Let me start by saying that I understand the hurt. I'm sure I feel it as much as any of you do. I'd fallen in love with Angela, and it broke my heart to write her murder.

I didn't do that out of some sort of random whim, and I'd tried to foreshadow it subtly over time, but I guess I was maybe just a bit too subtle. I'm sure that you, my readers mourning her loss, can look back in retrospect now and see the hints were there from the start of her time with Emmy and Leah.

Angela's end had to come brutally suddenly. It had to shock in its abruptness, or it wouldn't have worked as far as the storytelling is concerned. On the other side of the coin, it was necessary to build up the relationship and invest you guys in the idea of Angela being there for Leah after Emmy's gone, just as Leah was invested in that thought. Their long-term plans and long-term dreams needed to grow organically, and be a foundation of the lives of the three of them.

Yes, I'm still working closely off the original outline I wrote years ago, and all this was planned out. Obviously the move to the All. The. Words. format allowed me to build the relationship slowly and fully flesh it out, which helped to create the emotional attachment we all felt. Yes, me, too, even though I knew how it was going to end. In fact, me probably most of all, since I needed to feel the emotions I was writing to be able to make them compelling.

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

This long, slow build lulled many readers into a sort of sense that this is just a fluffy love story, but it has never just been that- not from the very beginning.

I'd invite you all to read CCT_85's amended review of the story. I had a feeling that I'd get reactions like that, and while I'm sad to see that reader go, at the same time I can't help but feel a bit proud that my writing could cause such strong emotions.

I attended a writer's workshop given by an author whom I admire, and she said that she loves to torture her characters. I don't. I don't at all- I would love for them all to live long, blissful lives, but that would make for a terrible read. We need disruption, we need conflict, we need sorrow. Otherwise, how could we recognize happiness if we didn't have anything to contrast it with?

Emmy And Me was never meant to be a simple romance. It didn't start out that way, it wasn't that way in the middle, and it won't end that way, even though romance is a big part of the story. Unfortunately for our characters, so is violence, sorrow, and loss. Along the way, there is also love, tenderness, and family. Both sides of the coin are important.

This is a classic hero's journey, and the voyage to self discovery can't be all smooth roads lined with delightful flowers. Some of it certainly should be, but some of it... not so much.

I hope that those of you who are still left* will continue on this journey with Leah. I promise it won't be "misery porn" as one reader commented, but for Angela's murder and the death of the two unborn babies will echo for a while. Healing will come gradually, but it will come. I promise that.