Thanks for the questions, Mare! Anyone else - if you have any questions, let me know! I'm going to be checking periodically throughout the day this week since I'm on vacation from work!
1) Tell us one thing about your story that no one else knows?I wrote all of Nick and Lisa's "past" in one night when I couldn't sleep. I'd had the idea for a while because I wrote a story similar to this one when I was younger. Since it was AWFUL and cringe-worthy for a lot of reasons, I didn't want to post it and I wanted to change some things in the way I presented the story and about the characters themselves. I also decided to do all of the background upfront instead of presenting it in flashbacks as I've done in other stories, such as Any Other Way.
2) How long did it take you to write this entire story?After writing the first 20-something chapters in a sleepless night, the rest of the story took me just under two months. I tried to keep the story updated daily, but since I was also writing my thesis for my master's at the same time, I didn't always get to write a chapter and post daily. I'm pretty sure it's the quickest story I've ever written - for some reason, it just really flowed for me. The characters were natural and worked well together.
3) Give us a summary different from the one you have posted on AC, with a few more spoilers to make people tune in. Is the person who knows you best the best person for you? Nick and Lisa find out in this intimate history of their ups, downs, and in-betweens. We meet Nick and Lisa when they’re only teenagers, clumsily losing their virginities to one another and vowing to always be there for one another. When Nick’s music career, drug problems, and lifestyle choices come into play, can their friendship make it through? Even further, can they make a romantic relationship last through the good times and the bad?
4) What made you come up with the concept of this one? As I mentioned earlier, this story is adapted from a story I wrote years back about Nick and a girl he dated off and on. With this one, I wanted to make the central relationship a friendship and build upon that foundation and lead it into a relationship. Even though Nick and Lisa experienced many monumental “couple” moments together, I never wanted to make it just an on-again/off-again relationship with all of that drama. I wanted to tell a story about two people who really cared for each other through all of the difficulties growing up and becoming an adult. Even though it wasn’t always the perfect friendship, sometimes completely one-sided, etc, I wanted to show that at the end of the day, they were friends. That was one of the reasons I decided to change the premise from what I’d written before. I also wanted to delve deeper into Nick’s drug use and the conflict it had with people who “knew him when” and that sort of thing. It was a way to push myself, too, since I’ve never really been comfortable putting a lot of drug use in my stories.
5) Who was your favorite character in this story and why? Other than Nick and Lisa, I’d have to say AJ was my favorite character in this story. A lot of times, I used AJ as the comic relief, the “go to” friend, and he really did a lot to help out Nick and Lisa when they were in the midst of hard times.
6) You had to know this was coming, who was your least favorite? I’d have to say that Lisa’s editor, Cheryl, was my least favorite character. She had no class, no principles… Just wanted to get a good story and took advantage of the situation Lisa was in to get it. Sure, that’s part of the job and perhaps Lisa shouldn’t have taken the position in the first place, but I really disliked the type of person Cheryl ended up being.
7) Are all the boys in this one? If not why did you choose to exclude them? The Boys were in this one, with the exception of Kevin. He only made a small appearance during the Backstreet cruise, but other than that, I think I mentioned him only once or twice. Since it was focused primarily on Nick and Lisa’s relationship alone for a good chunk of the story, then it revolved around a period of time when Kevin wasn’t in the group, he got left out. I tried to include AJ, Brian, and Howie as I saw fit.