Announcement and Author's Note

Hey, guys!
You might wonder why I suddenly made this announcement and note. Well, as you guys know the deadline for this contest is around the corner, and my story just barely reached a quarter done. Yes, you read that correctly, a quarter. Not even a quarter of the whole series, just a quarter of the first book.

So, in this chapter (or whatever you want to call this) I'll guide you to what I envision with this project;

First, I wrote this story way back in high school, but I've never published it anywhere. I just kept it to myself. Then when I was just minding my own business, finding anime to watch on MAL,  I stumbled on this contest and thought to join the fun. Turns out I got stressed. Not because of the contest but irl job, and my other activities and made me not concentrate on my story. So, I felt I kind of goofed and wanted to just end it there. But my friends in my discord group told me to keep going. So, I kept going but my stress was getting at me and made me sick, twice within the contest time.

As time went on it was already 2 weeks before the deadline, so I thought to myself, I might as well turn what I have now to the contest. I have given my best and ain't just going to turn this down, especially when I get support.

Now, let's move on to the bigger picture. I've written this story, but because the contest only allowed a limited number of words, I condensed it and made it at least half of book one, which is the battle between Makori and Kyle. But as you all realized, Makori and the gang haven't even gone out of the sewer yet and the time is running out. So, I'm just going to be stopping here and when the contest is finally over, I would like to continue this story without any contest attached to the name.

It is actually kind of bugging me now that I think about it that I have made the worldbuilding and character introduction so slow. It made this story feel like going nowhere, but that's how I wrote most of the story in middle school. My brain always thinks to make a solid ground for the characters first and then introduce the characters and their trait. Finally, settle on their journey together without making a stop to tell a flashback in the middle of an action scene.

But that's also becoming the weakness of my story. People tend to forget about those world-building and character traits in the moment of the story. I don't know what to say about that because I get it. There are probably a lot of better stories out there and it is worth investing than my story. And I don't judge you for that, myself included. I thought a lot of my stories actually trash, lol.

Sorry about the ranting but the point is, I don't even know if I will get the awards or not, I'm here for fun but also because I knew my story was not the best.  I also never even promoted it because I still had that stage fright especially since I didn't really have a story in English at all before this contest happened. So, my grammar is all over the place even when I already have Grammarly installed in my browser extension. That's where Spectrix0 came in. Man, he offered himself to me to be my proofreader and it instantly boosted my spirit to make more. I want to give him a huge thanks. Although time and work are not in our favor, I am still glad that he wants to help me with the grammar.

Then the reader. I know this is going to sound weird but, I have made an online novel like this in the past too, mostly in the Indonesian language but no one read it except my family. That's made me stop a couple of times and never finish what I have written but here, I can't even believe my eyes that I can get an instant 7/8 reader every release. It also encouraged me to write more. You all make me happy and I hope you're happy too with what I write.

Since we are on the topic, might as well mention that I would like to make another story and it will be different than Makorinama in the future. So, I hope you guys looking forward to those as well.

Now out of the main rant, I also would like to add more from this story, a bonus segment. That bonus segment will be trivia about all Makorinama until this point. It's a way that the main weakness of my story will be resolved a little bit. Hope you like that as well.

Anyway, that's all for this chapter/notes. I wish you a belated Merry Christmas, a belated Happy New Year, and a Happy Holiday.

So, tl;dr this is going to be the first stop of the novel. I'll continue it when the contest actually finishes. And there will be a bonus chapter for more info about the story after this. Also, a new novel will be coming too.