It's finished! Why am I not excited?

I am still trying to figure out a set day of the week to put up my blog posts, but while I do that I'm writing this today cause it's my day off.

I have a bit of an announcement to make...

I finished A Winter Grim and Lonely!

No, I am not okay.

Let me say that again. I AM NOT OKAY!!!

I can't even say that I'm that excited. Relieved is a better word.

I'm pretty sure that this book destroyed my heart. I wasn't ready for that. Nope, nuh-uh. Someone should have told me that was going to be as painful as it was. Did I think that this book was going to be difficult to write?

Yes!

But man, not even I expected just how painful.

Y'all don't even want to know the faces I was making as I was writing the last two excruciatingly painful chapters.

But anyway as a post-writing celebration/mourning period I'm going to share some things about this story.

I had the title before I had the story. When I came up with the title A Winter Grim and Lonely I wasn't even planning on writing an Ismena themed story. I was actually thinking about dividing A Winter Dark and Deadly into two books and naming the second book that. But then I decided that was way too much work and then the idea for an Ismena themed story came to me. And then thanks to Hannah for getting me really thinking about it... I decided I was going to write it.

I was actually going to publish it in a collection with a second Winter Cursed short story that takes place after A Winter Dark and Deadly (basically the plot I was going to put into the second book if I'd made them into two) but I didn't think the title fit for the second story. When I finally came up with the title for that story, I decided to just make them two books.

This is my first Winter Cursed story that has only one POV. Ismena's.

While I was writing the end, I started thinking, what would have happened if Ismena hadn't killed Stephan*

*Not a spoiler, it says in Winter Cursed that she did*

*cries uncontrollably*. WHY WOULD I DO THAT TO ME???

That thought got me thinking of how that little fact would have changed the entire story. Obviously Stephan wouldn't have been dead, Ismena would still be kinda good/kinda bad but a lot more stable. Elisabeth wouldn't have grown up in exile, or been forced to flee into a certain forest and she probably would have married the young lord Gerald Belton*. They would still have winter. And then I realized that in this version of the story, Cedric would have actually been the bad guy. He would have finally broken free of his exile and raised an army, plunging Illesya into another war.

*Only my alpha readers of AWDAD would know who he is

An interesting thought... How close everything came from being different*

*When you read the book you all will realize just how close we came to this reality*

*I'm not crying. You're crying.

Anyway... that's all I have to share. I apologize if this is a bit of a disorganized post but my brain died when my heart did. I'll probably do a post on Amar later this week or next week ;P

What do you guys think? You excited about AWGAL's upcoming release? Think you're brave enough to read it? Do you enjoy heartbreaking books? Comment below!