Gracie Abrams is eking out a solitary existence, fighting day-in, day-out against the drain of working customer service and nursing two newborn kittens in her off time. Out on her own ever since her sister moved in with her boyfriend, the burden of...
Total Word Count: ~190,000 Started: 11/1/22 Ended: 7/18/25
Buckle up, this ended up the length of a chapter 🥴🥴.
Let's start with a thank you to anyone who has supported the creation of this story, taken the time out of their busy lives to read even a piece of it, and continued to read and/or cheer me on as the years went by.
There were multiple times that I thought of quickly ending it so it would just be done. Writing a novel is a labor of love, effort, persistence, grit, and a million other things more important than editing and uploading. The longer it grew, the harder it was to hang on, keep writing, keep pumping out those chapters.
I'm proud that I never stopped uploading. I never ran out of material. Sometimes, it was biweekly, others weekly. But I never up and stopped posting or ran out of a backlog. That's a huge accomplishment for a story that went on for years.
I've been with this cast longer than any other. I've written in Gracie's head longer than any other MC to this date. And...yeah, this is the longest story I've written so far.
Salvation was written as a way for me to process my emotions after finishing the Naruto franchise. With 720 episodes, Boruto (which I gave up on, sorry!) 9 movies, a handful of novels, the original manga, etc., one can find themselves at a loss when the full-immersion is over. When it's...done.
It felt like an era ended when I finished Naruto. I had the unique experience of watching it for the first time as an adult, and I'd been into anime for years before even trying to tackle it. But once it was done...I stopped watching anime. This story was honestly my only connection left to that part of my life. And when I accepted that, I think Salvation changed from being a story about a fan and her favorite character to instead being about a man and a woman trying to figure out things that are bigger than the two of them.
I had planned out a trilogy of sorts. Talia and Shigaraki's story, Obliteration, where Shigaraki ends up being sent back, took place in a short prequel. Then the third story would be where the character from our AU world gets sucked into Gintama's universe. It was a trio of anime's silver-heads, haha.
Since I barely got to fit Talia, let's give it up for Roz and Gintoki, who never got even a blip of screen time once I realized I would not be making a trilogy:
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I'd also thought to make a sort of hot-sensei collection. Don't tell Kakashi, but my favorite teacher of all time is Aizawa...🥴🥴🥴
I think of Salvation as something of a prequel. The AU world is irrevocably changed as a result of the events in this story, and in many ways, the main characters lie elsewhere. Whether it's Sam's quest to track down her mother, Talia's self-discovery of who they are without magic, or even the Sinnissippa Witch Coven in general, there are many contenders for protagonists. Heck, even Kirishima's story has main character energy. I can acknowledge that this book really opened up a whole plethora of possibilities.
