(Update 8/16/2012)

House of Cards is officially posted! The story will be updated weekly once I start posting and hopefully, I already have enough written (I just started Ch. 7) that I'll be able to get away with writing less often when school starts but still have something to post every week. I think part of why I held off on posting this right away is because it's something that has been kicking around in my head for the past year--I even wrote out an entire outline for it and then walked away from it completely and started "True Love Way". I'm not entirely sure why I did that but I think it has something to do with the fact that there's a lot going on and a lot to juggle in terms of plot, theme, and still keeping it true to the characters. But it never left me and now that I've had time to rework the plot from start to finish, I'm feeling like this is something I can't walk away from again. It's kinda scary and that's how I know it's worth the time and the effort.

My plan is for this to become a three-part series to explore this Romeo and Juliet inspiration. I'm not going to follow the play's plot by any means but this story takes its inspiration from Romeo and Juliet the same way the show is inspired by Hamlet. The first part will focus on the beginning of the relationship and the initial conflict but the other two will center on what happens in the aftermath of that. I've always told my students when I teach the play that there's no way Romeo and Juliet would've actually been happy together in the long run if they'd actually survived and that's something I'm really interested in exploring. Take the risk and the forbiddenness away and what's left? Of course, Romeo and Juliet were teenagers and completely stupid and implusive. Jax and my OC are older, more mature, and in circumstances what will eventually allow them to actually be together. But the adjustment of having had a secret relationship to being able to carry it out in the open is something I'm really excited to work through with them.

As for my other stories, I'm not going to make any promises I can't keep--this one just became too big to ignore which tells me I have to see it through