There are three fun facts surrounding Lovesick Titans, and the overall two-part series.
1st: It’s an adapted fanfic about The Flash and Captain Cold from DC Comics (specifically the CW’s TV universe).
2nd: The editing and cover art was done by fans of mine.
3rd: It started as a single book and almost became a trilogy before I decided on splitting it in half.
Adapted fanfic
I am a huge proponent of fanfiction and have written articles about how to take fanfic and adapt them into original novels. Like this one: https://www.amandameuwissen.com/single-post/2017/09/09/How-to-adapt-a-fanfic-into-an-original-novel
Not all my works are adapted fanfics (The Collector and Life as a Teenage Vampire are not) but most are and more in the future likely will be too because that is where my muses live, even if I eventually take the stories and rewrite them into something original, often from alternate universe fics so the story really does stand on its own.
The Lovesick Series was originally simply Lovesick, a fanfic for the TV version of The Flash and Captain Cold. I fell so in love with the story and saw how the inherent plotline and villain didn’t rely on canon. So, I rewrote it, painstakingly at times, to be an original novel.
I couldn’t be prouder of both versions and the great fans I have from The Flash (and specifically ColdFlash) fandom that have supported the story, which is why the book’s dedication is – To my family of ice and lightning.
Editing and art by fans
I have close relationship with many of my fans – we hug at conventions, we’re Facebook friends, we DM on tumblr – so it’s hard to even think of them as fans so much as just readers and friends.
For the cover art for both books in this series, I commissioned a remarkable artist who had done art for my fics in the past, just out of the goodness of her heart and as a reader, and because of that, I wanted to have something of hers for the adaptation. It was a joy working on the little nuances to get everything just right, especially since the art is flawless, but my poor cover designer had to redo things several times until I was truly happy with how the art was presented.
The editing was also done by a reader and online friend, who still blows me away with how thoughtfully she edits. She would catch the exact moments where something might drag, or where something might be missing, and remember things I’d missed from earlier scenes that could be called back to at just the right time. She really immersed herself in the story to be the best editor I could imagine for bringing this tale to new life.
Without editor Kaila Corrington and artist Veronika Dolnikova, this series would be incomplete, and I am truly grateful for their contributions.
Book length
I have trouble writing that 50k basic novel length. My stories are often much longer, I can’t help it! I thought after editing things down for Lovesick that it would be fine for a single novel length – I was wrong. For everything I tweaked and cut, I added just as much for new worldbuilding, and the length at the end was as long as the original fanfic. I could NOT let it be a single book.
I spent weeks, maybe months, while still editing pieces of the story, trying to determine the best place to split it. Everyone tends to think of trilogies first, but I knew that doing that would make one or more of the books lacking in narrative structure.
So, I finally decided that the best spot to break things up was almost perfectly in the middle. I still made changes and additions to make sure each novel felt sound on its own, while also requiring each other to get the full story, and I don’t regret my final decision at all.
Plus, since there are two equal protagonists, with an alternating 3rd person limited POV between them throughout, having two books that each represent one of those characters really ties everything together.