Reviewer: Mellz Bellz Signed
Date: 09/02/06
Title: Chapter 151: Epilogue
Well, I must say I've been quite caught up in this story the past few days... So much so that I spent pretty much my only two days off this week reading this story straight through! lol I thought it was excellent and shocking and definitely not your typical "Nick has cancer" story. At the beginning I was very skeptical since its such an overused plot, but you researched the topic extremely well and made it very emotional. I found myself in tears in quite a few spots. I also read your alternate ending because I remember your concerns about the ending on the Ethereality board. I think you made the right desicion. Although its very tough to accept something like that happening to Nick it would be pointless to say that it was all just a dream. Anyway I;m going to stop rambling now and start the sequel LOl
Author's Response: Wow, thanks for the review!!! I\'m so glad you got into the story and liked it! I really appreciate your comments because when I started this story, I set out to do exactly what you said - take an overused plot and do it some justice by writing it RIGHT - actually researching and trying my best to make it realistic and believable, without sugarcoating it too much. I\'ve read several fanfics with the \"cancer\" plot, and many of them seem cheesy and oversimplified and contain huge medical errors. I\'m no expert, but I\'ve read enough to be able to recognize glaring mistakes, and I just think if you\'re going to write about something like this, you need to at least TRY to look something up about it and get the basics right. Then I read the \"Swollen Issues\" series (which you should read if you liked Broken - it\'s posted here on AC too), which are absolutely the best \"cancer stories\" I\'ve read - they\'re very detailed and realistic and absolutely heartbreaking. That was my inspiration and my motivation to try to write my own story, take it in a different direction, and also make it as realistic as I could. It\'s not perfect, but I definitely spent a lot of time researching and trying to get things right.
Oh, just for the record, my thread on Ethereality was not about this story, but actually about its sequel. Broken has been finished for a couple of years now; I just didn\'t start posting it on here right away. The sequel, BMS, is also a lot further - it\'s on my site (check the link in my bio) if you get into it and are anxious to read further.