Hey guys! 

Feel free to scroll to the bottom of the chapter if you’re just interested in the stuff about the story, I’ll try to keep the personal stuff short as this is a site for reading and writing stories, it’s probably not really my place to go on about personal stuff.

For the past few weeks I’ve been reviewing my writing, and how I write. It took me a while to really think about this but I’m sad to say I’ve realized that I have to change how I do stuff, and start over. After taking a long, hard look at my chapters, I think that overall it’s fairly messy in terms of worldbuilding and pacing, probably cus of all the rewrites and stuff. I did have the whole story planned out from start to finish but I impulsively pulled things like the clockwork mansion and Oracle engine forward and expanded Stormbreak just cus I was scared. Back then it seemed like a good idea, cus I’m still just new to writing I was insecure and afraid of being boring, i was…just anxious of having a bad story. Thanks to the support and advice I got with haf and dof I’m doing much better now though! And I know that this story can be better, which is ultimately why I’m starting over for the last time. 

In the future I need to have a pretty big backlog, as I just don’t write well under pressure, no matter what I do..For context, the first 3 chapters with roughly 25-30 favs were pre written but chapter 4 which already really dropped in favs wasn’t. I even rushed it because of personal stuff and cus I didn’t realize I had already worked through the backlog I had. Then after that I wrote each chapter on a pretty much constant deadline, twice a week. I didn’t really realize it in time but I just couldn’t keep up, even though I usually ‘finished’ in time, the quality and even my own satisfaction with the chapters wasn’t there anymore, so I ended up rewriting over and over until I was ok with it, and It wasn’t really fair to anyone.

This wouldn’t have been so bad, as writing is an iterative process(thank you SabGry!) and I’m sure every story goes through multiple drafts(I don’t even wanna know how many drafts Cassandra Clare could’ve needed for her novels) but everything happened publicly and I understand it can be pretty jarring and even exhausting to read one chapter only to find a completely different version the next day for example. I don’t blame anyone that’s dropped my novel as a result, and it’s probably been a lot of people. But that’s ok, I understand now that’s a part of being an author, especially a new one. 

But back then this still lead to an author’s worst enemy, doubting yourself. Depression is an awful monster to fight, especially as it infected my writing the further I got into my novel…my ADHD didn’t really help either, even though it’s a “mild” form, however I’m not here to burden anyone with my feelings, so I’ll keep this short.

I’ve lost my kitty and my dog in less than a year. My dog died really recently and it’s been so hard, I’m also in debt now and…it’s just too much for me to keep this up. Maybe you're thinking of Patreon but I’ll be honest I don’t want that right now, I’m not here to make money or anything. I’m here to entertain people and make them forget their sadness if I can, and I genuinely believe in not taking your money unless I know without any doubts that my work is worth it. 

But enough about my feelings, I eventually figured I couldn’t go on stressing myself out looking at stats and how little people still favorited my chapters, or constantly listening to my own anxious thoughts so I asked for feedback and held a poll. To be honest I expected haf to win this poll, as I personally seriously thought I wrote that better but nobody even voted for that option which actually made me really happy! Daughters Of Fire is my original work, so is Hearts and Fairies of course, but Dof had its own identity even more. I want to keep that vibe going when I start working on the 3rd draft. The comments and even the votes left on the feedback chapter have really helped me learn and start to heal from the mistakes I made with haf. I honestly can’t thank you guys enough! 

This story means a lot to me, I started caring about it much more than I expected when I started writing this world back in April. So moving forward, I wanna do things right no matter what. I don’t know how long it’s gonna take me or how big my backlog is gonna be, whether it’s just act 1(25 chapters give or take a few) Act 1-2(40-45 chapters) or most or all of the novel. I’m kinda leaning towards writing everything first, cus I really don’t wanna repeat the same mistake again…I think that’s what I’m probably going to do. Which would also let me upload more chapters a week! I’m gonna do my best to make sure I won’t repeat the same mistakes and take my time with my main novel. But I also don’t want to make people wait too long or make people feel frustrated.

So In the meantime I’ll be writing an optional lorebook about the world! I’m gonna try to write it like a novel so it doesn’t read like a Wikipedia page. And I’m gonna write short stories set in and outside of the world. The short stories featuring Nephalia(I’m working on a new name) are gonna feature characters like Miri, Runia, Fia and Locke and other folks. Maybe even some prequel stuff but anyway, they’ll probably continue to be episodic and I’ll move the Miri chapters there too. 

For those who scrolled down, I’m restarting the novel after I’ve prewritten a lot of chapters or all of them, cus this is much better for my writing, mental health and for your entertainment.

Some changes you can expect for the novel when it returns:

I’m probably going to change the title back into Hearts and Fairies, or design a new one. The name Hearts and fairies means a lot to me, I just hope that if that’s what I go with nobody’s going to associate it with my mistakes…

I’m gonna try my hardest to give Katie an unique name, I always felt like she really deserves one and now’s my chance!

Some people voted for a hybrid storyline of Dof and haf, so I’ll be looking into doing just that for Katie while doing my best to make sure nobody feels like they’re reading anything else twice. 

I’m moving back to past tense as Its easier for me to write and I've heard present tense can be really off putting or even jarring for people to read, which is the last thing I want!

A slightly faster pacing, to make sure the story/plot doesn’t become stale at least in the start, you’ll also see more of the world! For Lyra I’m gonna include a short part at the end of her chapters dedicated to her diary, where she shares her thoughts and experiences if it’s appropriate story wise. I don’t know for sure if I can do something similar for Katie yet, but I wanna try.

I’m also expanding and looking into my magic system, seeing what I can improve or streamline, and hopefully becoming a better writer, that’s all I really want! I just wanna be better in the future. 

I wanna reiterate that I’m gonna try to make sure you never have to feel like you’re reading anything twice while sticking to the same characters and core of the story. To my relief I did the same for Dof, I hope I can do it again for the 3rd draft but you can bet your butt I’ll try!

I’m really really sorry it’s come to this, and I’m sorry if this comes out of nowhere. Dof will be put on hiatus as one day, I might come back to this space for a different story, who knows? But for now I just really think it’s too soon to set it to completed. However if people or staff want me to delete my work because they’re clogging up the similar series section or rankings I will, my stories will never hurt anyone ever again or get in the way of other authors. If it isn’t hurting anyone I’d like to keep them up though, as people’ve enjoyed my stories in the past and maybe others can enjoy them in the future. Maybe I can even help some trans folks by hatching their eggs, I’d really like that! It would mean the world to me if my stories can help people!

I’ve learned a lot from writing this novel, so I hope to write something even better and more enjoyable when I’m bringing it back! It’s a small dream, but I hope that one day this story or anything I’ve written makes it to trending. I realize that like my dream of writing for a living and publishing my own successful novel this is probably far away though.

I’ll be back to writing a new short story(and the novel) as soon as I’ve taken a break, it’s honestly been a rough couple of weeks for me so I really need time to recharge and get my vibe back. Feel free to leave a comment if you want to give me feedback or anything, or you can DM me for my discord if you’re uncomfortable writing in a public space. Thank you for reading and stay safe❤️