Warriors: The Chosen Warrior: Final Darkness (Book 6)

Author's Note

Wow. Wowowowowowowow. I can't believe that, after 7 years, aka more than my entire high school career, this series is actually finished. Another huge shout out and thank you to NovaGrayVanElders because without them, I never would have written this last book. I would have just carried working on Rising Sun. My 12-year-old self is blown away right now, having finally finished something I started just as "Hey, this sounds fun to do!"

Warriors certainly has changed my life one way or another, and for the better lol

I started brainstorming for this book in mid-May, when I first got out of school for the summer and graduated high school. To be honest, I was going into this book planning on writing it in a single week (where I would do nothing but write... yeah, that didn't work). I outlined it briefly as 10 chapters and told myself I was okay with just doing it quickly, not caring if chapters were short (and I planned on them being short) and to just focus on the main plot rather than on smaller side stories like I've learned to do with my writing now when it comes to books. I also worked with the mess and inconsistencies I was given with LOL

That all turned into 25 chapters over the course of roughly 5 1/2 months. (Of course, a lot of that time is also lack of inspiration/motivation/straight up want to write.)

Since I have all of the OG CW books in separate Word documents saved to a flashdrive, I can share the differences between the word counts, page numbers (via Word), and amount of chapters for each book. (Note that for the pages, I changed the font type and lowered the size - 18pts to 14pts - starting in Starry Waters because it was so much longer than the previous books word-wise. So Final Darkness has the same format as its prequel.)

Out of the Darkness (2012) - 10 chapters (+Prologue) / 4,962 words / 29 pages

Way of the Stars (2012) - 10 chapters (+Prologue) / 5,374 words / 30 pages

The Betrayal (2013) - 10 chapters (+Prologue) / 9,809 words / 51 pages

Whispering Leaves (2013) - 14 chapters (+Prologue) / 24,360 words / 124 pages

Starry Waters (2015) - 12 chapters (+Prologue & Epilogue) / 36,910 words / 111 pages

Final Darkness (2019) - 25 chapters (+Prologue) / 68,755 words / 188 pages

That jump from SW to FD. At least I can say during those quiet 4 years I've still been working!! Not the most words I've written ever in a single work *cough cough* Flaming Ice *cough* but it is the most chapters. Though there could easily be more or less of them, with the scene of Swift and Stone's arrival being chopped up into multiple, and I was contemplating whether to split the last chapter in half, but it seemed more appealing to have 25 total chapters instead of 26 LOL

So for those of you who have been on this journey with me, whether you were here since the very beginning, tagged along in the middle, or are reading this a year from now, thank you. It was quite a journey. Definitely grew a lot in many different ways while I wrote all this.

So now, the Chosen Warrior series is over, right? This is the sixth book of the series, I'm not planning on another arc, time to move on to something else, hm?

WRONG!!!

In case you forgot while reading, as I mentioned in the introduction all the way at the beginning of this book, I am rewriting the series, more like a massive revision or remastered version. The first book is titled Rising Sun, so if you're not done with the Chosen Warrior series just yet, head over there!!

Rising Sun consists of all new characters. Of course, Leafsong is still the main character and the Chosen Warrior, but this time the story starts out with her as an apprentice. So, she's named Leafpaw. I wonder what her warrior name will be??

And I guess there's not all new characters, though there's definitely no canon cats from the true series wandering around. A good majority of the cats in this series (my OCs) will reappear in the rewritten series. Some may play a similar role, others will be different. Their names will most likely be changed, as well, mainly their suffix part. A few that will return are Rainshine, Darkflight (as a kit!!), and also Dapplerock. Several more are coming back too, so it's worth checking out at least the allegiances to see who you'd might recognize ;)

To go along with the rewritten series, I also have a book compiled of short stories of the new characters, helping to build up that generation of the Clans and to let both me and you to get to know these new characters a bit better. It's really fun, and I hope they're entertaining!

Again, I want to thank you - you - for reading this book, and this series (as I assume if you read the last book, you at least read one of the previous ones, right?). I really hope you join me on another adventure with the new Chosen Warrior series!! I'll be waiting for you >w<

All my love goes out to you guys, forever.

<333

~ Cheese