Thank you!! *gets tackle hugged* I'm so happy to be an inspiration to you. You've grown so much since you joined the CB and it's truly been a joy to have been (and continue being) your CBF! Here's to many more birthdays, indeed! (And for the record, Zoey totally agrees that wrapping something in duct tape counts as fixing. How else are you supposed to fix something??)

~Starseeker 

*hugs back* It's incredible knowing that I've managed to inspire someone as awesome as you! Thank you for all your birthday wishes! Haha, bi-five is definitely my favorite phrase now. 

My favorite flavor of ice cream is vanilla (whoops guess I'm boring) or cookie dough. I have always wanted to try blue moon ice cream though.

When I'm older, I want to work in the space industry. (My name isn't just for show!) I want to do either aerospace engineering or astrophysics. NASA hires straight out of the aerospace engineering program at an in-state college near here, so I'm thinking I could go there. Otherwise, I might head up to the University of Wisconsin in Madison to pursue an astrophysics degree. I still have 2 years to decide, though! Who knows what may happen.

Oh boy, this is going to be a long answer. (I'd just like to quickly thank the Admins for reading through all of the super-long comments I've been posting on this thread. I appreciate you guys!) Um, so I've been drawing and writing ever since I was a little kid-- I can't remember a time that I wasn't making up stories with my sister or drawing on my homework. So it's kind of in my blood (which is weird, since neither of my parents are or were very creative. My mom was an accountant, and my dad was/is a fireman/project manager, all of which are very logic-based jobs). As I got older, the need to create stayed. I just matured from drawing twinkle-eyed cats and writing about lost princesses, to creating complex fantasy worlds and... well, still writing about lost princesses. (But at least they have character depth now.) Something that I think about is what would I want to read? In other words, what's the story that I would want to be able to find at the library? Then I try to write that. That's why I write so many LGBTQ+ characters. If I can even impact one person with my creations, then I've made the world a better place. Something else that inspires me-- and I think I touched on this briefly before with someone else's question-- is feedback from other people, especially all of y'all on the CB. Getting to be able to have feedback and praise from real people who are depending on me to upload new parts of my novel definitely helped me finish it!

Um, so that got kind of sappy, but yeah! Those are my answers to your questions. Good questions, by the way!

~Starseeker 

Thank you! And yes, I have a lovely pupper dog named Buddy. Guinea pigs sound fun! We've had Buddy for about 10 years, so I've never had any other pets.

Well hey, it's actually cool that we share a similar name! I think I saw your intro thread but never posted on it (whoops, sorry about that). Your name is meant to be NightWing-like, right? So's mine! Starseeker was actually the name of a NightWing OC that I made with my best friend of the time. Fun fact: I made her before the release of The Dark Secret (yes, when I started reading the series, there were only 3 books, it makes me feel old) so the dragon character Starseeker has mind reading and prophecy powers. She's actually a lot like Moon, down to the silver scale by her eye (though Starseeker's is a star, not a tear). 

I'm glad you like my art! If you put in a request on the Ultimate Picturings thread, I'd be happy to draw you.

~Starseeker 

(PS Starfire Scales says ptptp. I've never seen it repeat like that before, cool!) 

Whoo boy, this'll be a long one. (But a welcome one!) *rubs hands together*

So, originally, it was meant to be a story told from 3 points of view: a unicorn, a dragon, and a human girl. However, by the time I started posting it on the CB, it was down to just the girl's perspective. Zoey (the girl) is taken from her school on Earth by a group of dragons, to a magical fantasy land called Zentara. There she gets dragged into a dragon conflict, and is tested for being "the One"-- aka, the fated prophecy hero. She ends up choosing to save one of her newfound friends, thereby failing the tests, and makes an escape from the dragons. She then gets picked up by a group of vigilantes, one of whom is her long-lost sister, and she trains with them to fight the growing evil and corruption in Zentara. She meets a bunch of loveable queer characters (and Vyolette's AE Trevor, though his name was changed to Jasak for fantasy purposes) and finds a new home with them. But then, a betrayal forces her to leave (*cough kidnapped for like the fourth time because I don't have a plot cough*) and she ends up actually being kidnapped again (*cough fifth time*) and experimented on. The book ends with her friends vowing to find her.

So! There's that. It's not the story I ever intended to write, but it is the story I did write. Kitten was kind enough to dig it out of the Inkwell, so you're welcome to read it, if you'd like. I'll talk more about it in my reply to Kitten's post.

~Starseeker 

Thank you! And of course I included you; I always looked forward every week to reading your comments on my novel! :) It was basically the highlight of my week. 

