With the final chapter Secret's Out, the story for Arnold's Secret (AS) has come to its conclusion. But do not worry. A sequel named Rebirth is in the works and it will pick off right after the final chapter! Be sure to follow my account! If you think AS had a nice little drama, just wait until the sequel!
A piece of quick background information behind everything. The reason why I choose to write AS was because for the past year, I've been reading a lot of Hey Arnold fanfictions. Another and the main inspiration into writing AS was from playing this video game called Catherine which I recommend (if you're into puzzle games). Catherine is about playing a character who cheated on his girlfriend and the ending is based on your choices throughout the whole game. When it was slow at my job, I'd read Hey Arnold fanfictions (through my phone) and then when I come home, I played Catherine. Or sometimes I'd read Hey Arnold fanfictions on my computer and then start playing Catherine.
So I thought of putting two and two together and started to write AS. Some of the early review comments in AS is that Arnold is finally the "bad boy" which is exactly it! There are some nice fanfictions of Arnold being bad, but I've yet to see him being a cheater, so I decided to go into that route. I like some of the comments where it was suggested Helga and Lila should sleep together. It was a consideration, but I felt Helga wouldn't go THAT far in this type of story. I had a pregnancy tease on chapter 18, but I had no plans on getting Helga pregnant as there are already a few fanfictions of Helga being pregnant.
The comments about the irony if Lila cheated on Arnold. Unfortunately, that was not into consideration at all. I wanted Lila to be sweet and innocent as much as possible.
Arnold and Helga getting caught during the first day of senior year were planned since day one of writing. When I started in chapter 12, I decided to rush the summer timeline so the first day would get closer. If you could tell since chapter 12, more chapters after were short and published almost every other day. I really wanted to have AS completed right as I start getting ready to return to school.
As of now when I write this (July 03, 2019), I'm starting graduate school on August 12 pursuing an M.A. in History where all I'm going to do is write papers. My undergraduate degree is in History so I already know how history graduate school will be like. Writing, writing, and more writing!
So I'm asking for you AS fans are to please have patience while I deal with graduate school, working, volunteering at a library, and focusing on the sequel on the side. All in that order. For the past few months when it was slow at my job, I've been writing AS chapters on google docs which helped publishing chapters faster. However, when graduate school starts, I will be working on homework when it's slow at work but at least I will have some extra free time to write chapters for the sequel whenever I come home. Please understand that graduate school homework/projects will have to come first. So far, I plan to publish one chapter from the sequel once a month but I will do my best to write and release them to you fans! School starts in a month so I will start officially on the sequel in a few days.
I promise, I WILL NOT just have the sequel stay "in progress" and just disappeared forever like many fanfictions are out there. If I was really burned out, I would leave an author's note like this but I promise that I won't. I already have great chapter ideas and a lot of great notes. Every chapter in the sequel will be and more detailed and maybe for longer chapters.
Rebirth will be DARK. Depression, humiliation, drama, fights, etc. I'm highly looking forwarding to writing the sequel!
I'm not going to let you off that easy, Football-head.
-AddressUnknown
