writer by day, scientist by night

I can confirm that in fact, I’m very much alive

I’ve spent the last few months writing my PhD thesis, which basically means I’ve hardly had time for anything else other than writing non-fun stuff. It’s been pretty stressful, so yeah… haven’t been online a lot, tbh

Posted about it a few months ago but just dropping it here again just in case anyone was wondering about it

So please... go crazy with the recs

Seriously, like, send me your favorites, recent classics, self-recs, fics everyone has somehow read except me, whatever you've got

I was thinking I could compile all the recs into a post afterward so everyone can have them in one place, and then maybe later I can come back and give my thoughts on the ones I read, if that's something people would be interested in?

Nooo, I’m not gone, I swear!! I’ve just been kind of kidnapped (that’s probably the right word for it at this point) by my PhD thesis lately. I’m really close to submitting now, which means I spend basically the entire day staring at my laptop writing already, and by the time I finally shut it down at night, my brain is fried. I’m just, like, fully incapable of opening another document or thinking about fic edits for more than three seconds before I have to lie face down somewhere

I still check in around here from my phone, though. I read you guys’ asks all the time, even when I’m too exhausted to properly answer them, so yeah, I’m still lurking around in the background like a tiny stressed gremlin living in the walls

If all goes well, I should be submitting around mid-July, so like… soon-ish?? pleasepleaseplease cross your fingers for me, because I really can’t wait to be done with this fjdksk

Although “done” is maybe a bit too generous, because after that I still have to study, prepare my presentation, rehearse it approximately fifty times, convince myself I won’t completely blank out in front of everyone and accidentally forget my own research exists, and then actually defend the thesis without leaving my body

So, as any completely sane and normal adult does during a six hour layover on the way back from a conference, I opened my notes app and just started writing. Call it a cry for help. Call it the self-destructive coping mechanism of someone who is less than two months away from submitting her PhD thesis (which, yes, is why I’ve been MIA lately. I’m sorry. I miss you all. I miss writing. The thesis does not care, though)

But here’s the thing. I need angst. Not just angst. Like, ANGST. The kind that makes you cry until your face hurts and your hands are shaking, and then you lie there at 2am staring at the ceiling because ohmygod it was SO BAD and you have to press your palms against your eyes and just breathe because your chest is tight and you can’t tell if you want to keep reading or throw your phone across the room. I want that. I NEED that. Am I crazy? Probably. But what else is new?

So obviously my brain went full angst mode. And this is what came out:

Will and Mack, second season with the Sharks. Everything is golden

They’re best friends in the way that makes other people feel a little sick with how close they are. They fall asleep on each other’s couches. Mack steals food off Will’s plate without asking and Will pretends to be annoyed about it every single time. The league doesn’t look so scary anymore, and the Sharks don’t look so shitty anymore, and Mack is top four in points and playing the best hockey of his life. Things are good, actually. Things are really, genuinely, frighteningly good

And then the Emergency Governance Act passes in the middle of the night with no vote, and three states fall before anyone has time to process what that means, and the world shifts

This is a Gilead/Handmaid’s Tale AU. It’s A/B/O. And Mack has been keeping a secret for a very long time

What follows is a drive across the country with whatever they could grab in twenty minutes. A checkpoint outside of Oklahoma City at two in the morning, flashlights in their faces, hands that won’t stop shaking. The specific, horrible silence of realizing you cannot go back. It’s realizing that your best friend is not exactly who you thought he was, and then realizing, much slower and much more painfully, that you are not who you thought you were either. It’s golden afternoons in a little garden in a house in Northern California. It’s dark nights in a cold bed clutching your phone against your chest, alone and silent and miserable, and the walls feeling closer every day. It’s a young man who doesn’t understand, not yet, what it means to watch the world close in around someone you love and realize you were part of why it took so long to see it. It’s another young man who has been fighting and running and shrinking himself for so long that “I’ll be fine” stopped meaning anything, but he keeps saying it anyway, because what else is there

Will I ever post this? I don’t know. I hope so. But I wanted to get it out here

Honestly, there’s not some big, deep thought process behind it. It’s way messier than that

A lot of what I’ve been doing with the rewrite is just trying to make the tone actually fit the characters better. Like, I think I was pretty consistent with Will overall, writing him like someone his age and all that. But when I started rereading, there were moments where I’d stop and think… okay but would he actually say this?

