... and the sugar turned bitter.

This dark night between Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, may you all be visited by Three Sisters. Wooo~! I spent a year writing this. There's still a lot I left off the table for this collection, and I'll try and outline those other pieces and provide links in another post, but over this year, I wrote the first main story in this collection mostly late at night by candlelight. Before I knew it, I had surprised myself by leaving canon so far behind that the things I was making up in the dead of night about this one character from episodes #11-12 had become more important to me than I really knew how to explain.

Alongside a forthcoming book that I actually got asked to write, I wrote the second story in coffee shops in Shinjuku and East London on rainy days, in transit through Narita Airport, and whilst waiting in the early hours of the morning at Zayed International Airport in Abu Dhabi. I worked on it in-between telephone calls in my previous temp job, in a hotel in Vancouver, on a flight from Canada back to Japan, and then, again, in Shinjuku, in coffee shops in Shibuya and Ueno and Akihabara, in the Kamen Rider Diner in Ikebukuro, and at last, finally, by candlelight once more at home. I never intended for there to be a second story, but it happened anyway, and whilst I was away, I took Harima Shiori with me everywhere I went.



It's late at night as I write this, or it's early in the morning, you can take your pick. Somehow, this became my Christmas present to you all. Once you turn the pages, you can't return it. The lovely Rei provided the artwork and the ever thoughtful Stewart Sheargold brought his patience and keen editorial eye. Neither of them told me to my face that I was insane, and I am very, very grateful for that. I don't think I could have sustained this level of madness either without the warm community environment of Black Saturn, and I have to especially thank luckyzukky and linky for basically doing everything I was doing when writing this, but doing it better and thus forever providing endless inspiration.

I'm so tired. I need to sleep. Thank you all for letting me spend a year working on this. Sorry when I make more things like this. Merry, merry Christmas, one and all.

"I blinde gaar jeg
Redd meg, ikke
La natten føre meg
Bestandig."

Kveldssanger | cover and illustration by Rei | written by me | edited by Stewart Sheargold | published by Black Saturn.