Ok. I know I promised to finish this story and was working on a sequel. For the past couple months I have sat down to finish this one as well as the one I was just starting, but found no motivation. Everytime I even thought about the story I wanted to cry. It was a story, like all stories I write, that was dear to my heart and needed a lot of work before it was complete. I have even rewritten over half of it to correct the holes I've found in it. I believe it would have been a great journey.

Imagine my surprise when I opened up a local paper and found the name of my story, the contents from my own overly-vivid imagination printed in an article. At first I was shocked that anyone locally would take an interest in something I was doing as a project to strengthen my writing skills – I was even happy about it. This happiness died, however, as I continued to read the article and found that the author listed was one of my closest friends whom I've shared to story with. In the article she stated that the story had come to her in a dream and she felt the need to write it down. Anyone who was interested in reading should contact her and she would send them a copy. According to her, she had gotten a decent response and had sent out several copies. None were sent to me, the original author. This news came to me just before the last chapter I posted, but I pushed through that chapter hoping that it wasn't as bad as I thought. Unfortunately, it was much worse. Once I got my hand on her version of the story and begin to skim through it, my heart sank. Not only had she taken credit for my work, but the story was no longer mine. Her writing, the way she is able to describe characters and emotions, was embedded in the entire manuscript as well as her personal style. My characters, whom I loved dearly, were changed so dramatically I couldn't even begin to recognize any of them. I know the story needed a lot of work, but it was a slap in the face to have a friend take it from me and write it a whole lot better than I did, and take credit for it. I felt that as my skill grew, I would be able to do justice to the story and right now, I feel that she stole it from me and killed everything in it that was uniquely me.

This is why I haven't finished the last chapter and you may say that I only had one chapter to go, but I just can't find the motivation to move past the hurt to even think about a story that was once mine. Needless to say, the friend is no longer a friend and to keep everything civil I gave her the rights to the story. I feel like we've been friends forever and if it was that important for her to have it, I would let that by my final act as a friend.

For those of you who are as upset as I am about this news, I would like to offer an apology. I have never had anyone do anything like this to me before and I'm sure you were all looking forward to the ending I had prepared. I am continuing to write under another name but this story will not be posted under that name. If you are interested in reading anything else from me, please let me know in a PM and I will give you the other name I am writing under. Thank you all for your support, the reviews, and the PMs and again I am so sorry that I wasn't able to finish this. I will be deleting this profile soon, just wanted to offer an explanation before I did so.