Someone asked me recently why I haven’t taken the time to republish girl/Mistress and bring it back to life. Honestly, the real reason is it’s such an enormous undertaking that I am don’t know if I am ready to give that much time to it.
The novel, girl/Mistress was a book that I wrote back in 2009. It took seven years to actually publish it on Amazon and was the only book to make some money. Maybe somewhere around $300.00, give or take. The paperback version came in over 600 pages. It felt like the size of a Stephen King book. Each time I am ready for a new project, I look at girl/Mistress and pass up the chance to relive it to work on something else. One day it will happen.
For any of my peeps who know girl/Mistress knows that this book was life-changing. Last night when I thought about this blog post, I wanted to start off like this: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. To talk about girl/Mistress that line is completely true. So here is the story of girl/Mistress.
I had a little obsession with the Hannah Montana TV show, or to say, Emily Osment. I came up with the idea for fanfiction in the HM fandom. The title became, I’m Not A Girl, Not Yet A Mistress. If anyone knows HM, you know that all the episode titles are song titles with a little humor to them.
I began writing it and posting the chapters on FanFiction.net back in 2009. This introduced me to a bunch of people I now call friends. It also introduced me to someone who completely changed my life. I met a girl online with who I had a lot in common, and she became my beta-reader for this story.
In my personal life, I had a girlfriend but we were not really happy at the time. A good word for it was BORED. So when this person came into my life and we had all the odd and warped things in common, it was inevitable that I fell in love with her. I broke up with my girlfriend, started a long-distance online relationship with someone, got back together with my girlfriend, thought that I could have two women at once, and found myself more messed up than I already thought I would. All in the span of a couple of years.
Ultimately, my beta-reader lost interest in me and the story. My girlfriend (now wife) almost kicked my ass out of the house. And I had a lot of pieces to pick up and make right in my life. Which I did. My girlfriend did not kick me out and we are actually much stronger together because we finally appreciate each other. I still have great friends from the making of this book. And my beta-reader married her previous girlfriend, so everything worked out in the end.
So I thought about a bullet point list of all the things I learned from this process. Here we go.
- Online long-distance relationships don’t work.
- If your girlfriend gives you a second chance, fucking take it and don’t mess it up. She’s a keeper.
- My favorite couple to write about is Emily/Miley or Miley/Lily.
- I like sex and I like writing about it.
- Friendships can form online and they are real. Thank you, Karleen!
- Don’t be afraid to let your freak flag fly. The keepers will help hold your flag with you.
- A brilliant novel doesn’t happen in 30 days, it takes years to be ready but never will be perfect.
- Never rely on someone else for inspiration, muses are good but they shouldn’t stop you from writing.
- Write whatever the hell you want. There will be someone out there who will love it, too.
Jae Morgan