Hello friends and readers alike,
If you've reached this point in the story, I would hope you've been enjoying it thus far. I had the idea for it in my graveyard of ideas for many months, but having decided to do my first Writathon I finally sat down and said 'okay, let's do this shit.'
Usually I would always give up by this point, three times over I'd have given up even. But thanks to everyone's support and kindness, I've actually managed to keep up with it to this point, and with no sign of stopping! Which is absolutely amazing.
During the Writathon due to starting late, and in general having terrible work-ethic coordination, I had to push out 2k+ words daily, I was doing 9! NINE!! whole chapters per week just to make the schedule, which left a lot of glaring issues in a large part of the early chapters, both in terms of grammar and overall coherency. So I do want to take some time now to go back and fix up as much as I can.
This isn't aimed to be a full rewrite but merely a coherency rewrite and fixer-upper. The full rewrite will happen later on, as I still want to push the narrative and plot to the end before truly diving into the major changes.
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When it came to writing this story, there were quite a few elements that I overlooked or inevitably left out simply because it didn't fit into the flow I was trying to make work while writing it. So when I do go into a full rewrite I want to establish all these loose ends that are merely sort of 'hinted' loosely.
For example the relationship between Priscilla, her mother, and her father. It's a glaring 'how did this happen'. Trust me when I say I have a very good reason as to 'why' it happened, but it would be a spoiler to say it here, but I will definitely make improvements to the story to repair the confusion caused by these loose ends.
Another one is the abstractness of the early chapters. When it comes to something ethereal like Purgatory and a void between life and death abstractness I feel should be natural, but as it was resulting in a good portion of confusion and narrative inconsistencies, I do think I'm obligated to rework it and make it as concise as possible, without destroying the stylistic integrity of the world and the universe as a whole.
I think the style as a whole is one thing people do enjoy, but just due to the rush, many holes still inevitably remain.
There's also issues with Priscilla's character as a whole becoming too passive inevitably after her 'return', which isn't something I wanted but sort of just leaned into as the chapters were being written. So another thing that I will put my focus into, because she's always meant to be and aimed at being someone who while damaged and traumatized does fight for herself, stick up for herself, and knows how to kick some serious ass.
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'Grimdark' vs 'Dark Fantasy'
This is another aspect I feel like I've betrayed, Priscilla was always meant to be someone with an inherently traumatic dark side to her character, once I rewrite and refine, I do need to consider how to best establish the events in a way which not only makes you resonate with her and feel for her pain, but ultimately make you cheer for her later decisions.
The world needs to be dark and gritty, death needs to be a given, and hope something taken for granted. The Empire may gleam with the golden hue of wealth, but the people themselves struggle to survive in the filth. Priscilla herself also is aimed to be a very anti-hero type of protagonist who has less qualms about how far she'll go to accomplish her goals and dreams, but in the current version it ends up being swept under the rug as her fear of betrayal and anxiousness of how people will perceive her takes prevalence.
Generally I think this is also just completely my fault and problem to fix. Some things need to be expanded on more, others cut out. As a whole it should receive far more clarity in the same space and word count, without losing the actual meat on the narrative.
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Arc III
As far as what the future holds, there's going to be tons of conflict to be had. Valentine's ploys will begin across the Imperial City and Priscilla would be a treat to attend his grand coronation. Will she make it though?
The members of Divala's Cult head toward Parth with their own incentives, our group has already planned for the worst case, but how well will the plan truly work out? Or will Priscilla and the rest simply meet them in the middle of the journey?
Inevitably, my plans will end somewhere either on Arc IV, or Arc V. This was never meant to be a long-form thousand chapter series, merely something to complete and refine repeatedly to publish for the world to see. So I hope you guys will stay with me on this journey, and join along Priscilla's journey, so we can all see where the path leads, together.
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'Devouring Heaven'
I'm currently also working on a long-form many-chapter-intended series inspired by Cultivation/Xianxia's which is estimated to have a 2025 release.
It'll follow our main character, Feng Han, who winds up in an insanely chaotic situation when he inadvertently steals from a cultivator, as a mortal it was a foolish mistake to make, but because of it he's thrown into this new world of cultivation. He'll have to fight to survive, use his wits to survive, and survive simply for survival's sake if he wants to save his family.
If you guys end up wanting me to post chapter 1 prematurely, and give a teaser of it around Christmas or New years, do leave a comment below, or shoot me a DM on the forum!
So yeah, in any case as I've mentioned before; WWoV will return in about a week or two with the intense Arc III. And stay on the look-out as I'll be fixing up some old chapters in the meantime as well. Which will be annotated with a [2.0] tag on the chapter title. Currently chapter 1 has been edited and improved, with the others coming soon.
Thanks, and I'll be seeing you all around!
Happy, Friday the 13th as well since we won't be seeing each other then!