Thank you so so much for your kind words and for taking the time to reach out and ask. I'm also especially glad to be asked about I Asked You First. 

I can't believe it's been nearly two years since I last wrote a chapter on that story. I’m sorry about the long pause, and I'm honored that it matters to readers still; that story is pretty important to me. And the short answer to your question is, yes, I do have plans for it. 

The longer answer ended up meandering a bit, but if you're interested in some self-reflection on writing process, the nature of fanfiction and goals, then please read on.

Some thoughts on fanfiction and IAYF in particular

When I started writing I Asked You First in 2020, that story, and the practice of creating fanfic in general, helped heal my relationship with writing. 

I believe that every author (or artist of any kind, really) needs to create from where they find energy. I guess that sounds kind of floaty. What I mean is that to write something captivating, you need to be captivated yourself—you must find what animates, agitates or obsesses you. And that’s where you must start. 

I think this is part of what makes fanfiction special and communal. How wonderful is it that in a story like ATLA, there remain places with such potent concentrations of unrealized potential that a community can feast in art and  writing and animations and edits for decades? 

When I inhaled the series in 2020, I found it so good, immersive and powerful in so many ways, with such strong characters with amazing arcs. And yet, leaving Zutara unexplored — after all of the narrative groundwork the story laid — left behind such a shining pool of untapped narrative power that I just…couldn’t let it go. So I didn’t. I found this community. I read fanfic voraciously. There were so many wonderful stories. 

And yet my imagination wouldn’t quiet. There was a very particular way I wanted their story to go, so I started playing it out in my mind. Then I did that so many times that I began to feel I must write it down in order to keep laying its path. And once I started writing, it grew into something more. That was how I Asked You First started. And I was able to come back to it even after hiatuses for health and family.  After all, there was still energy there.

I Asked You First absolutely thrived on Ember Island, rewiring small elements alongside the existing narrative. It strove to find a way to make ZK resonant while maintaining the beauty of the canon finale… It wanted to find a happy place to settle the characters I loved. And then it wanted to end. And yet, as I kept writing, I discovered that the story on the page…well, it wasn’t quite wrapped up when I reached the end of what initially obsessed me. There were new challenges and ideas at play—that needed resolution before I could let it close. But I also needed a break for IRL reasons. I absolutely could not write fanfiction and plan a wedding while working full time. Kudos if you can. Not me. And by the time I came back to it, I’d lost track of some of the threads I was weaving, and I’d lost some of the animating why. So I needed to find a way back in. 

Some ZK authors find inspiration in the immense potential of palace intrigue, in writing through the herculean challenges Zuko faces in his early years as Fire Lord, and in exploring what it looks like for Katara to come into her own against the grain of a canon that left her potential behind. I love reading these kinds of stories. But…none of these places are where my particular inspiration/energy for this comes from. Or at least, that was true when I was working actively on IAYF. I came back to it with ideas, but my drafts for the next chapter felt flat. I found myself writing scenes that I wasn’t interested in. And so how could I expect readers to be?

And when I first started writing But Who’s Counting?, the idea was actually to write something short (lol @ me) to help me find a way back into I Asked You First. The untapped potential of these two characters alone in Fire Nation in the time immediately after the Agni Kai felt so so rich to me. And so I thought: could I fall in love with the Fire Nation Palace/coronation/immediate post-war setting if I got to write their love story again? 

The answer was absolutely yes, and now 75,000 words later, I think I have found enough to excite me about that setting that I could bring some new energy to I Asked You First. I know what happens in the next chapter—I know where the story ends—and now I think I can probably do it justice, give it life.

I do want to finish But Who’s Counting first. I think I need to show myself I can, and there, I have the homeward wind in my sails. But I do plan to give the same love to I Asked You First. I’d like to do that sooner than later. When I have concrete updates, I’ll offer them here.

One more bittersweet musing….

I have absolutely loved writing Zutara stories. And as I mentioned earlier, I really love fanfic in general. I’ve read it since I first dialed up on AOL in the 2000s. I admire fandom community and supportiveness it can build—I really appreciate the people I’ve met virtually through this. And I truly love the way the practice of writing this way grows from a kind of pure love of storytelling and characters and setting. We’re not making money here, and we’re not elbowing for prestige. I’m not saying fanfiction writers don’t deserve those things, just that for me, it meant a lot to be able to step away from that mindset. After a writing block that lasted years, and some disillusionment about what the “literary world” (ugh @ me) has to offer, finding this outlet gave me more than I can possibly give back. 

But I also have been feeling very called to turn my attention to original projects. I still have aspirations in that direction, and I think writing fanfiction has really helped me understand what I could do on my own. 

I’m not saying that I’m done writing Zutara once these stories are done. How could one ever be done with these two? But as I’ve watched IRL friends publish novels and such in the past few years, I also have some wistfulness about the hidden life of it all. 

