Whoa, I didn't even realize I was featured this month! lol, so I apologize for the delay in answering the survey. First and foremost, thank you so much for featuring me! Thank you so much for reading!
1) Tell us one thing about your story that no one else knows? Any Other Way is the first story that I ever officially completed and it's the first story I ever shared with a wide audience other than close friends of mine. I'm really happy that people took a liking to it and continue to read my series!
2) How long did it take you to write this entire story? I started it in early July of 2007 and finished it in mid-September of the same year. So that's just over two months!
3) Give us a summary different from the one you have posted on AC, with a few more spoilers to make people tune in. When ex-significant others Nick and Katrina reunite in Key West, Florida, both of them are thrown for a loop. Will they become just friends, friends with benefits, or will they rekindle their romance that each of them thought was lost? Follow them through the first awkward kiss, the first overnight stay, and the development of their new relationship, of course not without hurdles from family and friends along the way.
4) If you could cast this story as a movie who would play the main roles and why? Hmm, this is tough. Nick Carter for Nick's role (haha, is that cheating? whoops.) And I think I'd have to say Rachel McAdams as a brunette for Trina's character. I really admire Rachel McAdams as an actress and I think she could bring the down-to-earth, yet fun personality that the character has alive.
5) Have you ever thought of giving up on the story and if you did what made you continue to work on it? You know, I was honestly very excited while I was writing this story. I've gotten tired of writing with so many other stories and I'll lose interest and then revisit it later (sometimes never, depending on the story), but when I was writing AOW, I was literally cranking out 1-5 chapters daily and I tried to update as often as I could. I was writing it while I was taking my last semester of classes and I didn't have a job other than substitute teaching at an early childhood school, so I had a lot more time than I've had with any other stories I've written and that definitely helped. I think thriving off of feedback also contributed to how excited I was while writing this one.
6) What was your writing process? (Outline, make it up as you go along, the characters wrote it, I am Tonja and plagerized lol) At first, I just had an idea in my head about how I wanted the story to go. After a few chapters and establishing the characters the way I wanted them to be, I wrote down major plot points that I wanted to happen and filled in the gaps with random daily events to make it into the more-realistic, less-crazy-drama story I wanted it to be. I decided how many chapters I wanted it to be ultimately and then I pretty much wrote whenever I had the free time on my computer.
If I ever got stuck or bored at all, I'd refer back to an older story I'd written (the ones you guys haven't read cause they're terrible) and sometimes I'd use things I liked from them for the "filler" type chapters. And voila! There it was.
7) Who was your favorite character in this story and why? I'd have to say Nick. He's the "fun" one in the relationship, I think. Trina's always more "where are we?" in their relationship and Nick goes with the flow more. I've heard it said from readers who know me personally that Nick and Trina are pretty much the two different sides of my personality. LOL sounds weird, I know, but let me explain. I can be totally like Trina some days - I want everything planned and labeled and organized and I can try to resist change and I can think with my head and not my heart. And the next day, I can be like Nick - go with the flow, follow my dreams, make everything about sex, and be assertive. There's definitely similarities with me in both of the characters, but I like Nick more. He's just generally more fun for me to write (which is also why I picked him to narrate
Double Trouble when I wrote that).
8 ) You had to know this was coming, who was your least favorite? Least favorite would have to be Sean. It's kind of funny because I had planned on Sean and Trina actually becoming an item and then it being a whole big dramatic thing of Nick winning her back and having her realize she loved Nick after all... But then I decided not to. I personally like it better the way I wrote it, but I know others might have enjoyed that drama. lol. Either way, Sean became a really unlikable character throughout the writing process.
9) Are all the boys in this one? If not why did you choose to exclude them? The Boys are in this story on a limited basis. It's more like they're mentioned when Nick's working, but that's about it. I'd have to check back to be 100% accurate on this, but they get together socially very rarely in this story (might be other stories in the series - like I said, I don't totally remember considering the series is so long and I tend to confuse the stories). I just have always been more of a Nick Carter fan than a Backstreet Boys fan in general and I chose to focus on the possible "normalcy" of Nick Carter's personal life instead of his professional life. Some may argue that they would coincide more often, but that's just the way I chose to do it with this series.
10) If we like this story...then we'd love what story? Here's my shameless plug to read the rest of my series! lol. If you love this story and you enjoy Nick and Trina, read the rest of the Hearts Don't Lie series to find out what other adventures they get into together. (Sounds so after-school special, doesn't it? lol.) But yeah - I promise I'll try to update the stories I'm currently working on more, too!
Thanks again for reading! Now ask anything you'd like to... I'll check back as much as I can!