying. Why do they feel that way? Also, how old is Ava in the last chapter?

A: When Eli and Julie say that, they say it half sarcastically. They don't really think that the story will traumatize Ava but also worry (just a little bit) that she'll be weirded out by the story (they do mention that they have sex and all that). So it's less legitimate worry and more humor covering worry, if that makes sense. I'm not sure how old she is, I can't picture it, but when the story ends she's about nine so older than nine but younger than thirteen. Let's just say she's eleven and this is a few years later.

Q: [Submitted by Bookwurm666] Would you ever consider writing a story with Ava as the main character?

A: As much as I love Ava, I wouldn't. The closest I've gotten to a spin-off is the fact that Bea from "The Stage Manager" is Eli's cousin. I'm not opposed to having my stories loosely related (like how Sarah Dessen's books have little Easter eggs connected to her others), but I also think that when I finish a story I need to finish it for real unless I have a solid idea. Such as, when I got the idea for "The Stage Manager." But even then I almost didn't write it. With the amount of time JTH covers I could write 500 spin-offs but it's time I move onto other projects. That being said, if I was going to write a spin-off (maybe as a full fledged book based off my characters), a story about Ava would be one of my top picks, with a story about Casey and Grace as another.

Q: [Submitted by The_Minty_Orange] When you were writing the chapters for JTH, did you write the dialogue parts first then base the description parts on that or visa versa?

A: When I started JTH, I had an almost complete outline and had the last parts at least slightly figured out so I didn't really have to base one chapter off of the other. But due to the order of the book, I did write the description chapters first. There were times that I would switch it up, like if I had writer's block or something, but usually it went description chapter first and dialogue chapter second.