Without being redundant, this blog entry will contain MAJOR SPOILERS for my recently completed novel 'rozar'. Additionally, it gets pretty personal and heavy regarding covid, substance abuse, and self-reflection. Most of that is in a spoiler tag, but I wanted to add a content warning here as well.

I am so excited to have this story completed. It has gone through a lot with me. COVID, graduation, more covid, jobs, and a whole hell of a lot more personal change. I started writing rozar at the very beginning of the pandemic (posted March 17, 2020), and it has taken me about a year and a half to finish it. Honestly, it changed a lot as it was written because I changed a lot as it was written. It definitely started out as a mystery/reluctant friends-to-lovers. It has become a villain origin story. 

I don't know when it became that, really. I do plan as I go, and I usually have my endings solid, at least conceptually. Rozar became more about letting the story develop on its way to the end. I knew that Cain was going to come back at the end, I knew that Anna would betray them again, I knew Hermione would still be corrupt. But I didn't know how Rose would react to all these things, and she just wound up a villain (kind of?? up to you to decide). She is trying to get justice for Abel throughout the whole text, and slowly realizes that no one is willing to interrupt their lives to find it but her. I guess, this is the story of her descent into extremism and vigilante justice. Secrets breed desperation, and a lack of therapy is an issue. (I am going to put some words about my substance abuse in a spoiler tag here) 

I really wanted to write about people post-secondary school. Thankfully this is not my "normal life", but Rose does struggle with normal things. I was fleshing out what I could potentially be facing in my own future. A distant mother, a successful sibling, unsteady jobs, multitudinous, ruinous relationships. Then my life shifted sort of quickly, and rozar became an exercise in writing about dishonesty and betrayal while I was in the happiest relationship of my life. That threw a wrench, and I think it tested my writing skills. There are many things I'm grateful for with this story, but mostly how it allows me to reflect passively on how I felt in that time in my life. Like a horrible, metaphoric diary. 

Rose is mean and vindictive and really reactionary. Scorpius is apologetic and quiet and secretly very angry. There's a lot of built up tension between them of things not said, which is just a polite term for more lying. It's confrontational and wrong in a lot of ways. Rose says really insulting things, and Scorpius takes it. And even when he breaks, he repairs himself and is mature enough to realize that Rose is struggling, too. Scorpius isn't weak, he's resilient. I'm not that good of a person. People will tolerate a lot for who they love (platonically or otherwise), and I think....Rose destroys those boundaries. She takes advantage and lashes out, and when will she learn that enough is enough??????

The ending....yeah I set up a sequel. Idk when it will come, if it will come, it all depends. I'm making a new story that I love, and its equally if not more immoral and dirty. Turns out, over a year later, I still like writing about pain  Let me know if you have any questions down there! Or if you are here to spew abhorrences about the Geronimos, that's cool, too. 

Catherine