rosechristo1-deactivated2017100:

Thank you very much for the support.  Don’t worry about the questions, I think they’re warranted at this point.  I tried to answer this one in the FAQ, but basically:  Macmillan is a major publisher.  When my agent sold my book to them, they first hired a lawyer (they do not have an in-house lawyer) to legally vet all my claims.  He combed through my manuscript for things related not just to My Immortal, but to my childhood.

I won’t go into my childhood, because that’s not why you’re here, but when it got to the question of, “Can you prove you wrote My Immortal?” I provided him with the original email address with which I first signed up for fanfiction.net.  Believe it or not, I still have it.  (”After all this time?” “Always!!”)  And the other thing I have in my possession, which I’m very fortunate I never threw away (side note, I’m a hoarder), is an old, gross flash drive from 2006 with the first eleven chapters of My Immortal on it.  Because when we first started writing My Immortal, we were doing it on the school computer.  And I had no idea how reliable it was, so I bought like, a $5 flash drive from Best Buy, lol.  Once I was in a home with a real computer, I stopped bothering with the flash drive.  I may be a hoarder, but my attention span is shit.

The verification process took three days.  So, I think if anybody is unconvinced at this point, it’s just because they don’t really want to know the truth.  I’m sorry if I’ve ruined it for those people, but in writing about my childhood, there was no way I couldn’t write about My Immortal.  My Immortal shaped so much about who I am, whether I like it or not (more often than not, I don’t).  If it bothers anyone, that’s fine, they don’t have to read the book.  Anyone who wishes to has my blessing to go on pretending the fic wrote itself, and I promise I won’t bear you any ill will.