I’ve always believed that everyone has a story not just that they wish they could tell, but that they feel compelled to. I call it their work of the heart. FRAY is mine.

For most writers, I assume that the story of their first novel- not the one that they publish first, or the many drafts and ideas and Book 1’s it takes to get there- is a path we all share. It’s the one story that made you put pen to paper. The one you’ve spent countless nights dreaming up, losing sleep over, and writing, writing, writing. And once it’s done… it’s usually terrible. Atrocious. Something that should never be let to see the light of day. And so it gets sacrificed on the altar of making-you-a-better-writer, and you curse silently every book after that you wasted your work of the heart on the very first book you ever wrote.

It was inevitable that I would give FRAY another go, a proper go, until I got it right. Tetsuka’s story and the character herself have haunted the margins of my notebooks since before I even began to write the original draft in university. She just wouldn’t let me go, no matter how many books I penned after. This bitter, independent girl with white hair and her snarky black-haired lover chased me from story to story, always finding a way to return until I finally gave them their real encore nearly five years later.

Compared to the original draft, the new FRAY is much tamer, much more readable, and thankfully quite coherent. The original still holds a special place in my heart, though. It was infused with personal trauma that I didn’t even understand until I looked back on the book in retrospect and realized how much of Tetsuka’s life and internal struggles were mirrors of things I’d had to deal with in my own life, and either hadn’t known how to express them or hadn’t even realized how much they were affecting me until I saw them drawn out like a painting on a wall. Her tragedy is more human and close to my heart than any other I’ve written. The characters were like shards of my life and self that had been strewn into a garden and let to grow independently. Mars, the absentee father who she loved incomprehensibly despite his flaws. Thane, the supremely confident older sibling of Cal, who always wanted to step out from her brother’s shadow and what the world demanded her to be; guarding a seed of good inside herself all the while.

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I really did have no idea how my life would change after I wrote that book. The ups, the downs.

I had no idea I would (re)meet the Cal to my Tay just a year or two later. She’s my soulmate. The campfire to my life. Before her, I had no idea what it was like to stay up late in bed with another, reading chapters as bedtime stories together off my phone. I had no idea what it was like to fall in love. Hesitantly at first, not trusting that magnetism that pulled us together from that very first moment, over late night drinks at a party. I had no frame of reference for romance or devotion or the heartbreaking medley of emotions that first love evokes. Without her, this book would never have been able to be given its renaissance. Like me, there are parts of her, of us, scattered throughout this book too. So it’s to her that I give the greatest thanks of all.

To the readers, especially those who have been following me since the very beginning in Memento Mori, your presence means the world to me. Your words remind me that I’m not shouting my stories into the void. That somewhere out there, some internet stranger is logging on every Saturday to read what’s happening to Tay and Cal this week. You’ve given so much fulfillment and excitement for what can otherwise often be a solitary, thankless endeavor, and I can’t thank you enough for it.

To the many inspirations who have made me the writer I am today, especially PB, thank you for making your own shouts into the wind. I am glad I had a chance to hear them.

To the friends who suffered through the crappy original drafts with Tay’s color-changing powers and Thane literally being able to stop time (no, I’m not kidding), yall are the best. Thank you for being my cheerleaders and caving to my nagging to read my stuff.

To anyone out there who hasn’t yet penned their work of the heart: do it. Don’t let it stay as a what-if. Get it out there. And if you ever are looking for advice, my inbox is always open. Helping others as I have been helped is something I will always make time for.

And to my darling, my biggest fan, my Cal:

I love you.

Virginia

(pen name: hiraeth)