<– 008.027 | Index | 009.001 –>
Hello, thanks for reading.
Book nine will continue as scheduled. No intermissions or interludes. Tune in next time for 009.001.
As with last time, I’d just like to say thanks before anything else. So thanks to all my supporters on Patreon and PayPal. I really do appreciate your support. And thanks to everybody else for reading my story!
I don’t know about all of you, but I had a lot of fun with book eight. It didn’t cover half as much as I wanted to cover, though I’m not sure why I don’t just plan for that. Pretty much all books so far haven’t gone exactly as planned.
Next book, we will finally be getting the other schools involved and start their little tournament. Something I know at least one of you have been waiting for since waaay back in book one.
Last Author’s Notes, I said two books left. Since one book has passed, that means one book left. Except… not. As mentioned, I didn’t cover as much as I had planned. How many books are left? No idea! Probably best not to listen to me on these sorts of things.
I’ve actually been thinking a lot lately about writing and characters. Specifically my writing and my characters. I posted a Worm fanfic titled Ziz (Simurgh!Taylor), only about 30k words worth as of writing this. Depressingly enough, I’m pretty sure that story that I’ve put about twenty minutes of thought into got at least a few thousand more viewers in two weeks than VD has gotten in the near two years that I’ve been writing it. Now, to be clear, I’m not mentioning that to whine about my numbers or anything, at least not too much, but simply to add context.
Some of those thousand people made their way to VD and started reading it. A tiny subset of that larger subset actually sent me private messages with critiques of Void Domain. That tiny subset is only about three people, but point still stands. Anyway, I sent messages back and forth to a few of them, discussing writing and my writing.
One of the big things I’ve decided is a problem is the lack of real consequences. The stakes in VD are almost always life or death, which is a fairly silly thing to have on the line as I’ve barely killed anyone. Even antagonists. If I were writing Game of Thrones (which I admit, I’ve never read or watched), death would be a valid consequence because of how frequently GRRM kills off his characters.
I touched on this in the previous Author’s Notes, but antagonists are another thing I feel I’m deficient in. Gertrude and Clement and the occasional Elysium Order are probably the best antagonists in the story. Sawyer, Willie, Des, not so much.
Honestly, it is likely too late to do much for proper antagonists. Gertrude and Clement have been a good shift, but too late. Still, something I’m heavily considering while thinking about new stories to write.
While on a semi-related topic, however, I’d like to pose a small question to people.
Chapters 004.020-004.024 are, in my opinion, the lowest point in the entire work. For a refresher, those covered the fight in Willie’s domain between Eva, Genoa, and Arachne. I’ve been considering outright deleting them and replacing them with a single chapter. Probably a simple battle to the death between the three of them without all the minions and nonsense, one that still ends up with Genoa stabbed and Juliana summoning Zagan. I’m not sure that it is the best choice, but it does need to hook into the rest of the story still and would at least get rid of all the meandering about with the cat-vampires and other things that I really don’t know what I was thinking at the time.
What do you all think?
Now for some side notes:
Again, thank you to everyone who has donated through either Patreon or PayPal.
As a reminder, I’ve posted a few chapters of a series that might be in the future for me on a second WordPress site. Tower Curator Preview! Yay! There are currently three stories with at least two chapters each, all of varying genres. You may have noticed little author’s notes at the bottom of some chapters during this book. If you’ve never clicked them, that’s what they were.
As for whether or not any of them will actually become real series after Void Domain, I’ve got no idea. I went through dozens of story ideas before settling down to write Void Domain. There are only three over there. Far from dozens. Though I will admit that I’ve started and have thrown out about five other first chapters that I haven’t even bothered to post.
I’ve also considered trying to find an agent and get published. Not Void Domain, as I still don’t think it is publish-worthy and it has already been published online—something publishers don’t like, I gather. If I go that route, there might not be a web serial. Or, if there is, it would probably be posted at a much slower rate and would not be what I am considering publishing.
Of course, that’s all merely in the consideration phase. I’ve barely looked up what I would need to do to find an agent, let alone actually get published. Though I do believe I need a complete novel that I haven’t put online.
So don’t worry too much, I’m mostly rambling anyway.
I’d like again to point out that a good amount of referrals to this story come from Top Web Fiction. As such, I would appreciate any extra votes in my direction. It is a quick click once a week and helps a lot.
On to the trivia section!
- The segment where Alicia died was originally intended to be a quick joke. “I wonder how Nel is doing,” Eva says, right before it cuts to Nel standing in a cartoonish bullet-hole outline in the wall behind her. It got a bit longer, but I think it was a fairly decent chapter. And added character development for Nel! Yay!
