How is the story to you so far? (& an in-depth to its creation)

Is the story well-received or poorly-received among you guys? I can't tell, honestly. I see people putting it in their collections (Thank you all so much, by the way) but honestly, I don't know if I want to move forward with posting Volume 2 of this book.

I have the skeleton and some of its meat down, that's for sure, all the way up to a little bit over Volume 3, but I'll need some simple editing & tidying up, I'll need some time for brushing up a couple of descriptions and plot-points, I'll need some more time to tidy up the plot directions. But I promise a story that's really different, a story that's really great to all the people out there who've rooted for me and this child of mine.

It's got roughly the same problems as the first volume in this series, it's got only 32 chapters. The bigger problem is, that while the first book has 95k words in 32 chapters (a full, proper novel for paperbacks, look at that!), the second volume has (at the moment) 120k+ words in the chapter.

So, I don't know. If you liked the story a lot, give me some comments on which parts you loved about it, and I know the writing style is quite bone-dry and not very descriptive but I thank you nonetheless for coming so far into 32 chapters. I don't need your power-stones, I just want to know if you liked it / enjoyed it enough to want another 32.

I wanted a unique reading experience, so I've been brewing and crafting. Volume 2 has a really, really grand stage. You could say that 80+% of the volume is showing you this story world's history along with a little bit of drama and action/suspense, and the last part, the climax really kicks into high gear and uses everything you've learnt so far in what is perhaps the greatest high-stakes fight scene in the series yet.

(For those of you who've loved this book since my blog/Wattpad days, thank you for coming back to a refurbished version of this series. Haha. You guys are the best!)

Anyway. Enough rambling. Time we got serious.

Let's talk about WoP Quest's biggest goals. It's true motives, the reason why it takes on such a bizarre style, plot and direction. Why some people feel a lot for Katachi, and others don't.

So, for the idea WoP Quest embodies, Katachi is a very strange character for sure. He doesn't act like a protagonist, he doesn't act like a traditional hero and he doesn't really have their obligations to help someone in trouble. He's content with helping the world in his own way, even if everyone were to shun or ostracize him for it.

Much like how a budding writer steps out into the literary world for the first time, seeing the superstars like Tolkien or Rowling or Erikson, and getting intimidated by their presence. Hey wait a minute, that sounds very familiar, doesn't it! Yes it is. That's our reality right now.

But we all soldier on, we all create our own stories and books and settings and characters, our own versions of the tales that people aren't always happy or willing to accept. The controversies of your actions, where many would either encourage or dissuade you from pursuing that dream, that ideal.

I wanted to convey that sense of "I'm not going to be as good as them at the #1, but I'll try to be the only one in a way that none can ever replicate." with his tale. We all are, aren't we?

In a sense, it's right for me to say that Katachi's tale is directly targeted at authors and anyone who's tried their hand at art or any cultural contribution! Haha. For those who've truly attempted creating something novel, something you think the world's never seen before, Katachi's story will click with you instantly. To strive for what you think is right, even when the world is against you.

I wrote WoP Quest out of resentment. I hated the way the world confines us to a specified writing style because it was popularized by recent authors. Back 500 or so years ago, the script-like writing style I'm using in WoP was VERY POPULAR among those in the Renaissance period, the time of Shakespeare.

Christopher Marlowe, Joseph Milbrand and Thomas Middleton, for example!

"Who are they?" Exactly. They're examples of authors who made their own variants of a tale during their time as Shakespeare's not-really-worthy-to-be-called-rivals. It's just that Shakespeare happens to be more famous and popular, but in the time they were alive those authors lived harder and stronger than Shakespeare ever did.

Having gripes with critique, being told that they fall flat when paired against the most famous & notable playwright Shakespeare, suffering in their own admittance of their limits and capacity, that is their life story immortalized. Katachi's life story. A life story of today's author, who struggles to peek his head out and hopefully be recognised and loved for his works, only to be cruelly pelted down.

We're authors, not murderers. We want to be known for our use of the pen (or keyboard in today's time), not the sword. We take pride in creating elaborate stories, simple stories, complex tales, simple tales, not to be remembered as savages who garner the hate and ire of others, only to be hexed in return at your success.

In today's corporate-driven world, the essence of success seems so closely tied to what money you make from your book, but the reality of it is that if you did it not for the money but for a true cause, a true goal, you are in Katachi's shoes. You watch for everything carefully, knowing full well the world is against you and will take every chance it gets to devour you.

That's part of his extreme & fundamental character design; He is, essentially, the persona of every person who's ever attempted creating something to truly call their own. He is the persona of a deep, saudede-like yearn for an identity, and in specific the identity of those who seek more. Those who are discontent.