Like with Dr Fraser and the hospital scenes, I’ve changed quite a bit of the dialogue because it didn’t really sound the way a doctor would talk. It felt a bit off, or too generic and informal almost. so I’ve been trying to make everyone sound more like a character like that would

And it’s kind of the same with Will. When you’re writing something as long as JLH, things slip. They just do. Especially when you don’t have a beta (I know I need one, I know 😭) and you’re the one rereading everything over and over until it all just turns into words and you stop noticing stuff

So with the bracelet line specifically, I remember reading “this omega is spoken for” and just going… would an 18 year old alpha hockey player who basically lives on tiktok actually say that? Like… no. Probably not

“This omega is mine” just felt more him. More direct, a bit rougher, more instinctive and way less polished

And then there are other changes where I genuinely don’t even have a reason. I’ll start rewriting a sentence and suddenly it becomes a whole paragraph and I’m like oh… okay. That’s actually closer to what I meant. And I just go with it

Hi!!!

NO because this is exactly what I want!!!! Like, really. This is the whole reason I'm going back and doing a slow reread/rewrite

When I first wrote JLH, I wasn't exactly rushing, but I was always half in the present scene and half in what was coming next. My chapters are SO long, and they always took me days to write, and I think sometimes I lost track of the emotional thread I was actually trying to hold onto

But now it's all there. The story exists. A few months have passed, my head is clearer, and I can sit with it properly. It's so much easier to read a scene and go "oh… this is good, but this isn't quite how I wanted it to feel." And then reshape it. Soften it. Linger a little longer where it matters.

I know some of you had favorite parts of certain scenes that maybe I've changed or cut off, but know I'm not doing it because I hate them or anything else (I love each and every version of JLH), but just because I want it to be the version of the story I had in my head, and I'm so happy it's finally coming through that way

That said: I've gotten so many messages lately and they're kind of piling up in my inbox, and I'm so sorry I haven't been able to reply properly. Work has been insane and I'm heading into what's probably the last conference of my PhD next week, so everything is a bit… chaotic right now

WAIT WHAT??!!

That's so weird because like, yeah, I have been kind of "rewriting" bits here and there, but not like… fully going in and deleting whole scenes?? at least not that I remember?? now I'm stressed 😭

Please please tell me which scene you mean so I can check!! Maybe I messed something up without realizing, or moved something around and forgot to paste it back, or ao3 just decided to betray me 💀

I hope this ok, but I was wondering if it would be ok with you to make a Podfic of Just Like Heaven? I can’t even count the amount of times I have read it, and, selfishly I was thinking as I was driving today about how great it would be to able to listen to it in the car.

I absolutely love your fic, the world you have built is absolutely incredible. Honestly, I’m absolutely obsessed.

Hiiii

Oh wow. I don't even know how to properly say thank you for this. The idea that you've read just like heaven that many times, and that you were driving around wishing you could listen to it, that honestly means so much to me

And yes, I would love that!!!!

Though, maybe not yet. I'm actually in the middle of rereading and rewriting it right now, since I couldn't find it in myself to do it right after I posted it. And I swear, I cringe every few paragraphs. There are so many places where you can tell I wrote half of something, left it, and then came back later in a completely different headspace. Some parts are repetitive, some feel unfinished, and there are little inconsistencies that I can't unsee anymore. I'm trying to smooth it all out and make it the version I always meant it to be

I'm currently at chapter 5, and I've been posting the updated chapters as I finish them (in case anyone's noticed small changes 👀). And since a podfic is something that kind of lives forever, I would really love for it to be based on the final, fully revised version

If you're okay with waiting until I'm done with the rewrite, I would be thrilled to have you make a podfic. Truly. I'll 100% let you know as soon as it's finished