Blaze in the Darkness | ✔

Author's Note

Damn, that was one hell of a ride. Thank you so much to everyone who read my story! I truly hope you enjoyed it. I certainly enjoyed writing it and seeing all of your reactions.

The support this story has had from the beginning has completely blown me away. Within a week, this story already had 200 reads. From then on, I blasted through milestones I never thought would happen. 1.000 reads, 5.000, 10.000, 20.000... It's insane. This book even managed to hit #8 in the Werewolf hotlist!

On top of that, I actually managed to get my story on Dutch national television on Friday the 21st of June. It was about Wattpad deals and they needed a Dutch Wattpad writer to talk about it, and I sacrificed myself and somehow made it. This is one of the most incredible things I never even thought possible.

Who knows where things go from now on? I certainly have plans. I have ideas to turn this book into a series called Bottled. The epilogue should've given you a taste of the sequel's main character. I'll drop you the name, too: "Bottled: Scales of Ice". A nice follow-up to "Bottled: Blaze in the Darkness", don't you think?

Now it's time for me to work on worldbuilding and then rewrite this story. When the rewrite is done, I'll post it here, too. And while the rewrite goes up, I'll be working on Scales of Ice. Things can only go better from here.

If you have any fanart, please let me know, and I'll put it in the next chapter with all the other graphics I've accumulated! I'd be honored that anyone even considers drawing something that I created.

Oh, I also found that very few people know that Wattpad has forums. I'm actually one of the most active people around there, and would love to have more people to talk to! To go there, go to your browser and type "www.wattpadwriters.com". This works best on PC/laptop, but you can do it on your phone's internet browser as well. My username there is the same as here. You can find yourself lots of new books and new friends, so don't hesitate to take a look.

A few statistics on the story

This was my first ever book to be completed.

I started writing it on November 23rd, 2018, and finished writing on June 29th, 2019.

The first chapter was posted on the 18th of December, and the last on July 3rd.

The story is ~34.500 words long.  

Help needed in the form of beta readers

Now the story is complete, I really need readers' help. To improve this story, I need feedback, and who better to ask than the ones who have completely read it? If you can spare a few minutes of your time to answer these questions, it could greatly help me improve. It's also okay if you don't want to, but severely appreciated if you do.

I have two lists of questions, a short one and a long one, for the ones who have little time or can miss quite a bunch. The short one will be up first, then the long one.

Short list: (5 questions)
1. Are there parts that you skipped to get to 'the good part'?

2. Were you confused at any point in the story?

3. Did you know what genre you're reading?

4. Was the end satisfying?

5. What characters did you like best and why?

Long list: (20 questions)
1. Did the story hold your interest from the very beginning? If not, why?

2. Was there a point at which you felt the story slowed or you became less than excited about finding out what was going to happen next? Where, exactly?

3. Were there any parts that confused you? Or even frustrated or annoyed you? Which parts, and why?

4. Was there enough conflict, tension, and intrigue to keep your interest? Was the narrative interesting and did it move along? Why or why not?

5. Was the ending good enough? Believable?

6. Could you relate to Zanixa? Did you feel her pain, sadness, or excitement?

7. Did you get confused about who's who in the characters? Were there too many characters to keep track of? Too few? Are any of the names of characters too similar? 

8. Were the characters believable? Are there any characters you think could be made more interesting or more likeable? 

9. Did the characters' actions seem believable or realistic? Did you root for them, or hate others?

10. Are there any places where you wanted the characters to act differently, and why?

11. Did you quickly realise who the narrator of the story is, and when and where the story is happening? If not, was that a bad thing or a good thing?

12. Did the setting interest you and did the descriptions and worldbuilding seem realistic enough?  Was it too far fetched, or good?

13. Did you feel there was too much description, information, or explanation? Not enough? Maybe too much dialogue in parts?

14. Did you notice any inconsistencies in time sequences, places, character details, or other things? Or were any details repeated or redundant?

15. Do you think the writing style and the story suits the werewolf/high fantasy genre? If not, why not?

16. Could some of the stories and ideas be more punchy or interesting? If so, do you have any suggestions?

17. Did the dialogue keep your interest and sound natural to you? If not, whose dialogue did you think sounded artificial or not like a person would speak (aside from those two mages all the way back in the beginning)?

18. Did you notice any obvious, repeating grammatical, spelling, punctuation or capitalization errors? Could you name some if you did, or point them out in the comments?

19. Did you understand every phrase and term I used?

20. Would you want to revisit the world, and would it be another part of the world, or roughly the same area?

21. Do you have any other comments or suggestions? Please, do tell!

Thank you to everyone who made it this far, and more thanks to everyone who answered! Your help is really useful and welcomed <3 I will keep all feedback in mind while editing and revising.

If you want to help me with beta reading the rewritten version once it's done, please comment on this paragraph -->
   You will get to see it before everyone else will, as they will have to wait for weekly updates. The only thing I ask is that you answer five questions every chapter and the big list at the end of the story :) 

And, once again, thank you. From the bottom of my heart. Your support helped me through some rough patches.