This page will be a catchall for any extra information and stuff relating to the story.

About the story

As I said on the main page, I wrote this story for The Spark Inside 2011. I signed up very excited about the concept of the challenge for this year, and even had a plot strike me early on. But the plot ended up hitting a bit close to home and I couldn’t write it until I’d gotten a little distance between myself and the worst it.

In the end, I didn’t write anything until the last two weeks of the challenge and, despite my newfound inspiration, did not quite manage to finish on time.

Here are the prompts I had to fit into it, and I did manage to get quite a few of them in before I ran out of time.

The event that gets the story rolling: The story starts when your character returns to a town he/she never thought they’d go back to
A secondary conflict: Another character is an ex of your best friend, who just moved into the building next door
One setting: Starbucks
Theme: Rescue – this plot involves the Protagonist searching for someone or something
One challenge: an important letter is lost
One random plot point/twist: finds out she’s pregnant
One cardinal character trait: Outspoken
One character weakness: trusts too easily
Character’s most prized possession: a journal
One every day character problem: Crabbiness
One character fear: Losing his hair
One character quirk: Distance runner
One character problem: Character has an obsession with being in control
One non-Hanson song: Musiq Soulchild – Who Knows
Dialogue: Character 1: Do you know what I’m talking about?
Character 2: Of course I don’t know what you’re talking about. I never understand what the hell is coming out of your mouth.

I won’t go into detail about just exactly how the plot that came out of those prompts is like my life. Suffice it to say, no one died and no one is pregnant, but there were lots of lies and deception going around. I live for that grey area of morality in stories, but it’s not my favorite to actually live. Nevertheless, it’s cathartic to write these characters. Do I totally understand why they do what they do? Absolutely not. But that’s life.

Credits

Big thanks to Aeryn for being my beta for the first few chapters I completed for the challenge.

All songs and lyrics used within this story are the property of their writers and performers.

As for the pictures, most of the Hanson pictures come from Hitz Pics and MMMBoptastic.com. Other pictures used for the characters can be found at the following sources:

Charlotte: Melanie Laurent 1, 2
Shiloh: Daisy Lowe 1, 2
Mollie: Natalie Dormer 1
Stella: Stock image from Getty Images