Venture to Uncertainty (#1)

Author's Note

ABOUT ME

Hi, I'm Tari. When I finished writing the raw version of this book in December 2019, I was seventeen years old. However, I write this now at twenty years old, the day I finally deem this book *done*. I'm a biochemistry and psychology university student who works part-time as an infantry reservist in the Army, which I understand is a little bit of a weird combination. As a writer, my most characterizable traits are my incessant typing (110wpm with the right amount of caffeine) and my memory, which could recite this book from front to back on a dime (yes, it's a scary place up here). Venture to Uncertainty is a manifestation of my soul, and anyone who has completed it becomes a part of the exhilarating experience taken to create it. I thank you for your time, for any comments or votes you may have provided, and for your overwhelming support.

ABOUT THE BOOK

My writing journey starts a little sad. My sister, who was the creative one between the two of us, showed me Wattpad when I was very young. I wrote some things here and there, but nothing special. In fact, considering I grew up believing the words unexceptional and failure were synonyms, it always bothered me just how average my ability to write fiction was. I didn't think much of it, since I was making use of a different unique aspect of myself around the same time.

I had an affinity for public speaking. I began competing in public speaking at eight years old—back when it was just a thing my parents encouraged me to do. A few years later, we found out that public speaking wasn't just a good skill to have, but rather one with an entire world of opportunities surrounding it. At sixteen, I began travelling the world on exchange programs and scholarships I'd received from public speaking. I was still a massive reader and longed to write, so I struggled to understand why I performed so well at speaking and so terribly at writing. The answer is very obvious to me now: When I spoke, people were enamoured by my passion—something I never managed to translate over to fiction without my voice. At the time, I'd concluded that I just wasn't creative enough to write fiction, so I turned down a very linear, academic path toward math and science.

I gave it another try. I had an extreme inability to read a book and put it down; I couldn't stop thinking about characters, monologues, action scenes, etc. long after the pages stopped. I wanted to write my own so badly, but like most people, I was far too daunted by the task, so I decided to start small and write fanfiction for a dystopian book I liked. It wasn't great, but I was proud of it. I garnered lots of success on Wattpad, but obviously the story is too happy to end here. Wattpad took my book down with no explanation, which resulted in a lot of tears, drama, etc. Wattpad is based on fanfiction, and millions of other novels about the same fandom were allowed to stay whereas mine, which was incredibly innocent, was not. That is my villain origin story. I deleted my account and went back to my academic world. This was the turning point, the place I might've never come back from if it weren't for everyone's favourite Siren.

Silta came to the rescue. Before Archer and Bardarian, there was Silta. She was a character I created in my head, an amalgamation of every cool heroine I'd come across and a hardened version of myself I could embody to get me through hard things. When I wanted to cry, when I felt my physical strength giving out, when I wanted to quit my training—I'd just become Silta, and I'd get through it. She was supposed to be just for me, but I found a home for her after the fanfiction disaster. While Silta is an entirely organic person, Archer and Bardarian had roots in other books, taking shape as characters that became my own over the years. They'd interact with each other in my head, beginning to form relationships and plotlines. Once I had the three of them, I just needed a place to put them. I decided the ocean would work best.