- Poor Irene. Always getting caught up in trouble. But how do Jordan and Shelby manage to avoid all the fun? Well, Jordan, as I’m sure many have guessed, has a demon bound to him that can manipulate shadows and allows him to teleport through them. Maybe if Irene hung out with Jordan just a little more often, she could hide out in the shadows as well.
- Did you know that the demon bound to Jordan has appeared in the text? Before all the student demons showed up even!
Reading recommendation:
Ah… so… this is really only barely reading. Still going to post it however.
This season, I watched my first anime in over two years. There have been shows that I’ve wanted to watch, but writing has sort of consumed my life. Anytime I try to watch anime, I just feel like I should be doing something else instead.
Youjo Senki — The Saga of Tanya the Evil managed to get me to watch the entire thing AND LIKE IT.
A sociopathic salaryman from modern day Japan gets sent back to World War One by a god-like being. In the body of a little girl. Fighting for the Germans. With magic. I really don’t know what else people need to know about it. If you’re reading Void Domain because of Eva and her fairly callous amorality, you’ll probably really like it.
Anyway, it counts as reading recommendation because subtitles. I don’t think it has been dubbed yet.
—
Book Eight Stats:
Chapters: 27
Wordcount: 97,473 (according to WordPress’ built in word counter)
POV counts (max of one count per chapter):
Eva: 25
Juliana: 4
Irene: 2
Zoe: 2
Catherine: 1
Clement: 1
Arachne: 1
Nel: 1
That’s all, thanks for reading book eight. I hope you enjoy book nine.
When you say that the demon bound to Jordan has appeared in the text, do you mean the species? Because it’s been mentionnee his father is bound to a haunter and I’m pretty sure those are the only shadow demons in the story, so… Not hard to guess.
Oh man, did I explicitly mention a haunter with Anderson? I forgot… Now I’m a little embarrassed.
Ah well. There was some other trivia thing I wanted to mention while writing but couldn’t remember when I got to writing the note, so I just put that instead.
I think Catherine might have been the one to mention it in her narration?
Thank you for your work!
I just want to say that Chapters 004.020-004.024 were nice read, in my opinion.
If I may add, even though cat-vampires were unorthodox, it still gave to us, readers, a filling of how strange and diverse demon*s domains and creations could be.
ps:I definetely will read your fanfic and I am pretty shure I will love it)
psps: Youjo senki is really great) If you enjoyed anime, I recommend you a eng fan-translation of light novel(just google skythewood translation). Its well done and got more details and world-building, compared to anime.
You’ve sold me on the anime, that was the main thing about Void Domain that hooked me.
As a non-writer, I’m of two minds about the ‘war in Willie’s domain’ chapters.
This is a web serial, it has different pacing than a book. When it’s done, the pacing will change yet again, simply because it can be read in one go (theoretically). Series tend to have interlude arcs, mini-stories or the like. Some novels do that too, usually those with several books where each has a stand alone (sub-)plot. In that context I feel those chapters should, at most, be edited to be take on such a role, not removed.
Then there’s my personal opinion of what constitutes good writing. I’d sum it up as ‘elegant’, but it’s much better described by Samuel R. Delany in the fore-/afterword printed in several of his books (which I can link, if requested). Suffice to say having superfluous scenes is not elegant. Then again, I’ve read (and very much liked) WoT, ASoUE and Eragon. Further, you could use the ‘superfluous’ argument to trim every book down to the words ‘stuff happens’. Where the line is drawn depends, I think, on what the author wants their story to be.
That’s just a fancy way of saying ‘do what you think is right’, but my conclusion would be that changing the structure of the story, as in how the chapters are organized (including introductions and epilogues), would allow any arc to find its place.
Stephen King has said that a novel’s first draft should be written ‘all in one go’, more or less, then left alone. Coming back to it after a longer period of time, one has a different perspective, and can better make positive changes.
Obviously every author works differently, but the two mentioned authors do agree on the mentioned points of the other, and I have great respect for both of them.
Sorry for the long text, I got carried away. Guess I don’t live by my own word?
I remember the part you talk about,I had barely read the action scene at some point.
The main problem was,I believe,the lack of stakes in this.
I didn’t got exited at all:/ I think I let a comment about that at some point
Gertrude and Clement are my favorite antagonists for sure. I guess I should say were my favorite antagonists. I mean, I still wanted them to die, but they were good villains.
I’ll agree that the fight in Willies domain was… a bit long. Condensing it might be good for future readers.
“If you’re reading Void Domain because of Eva and her fairly callous amorality, you’ll probably really like it.”
…you got me. It seems I’ll be checking out that anime in the future XD