The resentment did not manifest in that way alone. I hated strong, powerful characters like Whitebread Superman and inexplicable alien powers like Green Lantern's ring, Wonderwoman's convenient Amazon prowess with their own bigger-than-you problems. I hated tales where your convenient solution was some kind of greater-than-thou power that could never be explained.

The way WoP Quest's magic works, as you might have guessed, is based off of legends and tales of the past that actually happened. We all lend from the people who've tried creating something unique to themselves in the past. We've all went through that phase of looking up to literary idols and other writers, in hopes of learning what they've done and trying to make something we can call our own. Be it carrying their mantle, or starting a new one entirely on your own.

Some writers do it simply to recreate a golden, proven formula and get the money out of it, a very shallow and hollow experience that plagues so many chick lits, crime fiction and fantasies / science fiction. But there are others like us, who through our writing try to find our bearings in this world.

However we perceive these bearings ultimately influence the kind of person we are, what precepts we adore, what quotes we choose to use and what epitaphs we want during our dying breaths. WoP Quest is a truly, truly gigantic undertaking, and as I struggle with being an author and writer, it can be said that WoP Quest is a direct representation of my successes and failures.

A series of many small victories that might not truly matter in the face of others, but that journey means something true to you even if it didn't to others. That's the feeling I wish to share and convey through WoP Quest.

American stories love to dramatize it and make your change so apparent, that everyone else around you notices. I hated that, and I wanted to bring out the goodness in life. That you don't always have to matter to someone else, if you matter to yourself. It seems like narcissism if you're only thinking about yourself all the time, so please be careful not to over-indulge on it, but it's still a truth that corporates try not to talk about or they'll lose business.

The true love of this tale, however, is in regard to what it wants to tell you, what it wants to show. You don't always find happiness in others, even if many stories you've probably read about thus far always encourage the concept, the idea. I hated having that forced onto me. Why can't I be happy the way I am?

Why do they have to judge with their clammy eyes who or what I am worth, on their own metrics and scales, when they can never know my deepest of thoughts and who I really think I am? Why do they always think I'm veering on the side of the wrong, and they advise me what to do and rectify me towards their form of the ideal? Why can't I be allowed my own form of the ideal?

You don't have to be a hero. You don't always get praise for accepting yourself for who you are, especially considering the 1970s aggressive marketing sought to make people feel empty without furniture or appliances, turning people into hollow consumership. Look at Negan, from the Walking Dead! He followed the Disney's morals, and accepts himself as a big man who leads the Saviours, who believes in naturalism and the laws of the jungle. It seems almost ironic to what Disney films would have you believe, that accepting yourself for who you are makes your life better (but not at the expense of others).

It's the truth. And bitter as that truth is, it's best that you accept it. WoP Quest doesn't force you to understand the characters. You don't need a character spilling out every piece of their traumatic history like they want someone to vent it off of, a victim of that idea.

Katachi's various plights in his childhood he wishes not to recall, are not made known initially for you to understand him as a concept that you can truly accept him as a fellow pilgrim in search of an identity. It's not a story that wants the characters to be fully understood, and it accepts and embraces the idea that no one can truly be known. It's only later on in the story that you can slowly learn about what he's suffered and endured, and relate to him via some of his best and worst moments.

WoP Quest is a really, really beautiful symbolic tale of a modern writer's gripes with today's literary world.

I should know, in case you're wondering - I'm from Singapore. And in Singapore, you either write a book about the country / a working formula (RunHideSeek trilogy I'm looking at you) and become popular to the cabinet ministers that way, or you write an original book and become obscured to the abyssal regions where you never see light.

I saw this other author, Allan Cheng, a local who wrote a book called A Paris In Time. He wasn't well-received at all. And as I read his musical journey through 1930s and 1960s music, I felt truly saddened that it was not mainstream. I actually cried and almost soiled the only copy of it in the library. Yeah, a grown man crying in a library, what do you want to say to me? That's who I am.

I love, I know of love, and I grieve when I see how much love he put into his own book, but nobody around him bats an eye. Is that the only problem? No. I know the darkness of my country. His book was conveniently placed in a section where it's full of books related to current politics. In other words it's purposely and strategically placed in a section where everyone who visits the place has absolutely no interest in a fictional tale like that. There can be no sadder fate! NO SADDER FATE!!!

I know the pain of budding authors more than you might think, especially when I'm born and raised in an environment that actively stamps out such developments in lieu of its pragmatic goals. Here, art is dead - And none of the true fictional authors dare stay in Singapore with writing as their main source of income.

So I weave this tragic tale, a life story of the many life stories before me. Not just in Singapore, but in every active literature-producing country that faces such a terrible plight of desiring and yearning something more than the little shillings they get from their books.

And I pray, to all the budding and seasoned writers out there, never to forget your journey as a writer, and never to forget who you are.