Random Stuff

What Didn't Happen // Call Me Nya

While working on the bonus chapter for 'Call Me Nya', I went through some old notes. I mentioned at some point that I've changed the ending for this book a few times (whenever I start writing a new book, I already have a basic plot outline and the ending, but they sometimes change during the course of the story).

As it turned out the story is still fairly popular among my readers (or maybe Au51in has just bribed people people to vote for it), I thought I might share some 'behind the scenes' with you...

(If people are interested in this sort of stuff, I have quite a few scrapped ideas also for other books/storylines. For example, characters that didn't become Lloyd's girlfriend and such 😉.)

'Call Me Nya' was initially supposed to be a one shot, and I even posted the first couple of chapters in my one shot book). Didn't exactly turn out this way so I moved it into a separate book...

But even before then, the basic idea had already ages in my elephant graveyard of 'unfinished drafts and unused ideas', and it was a conversation with daniaanlyn and bear2710 (whose name is Antonia) that made me turn it into an actual story.

The working title had always been 'Call Me Nya', but the book title was 'I am Nya', because there was already a story 'Call Me Jay' on FF by Loki-Liesmith . But she gave me permission to change the title back 😊.

And now for the 'alternative endings':

In the epilogue, it was mentioned that Cliff Gordon had died in the meantime, having suffered a stroke during a press conference for a new movie. In the initial plot outline, this happened between 'Week 8' (the Open Day) and 'Week 9' (the movie premiere). This is why I had Cole meet Nya during her visit to the NIT (so that he would recognise her when she needs to get through security and such to see Jay afterwards). But... I just couldn't go through with that (seriously, I just can't kill of 'my' characters), especially after the kiss between Nya and Jay (which also was not supposed to happen at that time yet, but while I was writing the chapter, everything just really led to it - and I really liked it there).

So, after scrapping that idea, the story became much longer, with the movie premiere and the graduation and all that. I know quite a few people didn't like the argument during the graduation party. You would have probably preferred ending #2. No drama, just fluff.

And afterwards, in the final chapter, Nya and Skylor go on their holiday (as mentioned in the first chapter and the whole reason why Nya took the job at the comic book store in the first place). They have agreed not to call their respective boyfriends each day (but both keep secretly breaking this rule). When Skylor is in the shower after a day of sightseeing, Nya calls her brother. Turns out he is at Jay's place (they bumped into each other at the arcade), having pizza and playing video games (Cole is there as well). At some point, Kai asks her why Jay always calls her Nya and not Toni like everyone else. And she starts explaining the whole situation- that he was just annoying her at the beginning, and she wasn't expecting to fall in love with him (and realises that she has). At this point she asks Kai to let her talk to Jay and she tells him that she loves him and he says he does too. (This chapter would have also fitted after the 'actual' ending.)