Horns ✖

| UPDATE TO EXPLAIN EVERYTHING |

Hello my fellow dinosaur fans! Hoping all is well, and thank you so much for the love and energy you've given to this book. I am truly grateful!

I wanted to make this chapter as an update to explain the status of the book, as well as why things are the way they are. I know you were expecting a chapter regarding the story itself, but I can't guarantee that, not as of now.

So, what happened?

As you've seen already, I am unsure that I am able to continue this. This is more or less based on a creative reason compared to anything else. One of the reasons is confusion; despite knowing how I was going to end the book (which I will explain on soon), I was starting to lose control on how to balance the characters and the script. And it started to turn from a fun write into a sort of project. And that wasn't fun.

Another reason is effort/time. Toward the beginning of 2022, my ability to write those well-faired stories such as Ripper and These Wounds Bleed Black were starting to wane. This was due to my stress level; the amount of freedom I have to write anything has diminished significantly since freshman year of college. And, as the selection process grows closer and closer, I've set myself to focus on schoolwork first, then writing. I really want to fly. And I really want to publish a book. But, at the same time, I want to be happy when I do both, and enjoying it altogether. That means any book that I can't see myself enjoying I have to stop. If I can't put enough effort into it, and if I'm not feeling any emotions when I'm writing the 'said book', then I can't finish it.

Horns was going swell toward the later half of the novel -- around that time I put all my effort into These Wounds Bleed Black. While working between both, because Horns was dragging for me, it somehow made me more excited to write another book or turn to TWBB rather than go on with it. And by the time I returned back to Horns, my level of excitement was pretty non-existent.

In summary, this wasn't writer's block, this was bored-block.

And, finally, the last reason was due to the ending.

SPOILERS AHEAD:

YOU'VE BEEN WARNED:

The ending I wrote was pretty... mediocre. I wouldn't say bad because I saw some level of emotions in there, but it wasn't making me happy, and I didn't want to write it. That is a feat on its own. 

But let me first SPOIL you with what actually inspired the book. I had a roleplay called Domination (2019) where I invited several friends of mine to play dinosaurs on an isolated island. I had three characters, and of them was a herd leader named Sicklehorn. During one of the craziest events, one of my friends decided to team up with a few other characters and stage a siege on the herd. They killed all the Triceratops and drove others into the water to be eaten. Sicklehorn was the only survivor (losing both his HORNS to an allosaurus I think?). He loses his memories, but knows he wants revenge. He finds a scathed skull of his kind and, using tar, glues it on his own to cover up his lost horns. He pretty much becomes a terrifying menace afterwards. 

Clearly I didn't write that for this book... and I should've.  But this is what I made for the ending:

FROM HERE:

From where the last chapter picked up, our main character (Sicklehorn) enters the herd that he belongs to. It's neither an accepting nor a dismissive welcoming, as most of the older herd members know him, and the younger ones don't. The deputy leader is Thornskull, the Triceratops that Sicklehorn defeated in an earlier dream to become leader of the herd. But the twist was that the new leader is Thistlehorn, Sicklehorn's brother that he 'thought' he lost in the earthquake. Sicklehorn also notices two Triceratops that look like his mate, Livia, but ignores it. 

That was twist number one.

Twist number two comes in after Thistlehorn and Sicklehorn part from the herd. He leads him to a region of the forest to talk about what happened to him after the earthquake, and feeds his brother berries. Halfway through their talk, Sicklehorn starts to gag and retch blood. Turns out he was eating nightshades.

(From the prior chapter, A Distant Call, Wrecker warns about nightshades if you wanna look back on it)

At the same time Tooth finds out the truth from the raptors about their past leader who followed a different colored three-horn to Livia's body. Realizing it wasn't Sicklehorn, Tooth races back to warn him.

[Thistlehorn explains that he set up Sicklehorn so he can take back over the herd that their father left for him. Seeing that he had a friendship to Tooth, he hurt Tooth's mother to trick the carnivore and tense their relationship. He also killed Livia, and led one of the raptors to the scene to fool Sicklehorn into thinking they did it. Once Tooth killed Sicklehorn, he took back control.]

Thistlehorn breaks off both of his brother's horns. Tooth finds them and is nearly swade by Thistlehorn that Sicklehorn caused his mother's death. Tooth goes to kill his friend, but turns on Thistlehorn instead and kills him. The herd finds out and go to end Tooth but Sicklehorn defends his friend. The nightshades slowly kill him.

From here, I didn't know what to do. I was battling on either killing him off, or having Wrecker come back and save him last second. 

Another thing I had was that Rockhorn (Sicklehorn's friend with the mumble) was one of the eggs of Livia and Sicklehorn. Another one of the eggs was Stella, the same green Triceratops from Countdown. 

------

In the end, now that I look back on it... yeah, I still didn't like the ending very much. I was at odds with myself and the characters, and I don't think I would've had the strength to write it. It's a little sloppy, and I pretty much abandoned the rest of the characters that I made earlier. So I'm sorry for that. 

But now you know what was meant to be. I hope I satisfied... something LOL.

Thank you again!