Chapter 75 concluded the first Book/Volume of Damien Nightshade. Since this novel is being written as a web serial there aren’t planned ‘endings’ so it's hard to pick a good location to cut off but I feel chapter 75 is the best one.

Storywise it's a chapter that doesn’t end on a cliffhanger nor does it immediately reference a plot thread that needs resolving. It's a chapter full of promises that won’t come true for many chapters.

The more practical reason is that the book is now 479 pages long (132k words) which is about a hundred pages over the standard size and is approaching the limit of a hardback book (550 pages). I wanted the first book to include the next arc as well but due to a ridiculous number of new ideas being implemented the next arc will be far too long to include.

So what does this mean for you as a reader? Nothing. Chapter uploads will continue as usual and in the far future when I'm done with Damien and no longer wish to continue I will go back, edit and then upload the novel to Kindle. My dream has always been to have my own book on my bookshelf.

Below I will list some of my thoughts, feelings and lessons learnt and some plans for the future:

In January of this year, I had just finished reading ‘Jackal Among Snakes and ‘The Villain Wants to Live’ both these novels follow a similar plotline to Damien since they are the two novels that inspired me.

I was sitting at home and my final semester of university didn’t start for another 2 months so I had plenty of free time. I had just concluded my first novel ‘Reincarnated as a Nightwalker’ which got a very mixed reception. A lot enjoyed it but a LOT hated it with a passion which killed my motivation to write.

Luckily I understood the hate and worked on the issues, the main problems were bad grammar and 2D characters.

Anyway, I wrote this originally for fun with zero expectations that it would actually gain a small but loyal following. I would say my novel is in the top 10-20% of novels in terms of size which is decent but unfortunately not good enough to continue as a job through Patreon support. But that’s fine, I enjoy writing it and I hope you guys continue to enjoy reading it.

However, due to my original low expectations, I didn’t start taking notes or doing any planning till around chapter 50. This makes remembering what colour eyes a side character had or what a certain item was called a pain to find since I have to re-read where I mentioned it. I have since begun taking notes and now have lots of plot points and characters are written down. This is a lesson I would give to any other author, I thought I could keep it all in my head but once the novel got to around 70k words it just became impossible.

Overall I am mostly happy with how Damien has gone so far. I do regret not touching on Damien's Vampire side more in earlier chapters and I wish I figured out what I wanted Fay to actually be earlier as well. Originally she was going to be a yandere crazy person but I later decided against it since I had no idea how to write a character like that.

Another massive annoyance has been the magic system. NEVER write a novel without fully figuring out the magic system beforehand. It’s been an absolute pain to make sure Damien stays somewhat balanced without being too weak. Not to mention I originally planned a box standard RPG magic system but I got bored of it quickly and kept trying to spice it up with cultivation elements and other weird things. One massive slip up was giving Damien Pyrokinesis. It was just a little side thing to show how dumb Damien was for learning a fire spell but it ruined everything because now I had to explain how he had Pyrokinesis but not the Fire mana circuit.

Oh well, lesson learnt.

So what are the plans for book 2?

Kingdom building. I always loved kingdom-building novels and think it's a great end goal for a character to work towards. It is fun to write about as well, at least for me. I personally don’t like to write or read about a character going on an endless journey to power up. Damien WILL go on a trip to the central continent to gain power at some point so don’t worry but his power levelling will never be the main focus of the story.

Also, for those of you that like the Vampires, they will play a massive role in this next book, especially Damien’s sister Vanity will be making an appearance. My Patreons are already trying to ship the two together which is worrying… talking of Patreons, we doubled in subscribers this month so maybe the full-time writer's dream isn’t totally dead?

I feel over the past few months I have drastically improved as a writer and I will be carrying those skills into the next book so I hope you will all stick with me and continue to enjoy Damien’s journey!

- XKARNATION