Author’s Note

Hello, Reader! Thanks for reading :)

This has been a really fun little experimental novel to write. The entire premise started with a dream—as most of my stories do—about a strange girl with strange mannerisms who gets replaced by something even stranger. It was a beautiful dream of love, growth, and acceptance, and I can still see the scenes perfectly clearly in my head today. I tried to convey some of the “alienness” of It by foregoing most of the usual narrative and descriptive cues that standard novels have. And, perhaps because of how vivid the dream was, the imagery is still clear to me, and the novel still makes sense despite its sparseness. I often worry that that’s because I saw the ‘movie’ before reading the book, so to say. So my biggest hope is that, as a reader, you could picture the scenes too, and that it wasn’t too hard to follow. I really tried to make every scene as descriptive as possible despite the complete lack of description, but it’s impossible to know what another’s experience is like.

Was it okay for you? I hope it was.

There were a great many things that weren’t explained throughout the novel. The story is more or less told from It’s point of view, and It, after all, knows all there is to know within the myriad realms and those beyond the Veil. It would have no reason to explain any of these subtle inner details. And as a result, you don’t get to have them either. Sorry. I blame It.

I did receive a lot of feedback and complaints, though, because of how many things happened behind the scenes that never ended up being explicitly described. Many times, you only found out some clues about what might have happened through the briefest of hints in later chapters. This was intentional. I’m sorry. But the novel is, at the end of the day, just a collection of scenes that It considers important enough to show Amy and the other Observers from beyond. I like to think that the details given were enough for the reader to paint their own picture of what happened… but clearly that wasn’t the case for many. So, again, I’m sorry. But that’s just how It is.

Other things:

I purposefully didn’t explain any of the real lore behind the various Words of Power or The Language Of Divinity That Was Spoken By The More Powerful Beings.

( Neither did this one explain the formatting for how lesser Divinity spoke )

(( Nor did this lowly author expand on the loquacious subservience rooted within the weakest forms of Divinity ))

But I like to think that if you looked closely, all of these details would reveal themselves. I don’t think they’re too hard to catch, though. Likely, if you were to head back now and reread certain sections, the various formatting decisions and ways of speaking would instantly make more sense.

The censorship of True Names, in particular, was very deliberate. The more Power the being wields, the less characters their True Name contains. As for where It stands on the scales of Divinity, I’ll leave that as an exercise to the readers’ imagination. Ah. What about Amy and where she stands? Is she Divine? What about Mom and Dad?

I’ll let you come to your own conclusions~

Oh, and one last thing: the dots before It spoke. As the novel went on, I hope it became clear that those weren’t just random typos. They were, again, very deliberate. If you re-read chapter 28, hopefully It’s dots will gain some meaning for you. It is very precise, and the dots represent one aspect of that precision. There is a difference between the “. . .” used by It, and the “…” used by everyone else during dialogue pauses. Others might lack Constancy, but everything It does is perfectly Just and to the letter.

Segue. I will confess that part of me has considered going through the entire novel and adding dialogue tags, descriptions, and proper narration for all of the chapters set in It’s point of view (read: 90% of the book). Because, even though I’m happy with how Thia turned out, there’s always a small, nagging voice in the back of my head that tells me it might have had a chance to be a “real book” if I had just done things right. Even now, I still occasionally think about this one comment: “You can’t just write a book with only dialogue. That’s not a real novel.”

Ah. That really stuck with me.

But, while it wouldn’t be hard to turn this book into a “real novel” with standard formatting that meets the standard expectations of how a book “should” be… another part of me loves the completely alien sparseness of how It sees the world, and how It relays that information to the Observers. In the end, I do think that the charm of Thia lies in how weird it is, and how weird It is. So I guess those whispering doubts will just have to stay…

One last thing (again): I hope somebody noticed that It has never once used “it” as anything other than a proper noun referring to It’s Self. It was really hard finding alternatives to such a common and useful word. Please praise me. Or at the very least, please stop sending me messages that [its] is the possessive form of [it]. I know. I promise.

A slight spoiler (if such a thing is even possible in an epilogue): to me, chapter 39 is the biggest turning point in the novel. Three things happen in this chapter to patterns that have been inviolable thus far. I won’t spoil what they are any further, but I think it’s quite obvious on a reread. And I do think this novel benefits greatly from being read a second time. Hint hint.

Ah. One last last thing²: everything I’ve ever written has used the number 9 to represent either the apex, or the end of a cycle—with 9x9 = 81 being a wonderfully critical number for anything cyclical. It took a great many fudgeries to make the epilogue of Thia end with chapter 81 (mostly because, while formatting the eBook, I realized I had two chapter 45s and had to find a way to make the numbers work again). But in the end, it more or less worked out, and our couple cycles back to the beginning of the story after 81 chapters, thus effecting Forever.

A Causal Loop in which the Cause creates the Effect which creates the Cause. No Beginning has no End.

But, of course, this is not a perfect Forever. The story goes on, but not anywhere that we, with our small mortal frame, can Observe.

Anyways, that’s about it.

Thank you for reading, once again. I really appreciate it, and I hope that reading Thia filled you with as many beautiful emotions as I felt when writing it.

I hope you’ve Benefited from the experience. And if you have, I hope you go on to Benefit others in kind.

May you strive to be Divine in all that you do. May you find someone who wishes you naught but Overall Benefit. May others elevate you as you elevate them.

May The Great Dream last Forever.

Best,

cacto