When Rain Falls: The Start of Everything...
Disclaimer: Everything, other than my own characters, belongs to Masashi Kishimoto.
GUESS WHO'S BACK?!
After YEARS of not working on this story, I am finally back in the writer's seat and ready to go! I see I've still got a decent amount of followers, and I want to apologize first and foremost to you all. I've said multiple times I was going to write again and continue, but I didn't follow through. That was extremely selfish of me to not even give a notice about being on hiatus.
As a gesture of honesty, I want to explain myself a bit better. In 2016 I was diagnosed with a generalized anxiety and panic disorder. For almost the entirety of 2016 I would have panic attacks... we're talking every day, multiple times a day. And it made me very afraid to do anything. Even getting up in the morning caused anxiety. I felt like such a failure and such a disappointment to everyone around me that writing, reading, anything creative really was just not there. Playing video games would stress me out and cause attacks, like everything was a trigger.
However, with the help of some very dear close friends and my family, and a therapist that is amazing, I was able to get my anxiety under control. I can live a very normal and healthy life, so long as I take care of my mental AND physical health. I'm still adjusting to certain things and some days I find myself struggling a bit more than others, but I'm actively trying to maintain a balance in my life and stumbling is human. Thanks to this balance I find myself wanting to create again. I have never stopped thinking about this story and the decisions I wanted to make, things I wanted to change, things I loved, and things I hated.
So without further ado, WELCOME BACK! If you're new, WELCOME!
For the new readers, I hope you enjoy the journey. I know Naruto came to a full end and Boruto is well on it's way nowadays, but I find myself wanting to dip back into Naruto and start all over with the show! Many of us grew up with it and find nostalgia in stories like this. Others are younger and newer and might enjoy the creativity. Either way, I hope everyone finds something they enjoy in my story.
For the older readers that are returning, I do give a word of caution. I am re-writing the original 14 chapters that I had posted. As I tried to jump into things where I left off, I found myself upset at some of what I did. I rushed nearly the entire time. I was racing to get to Shippuden which made me neglect Kaori and Takumi's development, Toko became nonexistent, and I threw an imaginary relationship with Kotone and everyone in the Konoha genin in the mix as if she'd known them for ages. Of course I want the Konoha genin to be friends with my Ame team, but I also think they didn't interact directly enough for it to be realistic. So I'm taking what I had and making some pretty hefty re-writes. I plan to include a cheat-sheet at the end of the original chapters content; I say "original content" because it's hard to say if it'll stay 14 chapters or not and the chapter numbers/titles might not line up as they used to. The cheat-sheet will be brief summaries of the changes I made vs. the originals. I am actively typing chapters ahead of time, but I don't have a set posting schedule. I work 2 jobs at the moment so I am very busy, but at least 3 nights a week I have free time. I plan on writing some nights, hanging out with friends and playing games others.
Thank you for the continued support of When Rain Falls! There should be some new art of the characters coming out eventually as well, because I retconned that too!