Chapter 90:

Afterword

The Children of Eris


To all of you who made it this far, thank you for reading the first Children of Eris novel.

It’s been a long journey for the both of us, though I assure you it’s been longer for me than it has been for you.

I did a lot of planning, writing and editing in order to make the best version of this book I could in time for the deadline, and I still didn’t write everything I’d originally intended to.

Almost 90 chapters and 150,000 words and it still wasn’t everything you wanted to write?

As unbelievable as that sounds, yes.

When I realised the original idea I had for Eris was far too ambitious given the time frame, I had to cut plotlines, chapters and character screen time as it were.

It was tough, but I didn’t have time to delay, so I had to ask myself - what is the most important part of this story?

Ultimately, it is David’s journey to becoming the Demon Emperor.

So, first on the chopping board was a whole big-subplot I had involving a merchant’s guild; then, it was the adventurers/paladins investigating and fighting back against the Great Disaster long before the big final battle.

Regrettably, I also had to cut the screen time of some of David’s generals.

However, I realised that I could eventually develop the generals more as characters in the next novel in the series (if this series ever continued) and the same is true for the adventurers, Divines and Paladins etc.

Originally, I was planning to have a chapter between the Vampire Court stuff and David going to visit Kella. It was set at Themis and would’ve shown the defenders preparing for the attack, whilst also giving more character/depth to the Divines, Dante and the Emperor’s family.

However, I ended up cutting this chapter for two reasons.

Firstly, this book is already long enough as it is.

Secondly (this is the more important one), no matter how I approached the chapter, I just couldn’t get it to work.

It always sounded stiff, awkward or forced in no matter how many times I rewrote it, so I ended up scrapping the chapter entirely.

Now, if you were wondering why I uploaded 90 chapters for the Honeyfeed competition and why their length varies, the answer is quite simple: I wanted to be on the front page of the site as often as possible.

That, and I didn’t want to scare people off with 20 page chapters.

The more presence I had there, the more exposure I’d get and I’d garner more attention, in theory.

It worked really well, in a way, but I imagine it put some people off for the longest time or entirely.

In hindsight, I wish I’d just done 50-60 and combined some of the shorter chapters with the longer ones.

At the time, I’d thought smaller, but more numerous, chapters might be easier to consume as a reader, but I’m not so sure anymore.

I will say that, on reflection, I am glad I cut as much as I did from my initial plans; if I didn’t, this could’ve easily eclipsed 120 chapters on Honeyfeed.

Anyway!

Thank you for reading the Children of Eris.

I hope you enjoyed it and I hope that you’re excited to see where the story goes next!

D.C. Priest.