*8-14-10 UPDATE* I'm alive. I swear. I've stopped reading almost all of the stories I have on alert and have vowed (to myself) not to log onto Twitter until this damn story is complete. (I'm a bit melodramatic like that). I promise, pinkie swear, cross my heart and hope to... well that might be taking it a little far. The point is: the story hasn't been abandoned. I know that infrequent updates coupled with ginormous chapters can really affect the readability of a story, and I don't want that. I'm trying to get the rest written before sending it through the beta process and then posting here. Thank you for reading, thanks for your interest, and if you wanna PM me in the meantime, I don't bite! Once I've finished writing, my plan is to post them all within a pretty short time-frame as thanks for you sticking with me... ~Niki

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Just a little bit about Weighing In: Losing to Gain:

My outline has this story coming in at around 18 chapters. I realize that sounds tiny compared to most Twifics, but my chapters tend to be pretty long. I don't go in to each chapter trying to achieve a certain word count, but each chapter revolves around a set period of time with the goal of constantly moving them forward without unnecessarily dragging the same events out over multiple chapters or rehashing the same events from different POVs. If, however, it looks like the chapters will be too long, I'll split them up, and the story will end up a tad bit longer.

Although the original idea of this story was slated to be a first person narrative all from Bella's POV, in its current incarnation it will alternate between Edward and Bella every other chapter, hopefully (fingers crossed) without being redundant.

Thank you to everyone who plays a part in promoting this story!

Weighing In (the o/s) rec on The Fictionators' blog (thank you to Heather Dawn and Kassiah)

Weighing In: Losing to Gain rec on Twimpage (thank you, BelleDean)

I created a banner for Weighing In: Losing to Gain:

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Answers to a few questions I've received:

1. HEAR = HEA Rocks = Happily Ever After Rocks... Why? Because it does. And because I wasn't in a very creative mood when I had to come up with a penname. Titles and I don't work well together, clearly.

2. The Saga: 3, 1, 4, 2-- that's my book ranking.

3. I do not hate Jacob. He's an annoying 16 year old boy. Aren't they all?

4. I do not hate Breaking Dawn. Wow... was that the sound of multiple browsers navigating away from this page?! Hear me out: I didn't love it, but I didn't hate it, and I will always support an author's decision to take his or her story where their heart tells them to.

5. If you're here trying to figure out if I'm the crazy person that marked your story up with a ton of comments, you've come to the right place. I'm a PTB beta and I will always tell you my honest opinion and give your story the same level of detail I would want given to mine.

6. I have a Twitter account, though I'm not on very often 'cause I get distracted by the eleventy-billion tweets and all productivity (real and imagined) goes flying out the window. (Plus I'm ghost on there until I get this story fully written).

I'm a 33 year old mom of 4, a lawyer masquerading as a writer, with a serious Twilight Addiction. In January of '09, after the birth of my youngest, I asked for book recs to occupy myself during the long post-partum nights of nursing. Twilight was the book suggested the most.

"What's Twilight?" I asked.

A book about a vampire.

"But I don't do dark; I'm an HEA girl for life."

Just read it, they said. It's a love story.

"A love story? Between a vampire and a human?"

Yes, they're in high school and they fall in love.

"Wait... whaaaat?! Are they in night school or something? I know I don't do vamps, I mean, I've never even read or seen Interview With a Vampire but I know that vampires only come out at night!"

They can come out in the day, they just can't be in the sunlight.

"Why? Do they burn in the sun or something?"

Umm... no.

"What then?"

They sparkle.

"Is that a joke?"

No.

10 minutes straight of laughter followed by side-splitting pain said laughter caused...

"You want me to read a book about a sparkly vampire and his human girlfriend?!"

Maybe you're too old to get it.

"Yup, maybe I am. That sounds like the craziest thing I've heard in a while."

That was in January. In February I was desperate for a new read and bought a 6.99 copy of Twilight at my local Wal-Mart. Two days later, I was calling everyone I knew to see who had a copy of New Moon they'd be willing to loan. No one.

Three days later, I sent my husband to a Target 20 miles away with orders to pick up the remaining three books. One week, and a Twilight induced coma later, I'd read each book once and was starting my second read. Next came the movie. It wasn't in theaters any longer and wasn't going to be out on DVD for another few months. Does that stop an addict? Pshh. No. Like a true Twicrackhead I googled until I found it online. I watched it, bad sound, blue tint and all. I hated it. Do you think that stopped me from buying it when it came out on DVD? Haha. No. I bought the Wal-Mart version and then found out the Target version came with a free iTunes download. I bought that too. Damn, the blue tint was still there. Whatev. I still watched it. Seeing a pattern yet?

I googled to see if other fans hated the movie as much as I did. I found a few comments from people saying by the 5th viewing they were in love with it. That sounded like the biggest load of crap I'd ever heard. Wrong. Again. I'll be damned if it wasn't the 5th-friggin viewing that I started to like it. I can't even tell you how many times I've seen it now. Sad? Not really. I've fully embraced the crazy. A couple weeks later, I bought the audiobooks. All of them. What?! I have a 3 hour commute to work. Don't judge me.

Like all gateway drugs... eventually it wasn't enough. Enter google. Google led me to this site... And this site, and the Twilight stories it houses, have become my brand of heroine. I'm addicted. I know it. I accept it. I embrace it. That's me. I joined this site to feed the need through the amazing imaginations of others. Eventually, I'd like to let my creative juices run and start adding my own stories to the pot. For now, I'm happy to read and keep holding on to Ms. Meyer's universe a little bit longer...