The peace wouldn’t last. Nothing could remain copacetic indefinitely. Eva was counting on it not lasting. She needed bloodstones until her heart healed and for that, she needed people. While she could leave and head to Chicago, Detroit, or anywhere else she was likely to find valid targets for bloodstone creation, she was hesitant to leave.
Arachne would be back. One day, Arachne would be back. The first place she would check for Eva would be in her domain.
Until then, Eva lay back in her chair and counted the stars. She could wait. Arachne would be back. She would wait right here.
END
Vacant Throne, a new story! Young woman involved in a robbery-gone-wrong ends up meeting an angel and finds herself trapped in a world of magic and monsters.
Well, here we are. Two and a halfish years. Somewhere around a million words (I haven’t actually added them all up at the time of writing this).
Thanks everyone for reading.
Void Domain has ended.
Honestly, I don’t know what to say. I’ve done nine of these Author’s Note segments. This one feels a bit different though. Probably because there isn’t a ‘tune in next time, same bat time, same bat channel’ feeling anymore. People who read these author’s notes are probably aware that I write several chapters ahead of the currently posted chapter. As such, I’ve actually been done with Void Domain for two to threeish weeks before you’re all reading this.
Let me tell you, it’s an absolutely eerie feeling waking up in the morning and not having Void Domain to write.
Anyway, I suppose we could start out looking at Book 10 in particular.
The ritual occupied almost the entirety of the book, minus a few chapters right at the start and at the end. I worried a ton over focusing so much on the ritual, but it was a huge part of the overarching plot that’s been hanging over the everyone’s shoulders for several books now. I think it turned out quite well though. There was a lot of standing around and talking, but I think it was an interesting sort of talking. Though the few fight scenes, mostly those with Gertrude, were good as well.
Of course, I might be biased.
The ending… Oh boy, I had a fairly concrete idea of how I wanted the series to end ever since I started writing. When I finally got to the last six or so chapters, I was stressing out quite a bit. Enough so that I actually dropped both of my fanfics (which I’ll talk about later) to focus on Void Domain. Fun fact: I scrapped more words in the last ten chapters than I had over the entire rest of the series.
I started out just continuing. Nothing resolved and everyone was all ready for Book 11. It wasn’t until I realized that there really aren’t any major villains left and I don’t have anything planned past this point that I went back and properly fixed things towards how it ended up going.
Then I started worrying about how I was ending it. Should Eva have ended up stuck in Hell, seated on a throne of blood with her eyes brightly burning red as the very final scene? Should Brakket still be open or closed? Does Arachne come back? Should this or that and everything else?
After settling on what happened, I started on character epilogues.
All but one of which I ended up not writing. About five hundred words into a Juliana chapter with her pretending to be Indiana Jones and maybe going slightly crazy in attempts to entertain Zagan, I decided not to do the epilogues and to leave things up to readers’ imaginations. The only epilogue that I actually finished was Nel’s chapter and that one ended up slightly altered and eventually became 010.033.
A few chapters ago, there were a few comments of lists of things they wanted to see before Void Domain ended. Some of those things I hope I answered with some satisfaction. Some of those things I deliberately left vague or unanswered. Some of those things just didn’t fit in the scope of the ending (mostly the things related to Sawyer and Griffin and their actions in Book 1).
And some of those things I had forgotten I added entirely. Which was a problem in the early books. I kept thinking ‘Oh, this [concept] is cool, I should write this in somewhere.’ And then I would write it in, fully thinking that I’d use it more later, only to not. I think that stems mostly from my inexperience as a writer. I didn’t keep a list of things that needed addressing and just kept adding them.
Because of all that, if people want to post questions in the comments, I’ll try to answer them. If the questions relate to things I’ve deliberately avoided or kept vague, I’ll probably skip over them or mention as much. If a topic is big enough, I might write an extra-style mini-chapter. Might being the operative word.
Anyway, I hope everyone enjoyed the journey! The rest of this Author’s Notes will be more administrative matters and thoughts about the future.
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Administrative Matters
