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// author's notes 
// Story: Felt Heart 
// by Tchernobog 
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Yes, I know there's an author's note function built in. No, I don't plan on using it. It's ugly, and draws too much attention from the chapter itself. Bah to that!

First off, thanks to... way, way, way too many people. I've had a legion or prereaders, editors, and just friends to read the fic and offer feedback on it. Ranging from help with dialogue, to brainstorming ideas, and even to the poem at the very end. I find poetry to be the devil, so I had much outside help on that. I do think it turned out quite well, though!

As well as thanks to the artists that generously provided art for each chapter. Probably not something I'll repeat (unless they're willing? ;) )

This fic was an entirely different beast than the previous two. For Blue Wings, I didn't honestly know where I was going with it. I had the idea at the first chapter, then puttered my way through the remaining others. The quality shot up drastically when I took on the help of my editor/quasi-coauthor Macdjord, but it was still a chapter by chapter thing with not much of a plan beyond the next chapter.

Mood Wings, by dint of being much shorter, was an easier affair - it was easier to outline it, and write it all out in one go. After edits, it ended up like it is now - my most popular story by a fair margin. Though I do believe there are some aspects of it I'd like to have had when I first wrote it. Ah well, hindsight, 20/20, blah blah.

Felt heart was my first fic without a wing fetish! 

...in all seriousness, it was a fun thing to work on. I couldn't even begin to tell you where the idea for it first came from. I was chatting in an irc channel with a few other authors, and out of the blue, the idea of "giving dolls of themselves in a romantic fashion" was a thing. Later brainstorming added a lot more depth to it - in the end, the outline document was several thousand words on its own, and 20ish or so google doc pages. 

Despite that, I'd estimated around 15k words for this story. 

Instead, we got 34k. Yeah, my estimations suck.

I actually wrote the entire thing before publishing a single chapter. It's changed since that first draft, mind you (it was 29k at that point, so it's gained a solid 5k words), but it felt so, so, so much more comfortable to write it that way, rather than post a first chapter, see where that goes, and work on the next. It'll be something I'll repeat later on for sure. Makes for a whole lot of work, though! (which is why I'm mildly bummed out at not getting in the "update feature box" despite getting #2 spot with chapter one. Maybe the mechanics changed recently? Oh well.)

Thank you again for reading, and look forward to my blog for hints at what I'm planning on next ;)