Terrestrial Alien ✔

Q&A

Readers and Friends,

Because this week and the next I'm chin-deep in the business that comes with graduation, finals, and Track Championships (which I made! Woohoo!) I won't/wasn't able to get a chapter ready for this week. I meant to share this actually on Friday in place of the scheduled chapter, yet I ended up being so busy that it slipped my frazzled mind! My sincere apologies!!

I put this Q&A together in the place of an update, along with a short I wrote a while ago called Chicken Bones, which you can find in my book of extras! It's a cute little one-shot about Sundo and Joshua, if they ever find the time for an honest-to-goodness sit-down-for-dinner date.

If you'd rather not read a Q&A discussing the behind-the-scenes of the story, if it removes some of the mystery or magic of the story, by all means, don't worry! You don't have to read this! I put this together entirely because I'd been thinking about it for a while and because I didn't want to leave you guys completely hanging for a week :')

Other than this, the updating schedule remains the same as of now. I'll see you all again next Friday, June 7th! Till then, I send you all my best wishes!

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Q: What was your inspiration for the story? How did you come up with this crazy concept?

A:  Haha, well. This is going to be a bit embarrassing, but in all honesty I think I was just listening to some MEPs (Multi-Editor Projects) on Youtube, like the animation music video ones, and I don't even quite remember which song it was, but I was struck with inspiration the way many creators are. The song threw me into imagining a story scenario of a boy who turns into a monster showing up at his love's high school in an attempt to convince him to come with him, and to love him back. Interestingly enough, the scene I first imagined, which sparked my imagining the rest of the story, didn't even make it into the current version of the story.

I think I've drawn a lot of inspiration from my own interests, in full honesty. It's no secret that I'm a fan of the paranormal; I've grown up intrigued by the romance of the film adaptation of The Phantom of the Opera and entertained by Youtube series such as Marble Hornets and Buzzfeed Unsolved. I've always been fan of cryptids and the unknown, and I used to be a big Creepypasta fan when I was younger.

Sometimes, while writing, I consider leaning more towards the horror side and making this a true horror-romance, but other times I lean more towards making it softer and gentler and more heart-warming. It's probably clear in the reading, but in the end, I've settled for a precarious balance between the two that I hope has worked out mostly alright!

Q: Sundo, Sundseth, Seth... This alien has so many names! What should I call him?

A:  Anything you'd prefer!

In the story, he only really likes Joshua to referring to him as Sundo. This said, since you're readers, this restriction doesn't apply to you, and you may refer to him as Sundo if you'd like! I know I do quite often. It's a cute name, don't you think?

Q: Weird question, but what gender does Sundo/the monster identity as? It seems to switch sometimes!

A:  When a human, Sundo almost always identifies as male. When he's in his monster form (of which I don't actually have a name for yet? Suggestions?) it can vary. The creature, it/him, doesn't have a preference either way and is frequently referred to as both.