So. Hi. After like a month of inactivity, I’m back, and I dropped this bomb on you. Never say I’m predictable.

First of all, sorry about the absence. I really wanted to get this piece done for the end of July, but then I just couldn’t find a way to do it, then I got this weird paranoid episode where it felt wrong to post any blogs without having this thing done. If I worried anyone, sorry about that. But hey, oh my god, a new story! And it clocks in at nearly 40,000 freaking words. That would be why it took so damn long.

So, what’s today? Thursday the 22nd? Right, okay. So a good few readers are probably thinking, “Oh, okay, cool, a new story. But it’ll probably take him another few months to get GBM Chapter 11 out.” Well, let me throw a few more surprises your way. Starting now, my Patreon is going to charge monthly instead of per work, and GBM Chapter 11 will be coming out in two weeks exactly, on September 5th. Bam. Hard date. Write that one into your calendars. Bashful Scribe is back, baby.

***SPOILERS FROM HERE ON OUT, GO READ THE STORY BEFORE YOU READ THIS***

I had wanted to write this story ever since around late 2017, after Being More Social was finished. In my head I had always known a few of the details that came out in this story and this story alone, and in my headcanon, had known Olivia existed even while writing BMS itself. I realized only after BMS was finished that she as a character never got to see the light of day, but also was aware she never crossed paths with Adam, so I couldn’t shoehorn her into that story. So, years later, this expansion to the story was born.

I also wanted to write it so it would serve as a standalone and hopefully that was accomplished, but that’s not up to me to decide. Ultimately, I hope that most of the readers of this story have read BMS so they can enjoy seeing a few characters in a new light.

Phil was cartoonishly evil by the end of Being More Social. Why? Because both Adam and Nicole hated Phil. We sometimes have that happen to us in life – people become evil not necessarily because they are, but because we want them to be, and see their worse actions as who those people are. I wanted to tell this story to explain Phil’s side and was interested to see it not only outlined a few of Phil’s more positive moments (as well as more negatives, like him blatantly cheating in a monogamous relationship over and over), but it also cast both Adam and Nicole in a negative light, which I never intended to do so blatantly. Still, it was gratifying, since I knew that Phil saw Adam as a manipulator and came to see Nicole as toxic by the end of BMS anyway. God, it’s hell inside my head sometimes.

It’s easy to read a book and say we know this one character because we saw them from one perspective. This story, I hope, serves to undo that. Unfortunately I had to weigh in on the he-said-she-said of Phil VS May to tell his side of the story, which was something I never wanted to do – I always liked the ambiguity and the possibility of both parties being the evil one being relatively equal – but I couldn’t have told the story without it. That said, it’s still not as black-and-white as some of you may be tempted to think…

Either way, that’s just me rambling about this thing I wrote. Point is, whether it’s a tack-on for BMS or its own story to you, I hope that you enjoy it, and I look forward to writing and presenting more stories for you all while 2019 is still here. Once again, I’m sorry for the radio silence leading up to this story’s release. I hope you enjoy the story now that it’s here. As always, if you wish to give any feedback of any kind, you can always email me (bashfulscribe@gmail.com), comment below, or do whatever the heck you do to get in contact with me otherwise. Thanks for reading not only my stories, but my blogs too. You all mean the world to me. I’ll talk to you all next week.