It has been ninety nights since the last ember cooled, and the last trace of warmth faded from my skin. Not that I'm counting.
But here's the truth: we write what we know. And I don't know anything about romance. But you know what? I tried. I gave it my best shot. I believed I could keep writing this romance series, editing another chapter, and tweaking it just right until I had another finished story. But the more I sat here trying to make it work, the more I felt like an impostor, racking my brain to finish another love story I was never meant to write in the first place. The spark that kept these stories alive? It's gone. Without it, there's nothing left to write. Nothing left to edit, and nothing more to create. It's done.
I've never even read a romance novel. Not one. Who was I to think that I could dive into the world of love stories, and shape a novel about love and connection?
In 2024, I wrote like my life depended on it, trying to build something out of nothing. I poured over 70,000 words into what I hoped could be a romance novel. Thirteen stories came to life, but only three made it out into the world. But that's how life is. That's love too, I guess. You dream, you hope, you create something beautiful, hoping it will stay, and then it slips away without warning or closure. Just like that, it's Gone.
Not everything gets a proper goodbye. It just ends. Revisiting these stories I was once so excited about only brings me sadness now. And many of the ideas weren't even fully mine. Continuing them doesn't feel right.
This romance novel of 2025 had started to feel like a burden, a ball and chain dragging behind me. Looking back at the words I poured into this only breaks my heart now. It's too painful to revisit, and again, romance is a subject I know too little of. So, I'm done with romance. I wasn't cut out for it in life, and I don't have it in me to keep pretending on paper. I'm not giving up, I'm accepting what is and moving on.
They say, "Write what you know." Well, I never knew romance, and never did I ever set out to be a romance author. I saw the genre thriving and figured, why not give it a try? For a while, it worked. Maybe it was all in my head, but a fire consumed me, burning brighter than I ever expected.
But fire spreads fast. It's unpredictable. Unforgiving. Dangerous. And I'm the one who got burned.
That's how this story goes.
Before all this, I came from the crematory. Death and fire were the only guarantees. In some poetic yet twisted way, it felt like I made myself believe I was capable of handling a different kind of flame.
There's no phoenix here. No rising again. I'm sealing this away like an urn of someone once loved.
Three stories came out of this mess, and that's it. Fun while it lasted, but It's time to call it a wrap and say goodbye, not because I want to, but because I have to. The passion that once fueled these stories is gone, and so is the desire to shape them into something worth reading.
Writing about love, about people finding the endings I never did, feels forced. Obligated. And that's not love. Obligation is not love.
This book and these stories are just a reminder of something I tried to build that was never meant to last -the quiet suffocation of the end of... something.
No goodbye.
Just done.
Like Death.
Some people are made for love. For happiness. For bright, beautiful things. For warmth. For hands that never let go.
Me? I was built for endings. And I should have seen it coming.
Because, in the end, we all burn. And me? I was never meant to escape the fire.
