Read This! A Book Is Coming!

HOORAY!!!!!

For the past few months since October or November or... sometime around there, I have been writing a book; a sequel to my first ever self-published book, Playing With Shadows.

Now, PWS is about these things called Shadows that are basically trying to take over the world by turning children into more of themselves, and it goes on and on from there. Kloey and Red are the main characters of the story, Kloey being one of Red's many kidnapping victims on which the process of becoming a Shadow did not work on. She is the only human who can resist becoming a Shadow, and so the Shadows recruit her to their side to help them with taking over the world in their brutal mentality.

Kloey, however, being the smart-alecky 11-year-old that she is, drags the Shadows forcefully out of their sickening mindset and tells them not to kill people and specifically bonds with Red, who, in the end, decides against killing the sister of her long-lost best friend because of a promise Kloey forced him to make. At the very end of the book, the world "ends" peacefully by the Shadows making everyone go into long-term suspension so that the world can revert back to what it was without pollution and all that shizzle.

But... what Red didn't anticipate was that his second-in-command, Venik, who felt incredibly betrayed at Red's choosing to make Kloey, a mere human, more important than him, would betray the facts of pacifism that all the Shadows have come to accept and turn the world into a bloodbath.

But of course, this all happens in the second book, which just happens to be named SHADOWS OF THE STARS.

Now, let me tell you something about me- I do not plan out my stories. Ever. Each time I do, I change something, and then I have to go back and change the fact that I changed something, and then I change something else, and something else, and then planning out my stories becomes irrelevant because it just doesn't work for me very well. I tend to go completely off-track because I have a dream, or a sudden idea in the middle of working on school or studying or even watching a Minecraft YouTube video, and then I stray from my original ideas and replace them with something else, something new and special.

In fact, SOFS was called Living With Shadows (boooooringggg) originally until I wanted to incorporate something I had never even thought of in the first book, which is that the Shadow-turned-humans are interconnected with the stars, and the stars speak to them and convict them of their crimes, and so on. So yeah, that happened.

Anyway, I started writing SOFS in October of 2023, but stopped because I didn't like the way the story was going, and so I reset it back in February and began to write it again over Mid-Winter break, which is something my school gets because we're in digital classrooms and we never get any snow days. The plot of SOFS is that Owain and nine other children each have a special ability (or disability, unfortunately) given to them by Red and Kloey years after the Shadows have taken over in something called, naturally, the Takeover. Owain, Cleo, Atticus, Loft, Elwood, Ao, Dae, Naimh, Aoife, and Maeave (I tried to be as diverse as possible with characters this time around...) are ten children who have "superpowers" (except for Cleo and Aoife, who were both accidentally unempowered by Red), and Red and Kloey entrust them to find a way to save the world from Venik, the cruel monster that has taken over half the Earth and dubbed it "the Blackwoods."

However, in the beginning of the book, Owain is kidnapped by Venik and taken for ransom. A being of entirely darkness called "That" wants Owain's mind, because Owain's "superpower" is to hear others' thoughts, and once Venik finds this out about Owain, he marks Owain using his claws and both their minds interconnect, meaning that one can explore the other's thoughts and memories and vice versa.

Kloey, a half-Shadow and a half-human, and her friend Rosy, fully Shadow, traverse across the Blackwoods to get to the mountains, where they can climb to the very edge of the ocean and see "This" (I know, This and That, very original), a being which is the opposite of That and only desires good. It is a being that spoke to Red when he was younger, but Red, in his rebellion, rejected This, and ever since then This has been patiently waiting for his return.

This tells Kloey and Rosy a prophecy of sorts: "Three will rise, and three will fall, a sacrifice to please the stars. Three, the One Who Speaks; the Savior of the Shadows; the Bringer of Death."

Kloey deduces that she is the Savior of the Shadows, Owain is the One Who Speaks (because Owain is the only one who can still speak out of all the nine children, since their voiceboxes had not been used in countless years), and Venik is the Bringer of Death, and she and Rosy descend the mountains and travel back through the Blackwoods to warn Red about the upcoming danger.

The end of the book, I will not spoil, but Venik meets Red and the eight children (yes, it becomes eight...), followed by Kloey and Rosy, at the mountains, and when Owain tries to push Venik off the cliff to rid him from the world, This rises out of the ocean and...

...and...!

Something super incredible and awesome happens that I won't spoil.

So, since this is the book I'm currently working on, I was wondering that if I posted it on Vocal, would... would anyone care to read it, chapter-by-chapter? I will probably go back and edit it sometime in the future (because that's what us authors do, we edit and edit and edit until our eyes fall out), but the original chapters, if posted, will always remain on Vocal as a testament to my writing process and my "old writings."

These may one day be considered my first "best work," heh.

So, that's the question that I have for you, my... 50-something subscribers, I think. Would you care at all for it?

I have to say, my vocabulary and writing style has improved greatly since November of 2022, when I first started on here, so if I were you I would say yes.

But that's just me. What do you think?

Leave a comment! Tell me!

Adieu!