My Brother’s Keeper is officially finished! I hope you enjoy the last chapter, Chapter 50, and the chapter-length “Behind the Story” blog I added at the end. I’m gonna start doing these for all my novels in place of my usual author’s note at the end of the story. It’s fun to share my process and preserve my memories while they’re still fairly fresh in my mind, and hopefully some of you enjoy reading about the behind-the-scenes stuff.
Thank you so much to everyone who read this story! I really enjoyed writing it. This one’s been in my head for a long time, so it feels good to finally finish it. I would love to read your thoughts, so please feel free to leave a comment here or on AO3, email me, tweet me, or however you feel comfortable giving feedback. I always appreciate it!
As for my future fanfic projects, I have started a sequel to My Brother’s Keeper called The World Will Be Waiting. I’m not very far into it yet (just started Chapter 3), so I’m going to wait a while before I start posting it. I would give you a sneak peek, but I learned my lesson from doing that with MBK. Instead, I will start posting when I feel comfortable with how the story’s going and have completed enough chapters to be able to guarantee regular updates for a while. Usually, that’s around ten chapters, but with summer winding down and school starting up soon for me, it may take me a few months to get that far.
My daily writing streak is still going strong at 188 days, and I’m determined to keep that going even when life gets busy again. For any of my fellow writers who struggle to find time to write every day, here’s my pro tip: I write while I’m getting ready for work in the morning. I started doing this during the end-of-story streak for A Heart That Isn’t Mine because I was so obsessed with finishing that story, I would write whenever and wherever I could, including sitting on the closed toilet seat with my chromebook on the bathroom counter and pecking at the keyboard with one hand while I blow-dried my hair with the other. On a good day, I could get a few paragraphs written this way, so I kept doing it. This is how I manage to keep my writing streaks going on busy days, when I come home from work too tired to write or simply don’t have time. Although I always seem to revert back to my night owl nature in the summer, my mind is usually freshest in the morning (after I’ve had coffee), and knowing I only have a few minutes helps me focus. Some days, I may only write a sentence – or maybe just one word – but the simple act of opening my story each day and adding something to it keeps it in my head and helps motivate me to open it again the next day. I’ve found it much easier to stay inspired this way.
I’m honestly not sure when you’ll see updates on any of my other stories. Hopefully we’ll write another episode of 00Carter at some point, but that seems to be on hold at the moment. And as much as I would love to say I’ve been secretly working on Guilty Roads or Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Backstreet Boy behind the scenes, that would be a lie. Maybe someday I’ll feel inspired to finish those. In the meantime, I’m looking forward to continuing Kevin’s story and hope you are, too! Thanks, as always, for your support!