HELLO!

Before anything else, I want to thank the proofreaders that have accompanied me along this project. My first thanks goes out to Omnius, who has steadily supplied me with feedback all the way through the making of this book. He is closely followed by Dan and Lim, both of whom often gave me advice in terms of planning and a good amount of feedback themselves. Further thanks go out to WolfOfParis, Dawodd, and everyone else who helped with the project in any ways, however little.

A second group that deserves my thanks is YOU, my ‘normal’ readers. I appreciate that you decided to give these stories of mine your time. Be it for the lewds, the banter, the worldbuilding or whatever else may make you interested in my body of work, I’m glad to supply entertainment. A special thanks to all my Patrons who support me financially and make writing a possible effort, financially.

Now, to start with my actual Author’s Note.

In case this is the first of my works you have read, let me introduce myself. I go by Funatic and I write stories of the kind I like to read. Originally, this was limited to some porn on a website (CHYOA.com) I frequented. That site has a branching function that allows people to add their own spin to stories, as long as the owner of that story is fine with it. I used it to add the kind of erotica I liked to read, whether that was in terms of quality, attention to certain details over others, or kinks.

As my skill grew, I got a bit higher aspiration. I wanted to write stories that were good without the lewd bits and just have lewd bits in them for whoever might enjoy them.

Aside from one project, which is deliberately all porn, I think I have succeeded in this. Sure, this very book wears its intention on its sleeve, Karitas is an open pervert, but I would say I have brought to you more than just pornography. If you come to my body of work just to have a quick wank, I think you won’t leave satisfied anyway…

Anyway, I write stories with attractive characters and when I feel it's appropriate, I make the attractive characters bang. I have no publisher that stops me, no employer to justify my decisions to, just my own creativity to rely on, on whose basis I may fail or succeed. God bless the Free Market.

Welldark originally spawned in March 2019, when I was bored and decided to create a little prologue for a premise I had in mind already. There were a couple of goals: 1. A situation in which harems were logical. 2. Monster girls 3. University setting 4. Dimensional travelling. The shape this took pretty quickly resembled a mixture of Highschool DxD and RWBY. I don’t care to hide the parallels, but I don’t plan to skirt particularly close to either in terms of actual content. I regard both as rather poor in terms of storytelling. The mechanics are interesting enough though.

As I realized I did want to write this but also knew I would be hard-pressed to make this another weekly release project, I decided to try another approach and actually write a book for once. Usually, I write a chapter, let the proofreaders check it for spelling and logic mistakes and push it out there without really editing a whole lot. I wondered (and still wonder at the time of writing this) how my body of work would change if I finished an entire book first and then took the time to refine the entire thing.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

The decision was made, I started writing Welldark and, about a year later, on the third of May 2020, I had the first draft finished. That was also when I wrote this note.

I like the book I wrote and the world attached to it, from what has been shown to what is beyond the current scope of necessary details. I hope you like as well what came of the final draft.

Originally, I had pretty big plans for what would all happen in the first book, but to get to any actual action, I would have needed to rush the romance along and I just didn’t want to do that. I have botched a fair bit of romance plots in my days because I wanted to get to something else. At least for this book, I wanted to make the love something that felt like it came about believably.

So, it was basically all about Esther and Karitas, with some structural building blocks of Welldark at the side. Those will be necessary going forwards. I have a good number of ideas where I want to take the story next. More harem/Anomalia members are a given. I don’t think it’ll surprise anybody if I say that a few have been shown already in this book, be it only for a few paragraphs.

I don’t think I will dedicate a book to the addition of any one girl. More likely, a lot of plots will run in parallel and some will resolve whenever it is natural, as life runs its course. That is how I prefer to plot things. For the moment, I will concentrate on what ideas I have for Karitas’ university years. Should this world prove to be popular by the end of then, then I will likely continue with my adventures beyond. If not, then I will find an appropriate ending point.

That’s talking years into the future though.

What follows is 2021 Funatic. The first round of edits has been completed.

I discovered a couple of things in the process. Mostly just how much I improved between the first and last chapter of the book. Early chapters were almost entirely rewritten, be it due to character inconsistencies, bad speech patterns, or (most frequently) strictly awfully constructed paragraphs.

The increase in quality is undeniable. Perhaps I will make the first draft of this book available along the published version, just for people curious on what changed. I will have to ponder if that is a worthwhile thing to do. (Note: I ultimately decided against this).

As big as the quality increase is, I also discovered that I loathe editing. It is incredibly dull to read what you wrote yourself, knowing every intention and every follow-up sentence. It’s the literary equivalent of playing Minecraft with cheats enabled. You may build something grand, but did you really earn it? Similarly, can you enjoy a narrative construction you know inside out already?

I will stick to it, because it is a good thing to do for the final product. It’s just boring, is what I am getting at. Not that this, being my job, can and should only consist of things that please me. I just shouldn’t hate my life because of it. Ultimately, the goal is to provide the best story I can. This aids in that goal so some suffering is completely bearable.

I’m basically just rambling at this point. I just don’t know what much to say, so I guess I will keep to the good old adage that silence is gold and say my goodbyes.

Hope to see you for Welldark Book 2,

Funatic.