It is a truth universally acknowledged that any fan fiction writer who has ever put finger to keyboard is going to suffer through numerous bouts of writer’s block. I, sad to say, can remember every last one of them. They’re very easily identifiable from re-reading my previous work; I basically look for the segments that make me cringe the most. We’re not just talking about the cringe of early ‘I was eighteen and had a mild case of teenybopperitis’ work, we are talking about the ‘what was I smoking’ segments. These are made all the more pitiful by the fact that I don’t actually smoke anything - I tried to be a rebel at fifteen but tobacco apparently makes me cough myself to near death. It turns out I’m about as bad as tapioca pudding.

I digress. Failed attempts at rebellion aside, writer’s block is what I would like to call a pain in the bloody arse (this is my only sadness about writing for American characters, I don’t get to use the word ‘arse’ nearly enough). Having been annoyed by stories that I got really into that then suddenly ceased to be updated for weeks on end I have a pathological fear of subjecting anybody bored enough to browse my URL to the same irritation – that’s another truth universally acknowledged amongst fan fiction writers, that writer’s block is an even bigger pain in the arse when you don’t want to keep anybody waiting for updates. I’ve been suffering from it a bit lately, not sure how I’ve managed to throw out new chapters with any kind of regularity.

Well… I have an update for everyone now, and it’s definitely going to make them ask what I’ve been smoking… heh.

Funnily enough it’s an update for a story I’ve long since finished. Even funnier, it’s an update for a story that I never had a single bit of trouble throwing out endless updates for. Depending on how kind I feel towards it, in Hollie World it is usually referred to as ‘my epic’ or ‘my monster’ in allusion to its sheer length. I’ve never had the energy to write a story that long since, not sure how I managed it the first time. Since then I have come to the conclusion that quality trumps quantity, even if only for time management purposes; I like writing and would spend all day doing it if I could but the grocery shopping does not do itself. Sadly, neither does the cleaning - that would be just awesome. I especially hate doing the floors.

This update is… well, unexpected to say the least. I’m not a big fan of revisiting finished tales. I always know in my own head how my characters’ lives go after I stop telling their story (Chelsea’s next adventure is organising an insanely huge wedding for Ms Lumos and her latest Hollywood whirlwind romance while Justin sweats over it possibly making her want a rock on her own finger) but I’m not a big fan of stretching the little universe of each particular story past its sell by date. That may just be because it seems cruel of me to be so evil to the same set of characters twice… my characters are oddly real to me. They are even more so now with this new update.

If you haven’t already been put off and you decide to read on you are, quite frankly, going to think I’m insane.

Crazy.

Stark raving mad.

Loopy.

Escaped from the asylum.

Two fries short of a Happy Meal.

Certifiable.

You are probably going to dial 911 in panic before remembering that I’m British and there’s not much they can do about me from another continent. Still, that can’t be helped. You’ll all stop talking to me and my online reputation will be mud, but I have no choice. Everything happens for a reason and this story wants to be told. It’s like that bloody Ring that wants to get back to Sauron and does everything in its power to get there, and just as evil if you ask me. Nevertheless, I will endeavour to tell this little twist to an old story as best I can. Forgive me if it’s not up to my usual standards, I’m not much used to this style of writing.

I’ve never written non fiction before.

***

It’s hard to say exactly what happened. Well, it’s actually impossible to say what happened because I still don’t have a bloody clue. My current theories include an impressively vivid dream, paranoid schizophrenia, an LSD trip or having paid too much attention to that Lost In Austen thing I watched on television last week. I don’t recall having taken any LSD recently and I don’t recall hearing any other voices in my head, but I refuse to rule anything out.

All I can tell you is that I woke up in a body that was not mine.

For one thing it had blue painted toenails - which I would never - and it woke up in the kind of enormous room that I have never set foot in at any point in my entire life. It was enormous. I’ve stayed in hotel suites smaller than it. It seems strange to ascribe a nationality to a room, but this room was just not very British. The first tip off was the weather outside the window being glorious; that just does not happen in the famously rainy British Isles. The bed was made differently. It wasn’t a couple of pillows and a duvet like British bed; it was a complex arrangement of sheets, blankets and various cushions as well as pillows. The room was made up of white walls and warm earthy tones and a lot of very complex looking technological equipment that I would not be touching. The killer was that the plugs in the electrical sockets weren’t right.

That was one thing. For another, this body was much thinner than mine and I’m kind of bitter about that. The waist was smaller (great), the thighs were smaller (even better) and the boobs were smaller (not so great but a worthy sacrifice). When my hand went to my hair, it was a couple of inches too short and not as full of choppy layers. My bangs had disappeared. My hands were a little too small and there was a watch on my wrist that definitely was not mine.

I crept out of the bed like I was trying to escape from somebody. That was ridiculous since nobody else was there, but I suppose I was hoping that this was all a dream and I was about to wake up. The dream possibility is still under consideration. I was heading for the mirrored doors of the closet, though I was staring at my feet the whole way. It took me no less than four minutes of standing in front of them scrutinising my blue toenails before I got the nerve to look myself in the face.

The funny thing is that although it was a stranger’s face staring back at me, I looked oddly familiar to myself.

The hair was still blonde, though a darker shade than my own expensively highlighted sunshine locks. The eyes were still blue, but a much more unusual colour that had more green running through it than mine. The purple circles that live under my eyes were nowhere to be seen; the nose was a little pointier and the face more oval than round like mine. She wasn't a supermodel (I was mildly disappointed) but she looked good enough to me.