I'm going to answer your second question first, because I have a lot to say on your first question. So here we go. One of my main tips for actually following through is to share your work with someone. I chose to post my novel on here, but you could always show it to someone irl. Getting feedback really helps you stay motivated. If you set deadlines for when you post or share things (I did Tuesday/Friday updates), it can help keep you on top of your writing as well, since you have an actual deadline instead of posting when you want. It's a bit of a pain, but it does work! Also, I tend to have more than one project at a time, which seems counterproductive but it works for me. Right now, I have like 2 short stories in the works as well as separate pieces of the rewritten novel (getting there soon), so that if I feel stuck on one piece, I switch to another. This also sort of applies to another piece of advice, which is to write what you want to write. Nobody says that you *have* to write a book in order. If you're itching to write the climax but you're currently in the exposition, go ahead and write the exciting parts! It keeps you excited about your story. I like to do a little writing before bed every night, and I have a whole notepad full of future scenes that may or may not actually get put into the story. It's just fun to write! All in all, try to just keep your writing fun for you to do. It doesn't matter if it's "good" or not; if it's fun for you, that's what matters! I wrote the opening chapters of my novel over and over again for a good 3 years before actually making headway on the story. My last piece of advice is to just have a big document full of all your stops and starts. You never know when one of those could inspire you to keep writing. (And, it's fun to look back on!)

To answer your first question, uhhhh... *scratches head* Kind of? I meant to make a whole thread about it on the Inkwell, but I figured no-one remembered it too much, so I let it slide. (Thanks for remembering though, I do appreciate it! Also, I can't believe you dug that thread out of the back pages of the Inkwell. I'm mildly impressed, actually.) I changed the title to This Dark Night, for that draft at least. It was never published, and never will be in its current form. I haven't really made any changes to it since I finished posting it. I tried to read it all the way through, but there are so many plot holes and the plot just goes everywhere and I just... it's not what I ever meant it to be. I don't regret writing it, and I'll always be proud that I finished it, but it's so twisted and full of holes (and my old writing style) that it'd be easier to rewrite it than edit it. Coincidentally, that's what I'm doing! It will be significantly different. For one thing, the genre is changing from fantasy to science fiction (or maybe cyberpunk, if that's a genre?). It takes place in sort of a technology-filled alternate universe, so I guess like Earth in a few hundred years, but it's not Earth. The characters are all the same, with the main exceptions of Melise and Icantre having actual personalities and relevance to the plot, Zoey and Sterling's other sister finally gets to be in the book, Jasak's half-sister Blaiyre making more than one appearance (and also being relevant to the plot), and I'm also focusing more on the wholesome bromance-friendship between Feroc and Zoey, since I didn't get to do that too much in the original, and I love their friendship. The fledglings probably won't be too relevant, since they weren't really planned, so I don't love their characters as much as I do the others. Sterling, too, will be given an actual personality, and I'll get to explore her issues and motivations more. (Also, I'm tossing around the idea that Jasak gets to tell part of the story from his first-person perspective. Yes, he is actually an important character too, I just didn't get there the first time.) The plot is going to be pretty different. It'll follow more the plot of the planned sequel, instead of the original book. What I'm working with right now is that there's this corporation called Valkyrie Corporation (ValCorp for short; they're like the Elites-- the winged ladies-- who took Zoey in the original book) who were famous for cloning and experimenting on people during the war. Now that the war is over, the winning side (basically the Eagles, but more military-based and a lot bigger) are going through and dismantling the old ValCorp labs. While on a routine patrol, Jasak and his team discover that one of the experiments survived: 0E-3074 (zero e thirty seventy four), or as Jasak nicknames her, Zoey. Shenanigans ensue. I actually have a few drafts of the first few chapters written, so if you'd like to read them, I can make that happen! Anyways, thanks for reading through this super-long thing of me trying to explain what I'm doing (and thanks to the Admins, too, I know it's your job to read this but I do appreciate it).

Uh, side note related to both questions, I have like 2 short stories in the works about various novel characters (one is a pirate AU, in which Sterling is the captain of a pirate ship, the Eagles are her crew, and Zoey is a mermaid they capture by mistake; and the other is a modern red-string soulmate AU focusing on Feroc and Tyrian, but all the characters are in it) so if you'd be interested in those, they're do exist. I haven't posted them here yet since I figured y'all forgot about my novel, but since I've gotten questions from like 3 different people I'd post them if you wanted to read them!

~Starseeker 

Thank you!! I believe the total answer is 10 times, if I'm not mistaken. Within the last year, I've been on an airplane 4 times. I mentioned in an earlier answer that I took a school trip to Europe, so I flew from my local airport to Chicago, then Chicago to Frankfurt. Then on the way back I flew from Rome to Chicago, then Chicago to my home town. Earlier in my life, I've flown to California once and Florida twice, and as each of those were a round trip, it makes 10 times total.

~Starseeker