I'm just another young adult of a vaguely unstated age, from a vaguely unstated place in the US, and of a vaguely unstated career path, who likes to procrastinate by reading fanfiction and attempting to write my own whenever a half-formed idea pops into my head. I'm a huge reader and daydreamer, and love anything to do with fantasy, mystery, comedy, or romance. Basically, everything.

While y’all are waiting for me to hurry up and update Burn Like Cold Iron, here’s some background info that literally nobody asked for, but since I keep thinking about this story even when I have writer's block, I may as well throw some of my thoughts out here.

On love interests: So I’m currently writing the Council of Elrond bit, where finally (after a good 100 billion words) we meet the main cast of characters. That means it’s high time to add the romantic pairing in the tags, which I’ll do soon, I promise.

I admit I feel kinda bad because several of y’all have guessed at who Bee might fall for, and so far nobody's gotten it right. I’m sorry if y’all have your heart set on a pairing between Bee and someone other than who I had in mind, and I hope you keep reading regardless. Also, I’m a big fan of slow-burn, pining-from-a-distance-for-ages kind of romance, so…buckle up y’all, this is gonna take a while.

On character names I picked the name Beatrice for my MC for several reasons, and, yeah, I’m sure y’all are just dying to know why. One of the possible origins of the name is from the Latin viatrix, meaning traveler or voyager, which is obviously on-point for Bee.

Another possible meaning for the name is thrice-blessed (from Latin: beata—blessed, trice—three times); from the very start, I’d had the idea that Bee would have three run-ins with Middle Earth in her life. The first, of course, was when she was little and met the Ent-wife, and the third and last is when Saruman kidnaps her. I had a second meeting planned out when Bee was a teenager, but it hasn’t made it into the story, and at this point I’m not sure if it will. So, we’ll see if that meaning comes into play.

Finally, Beatrice is the name of Dante’s love in The Divine Comedy. I took so many university courses on Dante that I can’t help but dwell on it here. In real life, Dante Alighieri barely knew or even spoke to the real Beatrice, but he fell in love with the idea of her and wrote her into his stories, where she served as his muse, with him creating a whole personality for her to help him navigate his way through Purgatory and Paradise. So that’s the final reason for the name Beatrice—while she’s not a self-insert or an idealized character, I thought a muse and invented personality to guide readers on a quest would be an interesting parallel for a modern-girl-falling-into-Middle-Earth story.

And as for the name Smith…I just got lazy.

On pacing: Yeah I’m sorry about how slow the story starts. I’ll still stand up for my ent-wife intro, but I didn’t really have much of a story in mind at first and spent way too long on getting Bee from point A to point B—I’m still a novice writer and had no clue how to pace a story. I have a better idea of it now, but that doesn’t change the fact that this story has a slowwww start and is just going to be a beast by the time it’s over.

On violins: Continuing in the vein of things no one besides me cares about, violins would not exist in Middle Earth. I’ve done an embarrassing amount of research into medieval musical instruments, and the best I can figure is that the precursor to a violin would be a similarly-shaped instrument that would be broadly called a fiddle, which, okay, fine. But I just can’t reconcile Rivendell elves playing ethereal music in a magical valley…on a fiddle. Fiddles make me think of Cotton Eyed Joe and square dances (you know, “swing yer pardner round and round”)—not a very elvish vibe. So, we’re just going with violins.

Old timey instruments did tend to have inverted bows, though (turned outward away from the bow hair, unlike modern ones) so I threw that in there. Again, no one is reading this for musical accuracy. I just spent a lot of time on it, and wish I hadn’t, but can’t take it back now.

I'm always looking for new stories to obsess over, so feel free to message me asking me to read or review your story- I literally give constructive criticism for a living and love to read new stories! And don't hesitate to let me know what you think of my writing. I'm straight-up obsessed with getting reviews. The last one I got, I danced around my room fist pumping because that's what self-isolation does to you, apparently. Stay sane out there, y'all, and keep writing.