At that point, my thoughts were torn between the strange familiarity of my reflection – a long forgotten face I just could not put a name to – and the absolute irony of me waking up in the wrong body when I had written no less than two stories about body swapping (which was not easy, I struggle enough with pronouns under normal circumstances). Hopefully this chick wasn't famous and dating a pop star or I really would have entered The Twilight Zone… if I hadn’t already. As a matter of fact, that particular coincidence is part of my supporting evidence for the dream theory. Maybe I’d just spent too much time editing Sides of the Coin. That is entirely probable; I have a very impressionable young mind. Still, I might also add the Twilight Zone being real to the list of possibilities too.

It was around this time I realised that I was feeling nauseous. I figured that was unsurprising, all things considered.

This feeling came on doubly strong as I heard footsteps on the stairs. It was hard to know how far away they were when I had no sense of the rest of the building’s layout, but when you’ve woken up in the wrong body and are about to go into hysterics anyone within a ten mile radius is too close. Maybe this was karma since I put as many as four characters through this entirely wretched experience. It was like wearing a set of clothes that didn’t fit right. The very skin and bone was too tight.

“Hollie?” Someone called out beyond the walls.

My thoughts on realising that this person knew my name and was looking for me were far too full of profanity to reproduce here. Suffice to say they involved many repetitions of the word ‘fuck’ and a few other pieces of colourful language. In real life conversation I don’t generally swear a lot beyond the infrequent ‘bloody’ or ‘arse’ but honestly, if you had been me you would have understood. This was a situation that required every cuss word I could recall. Because I am blonde and was being a bit slow (in my defence, I think waking up in the wrong body would make anybody a bit slow), the penny hadn’t quite dropped yet.

If it had, I would have known precisely who was about to come through the door. In all honesty, I probably should have known who it was just from the voice. I’d certainly listened to that voice enough in my own life. However, once again, before you judge me as the dumbest broad who ever lived for not working it out sooner I must impress on you precisely how panic-stricken I was at this point. If I may flatter myself a little I’m a reasonably intelligent woman, but sometimes certain situations are just too screwy for my thought processes to cope with and this was definitely one of them.

So yeah, no prizes for guessing that Justin fucking Timberlake walked through the door. I’m not sure what a stroke feels like but I could quite possibly have been having one right about that second.

Because I am a bizarre person, I nearly laughed. After all, had I not seconds earlier been thinking to myself of a certain body swapping story where I wrote of somebody waking up as Justin Timberlake’s girlfriend? I just really hoped that whoever’s body I was in wasn't a singer because I myself am tone deaf; I refuse to sing in public for fear of bursting people’s ear drums. Yes, folks, it’s true, even at this point I still had not twigged what had actually happened (I say ‘happened’ purely for ease of expression, it may still have been hallucination) and who I was actually supposed to be. This is all the more embarrassing since I’d written that one too… but again, I ask you, who the hell could have possessed even a shred of common sense in that moment?

“Hols have you seen my sweater?” He said cheerily as he pulled open the drawer next to me and started rummaging.

“Uhh… which one?” I squeaked weakly. It was all I had. The man even knew my nickname. Considering I’ve never met Justin Timberlake in my life and it’s unlikely he’s aware of my existence that was kind of peculiar.

“You know, that green zip up one you said made me look like Kermit.”

Wow. That even sounds like something I’d say. Or, more to the point, write. “Nope, sorry.”

I shrank back as he peered at me curiously. “You don’t look so hot. You okay?”

“Yeah. Fine. Well, feeling a bit sick,” I replied honestly.

“Maybe you should skip work today,” he said with immediate concern washing over his face. “And tell the doctor this afternoon.”

“Doctor? This afternoon?” Did I ever mention to any of my readers that when nervous in conversation I sometimes develop a parrot like tendency to just repeat other people’s words?

That got a laugh out of him. “You know, you’re right. I think pregnancy has messed with your memory, you never usually forget appointments. You have ante-natal this afternoon, three pm, ring any bells?”

Oh it definitely rang bells, but not the type he was referring to. Wow. Who did I know who was blonde, blue eyed, pregnant, acquainted with Mr JT and answered to the same name I did?

No bloody wonder she’d looked familiar. She was mine. I made her up. Her very image and appearance and EXISTENCE were all down to me because I wrote her. I wrote a very big long story about a girl named Hollie… who was never meant to be me I hasten to add and yes, I appreciate the irony of that considering I at this juncture actually was her. I can only say that if this was a dream it betrays a very twisted mind that I probably ought to seek therapy for.

So… little fan fiction writing me woke up in the body of one of my own characters. I was smack bang in the middle of Letting Go. Hollie was pregnant and clearly Justin had been told about it. That meant we’d already done the meeting, the friendship, the hook up and getting arrested parts. She might or might not have told Shannen or the *NSYNC guys about it yet and she might or might not have moved in permanently. They weren’t yet engaged. I assumed the place was Justin’s seeing as I distinctly remembered writing that the apartment was small and cosy and painted in pastels, not some huge earth tone colossus where one room was bigger than half my house. Obviously she was already pregnant but yet not showing, so the question became precisely how far I was into Letting Go and what I had to look forward to experiencing if I couldn’t wake up out of the nightmare as soon as humanly possible.

Then it struck me that I hoped this little possession or hallucination or whatever it was wasn't going to last long because I really did not fancy forty eight hours of childbirth.