And yet I must say, I’ve found myself in many different types of creative community in my life, and this one is so special. I’m not even as actively engaged as I’d liked to me and I’ve found so much encouragement. Encouragement like this!

Apologies, @selfawaremaniac — you asked a straightforward question and I gave you several only semi-related paragraphs. But I thought I might appreciate this kind of transparency from a writer whose work I like, and it was helpful to put it into words, and so I offer it here to you.

I always welcome asks. Thank you again for this one.

Until the next chapter—

Thank you so much for the ask, the support and encouragement!!! Can't tell you how much it means ♡

I am VERY CLOSE to an update on But Who's Counting? I actually have more than a chapter-length written and mostly edited (16k words! Yikes!).

But I didn't think it was fair or fun for readers to post another full chapter+ of deepening miscommunication (oops), especially when it's sometimes so long between updates (oops), so the section I'm working on now will probably reach closer to DOUBLE a normal chapter length when it goes live.

I really do think it'll be soon, but I seem to be bad at prognosticating so I'll avoid jinxing myself with a bad estimate. Hopefully it will be worth the wait!!

Like, there's this widely-advertised production that shows the Fire Prince and the Southern waterbending master falling in love. Then, probably the next thing the gen pop hears about their future Fire Lord is that he's jumped in front of his sister's lightning to save this same girl's life, doing absolutely nothing to beat those allegations.

I always found this kind of a surprising argument (leaving aside all the narrative and thematic groundwork already laid between these two characters, and also the in-show precedent for compressed romantic timelines like Sokka and Yue) because of the Ember Island of it all.

Between the scene where Katara forgives Zuko and the scene when he jumps in front of lightning to save her (both romance-coded visuals), they're living for weeks as unsupervised teenagers in beautiful beach house, emotions running higher than ever as they face down the end of the world as they know it, in a location the story has already told us "has a special way of smoothing even the most ragged edges."

It's kind of hard to imagine a setting or situation with more romantic potential. Except maybe the moment after Katara saves Zuko after he risked his life to save her.

Hello and thank you, for reading and for this note!

I'm pretty active on But Who's Counting? right now — I've already drafted about half of the next section. I still have plenty of writing and revising ahead, but I'm hopeful to get another chapter out this month.

I also now have the whole story mapped out (very rare for me), at least until the climax, and the chapter count will probably nudge up a bit next time I update.

ahhhh THANK YOU 🥹🥹 This encouragement means so much. It's also really motivating.

I really love the Zutara community and writing in a space that is so generous with both creativity and support. I read fanfic for more than a decade before I ever wrote any, and I know the way I feel about the authors I've been willing to follow across years. It's such an honor to think that anyone feels that way about my work.

I definitely don't work at the pace I wish I could and am always grateful for the patience/not giving up on reading. I'm still working away on the next chapter of But Who's Counting? I had to do quite a bit of rewriting, but I'm finally working on a draft that I like.

I’ve gotten a bit blocked working on the next set of chapters for But Who’s Counting?, and I probably won’t have anything I’m happy with to post for a few weeks.

But, to try to break through the writer’s block, I took a discarded idea for an early version of that story's climactic scene and wrote a short new fic. I don’t consider this story a spoiler for what’s coming in But Who’s Counting?; basically anything I plan to keep for that piece, I’ve changed in this one.

And you certainly don’t need to read But Who’s Counting? in order to read You Make Everything Better. If you like Zutara fics with yearning, self-denial and also the end of yearning and self-denial, I hope you'll check it out!

I also brought some some writing process thoughts. Oops.

Something that has happened both times I’ve written Zutara multi-chapter fics is that the two characters fall for each other earlier than I initially plan. I’m not the most committed outliner—as a writer I’ll usually follow the energetic flow of the characters rather than any hard plotting I've done. And I find the empathy just grows so quickly between these two characters once there's opportunity.

The downside to writing this way is that often the scenes that initially motivated me to write a particular story no longer work in the story as it unfolds. So I’m often killing darlings while they’re still a twinkle in my eye.

In my initial (imagined, lol) outline of But Who’s Counting? the climactic chapter looked something like this new story. But then the relationship between the characters progressed too significantly to land in this sort of scene without constructing a major miscommunication plot for the sake of it. And I thought about doing that! I started writing that draft. And then I had to reconsider.

I don't dismiss miscommunication plots out of hand. In fact, I think miscommunications are basically essential devices in certain enemies to lovers or friends to lovers plot arcs. And frankly, real humans miscommunicate constantly, so I think this trope is more reflective of reality than it's given credit for.

For these reasons, there’s probably still some miscommunication ahead in But Who’s Counting? because there’s a lot these characters still don’t know about one another, their respective worlds, and what they want. But I didn’t want to contort the character arcs for the sake of a scene that no longer fit the story. For me, when miscommunications require me to suspend disbelief about character choices, that's where they get frustrating.