“Wait, does that mean that you’re shipping Shaker and Hertzog together?”

“Of course! I am definitely not shipping Shaker and Rowan.”

“That’s who most of the readers ship.”

“Rowan is such a little shit. He’s too smooth for his own good, and besides, he had his shot when they were stuck in the time warp, but he blew it. Next. Move on. It’s Hertzog’s turn.”

“I seriously cannot tell you how much joy this is bringing me. Whatever the opposite of a panic attack is, I’m currently having it. This is a euphoria attack. There’s too much oxytocin in my bloodstream right now. I’m gonna pass out.”

“You’re not going to tell me anything, are you?”

“Do you really want me to? You actually want me to spoil it for you? Whatever happens next, you don’t want to see it in living color? You just want me to explain it in my regular old voice? If that’s what you really want, I can spoil the whole rest of the series for you.”

“Ugh. No. Fine. You’re right, you butthead. I don’t want you to spoil it. But I do want you to finish it and publish it immediately!”

“I was just working on it earlier today. Trust me, I’m putting as much time in as I possibly can.”

“Remember how you said you’d have to quit your job in order to have enough time to post regularly?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I think that’s a good idea. I think you should quit your job. In fact, I’ll just go ahead and draft your letter of resignation for you right now. That’ll make it easier.”

“This is incredible. I could never have predicted this in a hundred million years. I can’t believe you’re my fangirl. I must have done something right in a past life.”

“Can you get me a discount code on some of this merch? Friends and family or something? I want one of the T-shirts.”

“Don’t pay for the merch! I’ll get it for you for free.”

“Obviously I’ve blown my cover on how cool I think this all is. But really, I can’t believe you do all of it on your own.”

“Well, I don’t do it completely on my own. There’s a team that works on the color-blocking for me. Art and design students, mostly. Especially when I’m up against a deadline. And I have a story editor and two proofreaders who help me with the writing.”

“Right. I wondered if your learning disorder stuff made that part difficult.”

“I can voice-to-text most of it, but of course, that always ends up making all sorts of stupid mistakes. And anything I input myself is always spelled embarrassingly wrong. The proofreaders have their work cut out for them.”