The Warlock's Azalea (EDITING) ✔

Afterword - TLH: TOOTC

Move away from this part right now if you haven't finished reading The Warlock's Azalea from start to finish, as this part will include major spoilers that I'd rather you know through experiencing the story firsthand.

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This is the first time I've ever finished writing a book that isn't a one-shot or a short story. And I am thrilled to know you have completed the first novel I've ever completed! Now, onto some technical parts of this book!

The entire premise and everything about this book was first thought of in 2017, but it underwent many different title names, structure format, and reworking in my personal drafts. For a brief history of how The Warlock's Azalea: The Secret of The Enchanting Stone came to be, I present the first two titles, the original concepts that made it to this final and official title, and the initial plan for TWA.

(You can skip this part and go straight to the next text in bold.)

The first title of this was 'I Believe In Love,' which came from a poem I wrote ending with the line, 'I believed in love because of you.' The idea starts with a warlock who, for some reason, took in a fresh graduate university student to a whole other world—a dark and gloomy world of ruin. The warlock, the queen, or everyone else had no names during this time. There was only Keir Morin. Eventually, I changed the title of the book to 'The Enchanting Stone' after having this idea of Keir becoming a summoner in the otherworld and aiding the warlock in retrieving an heirloom—the enchanting stone. The original world was not as magical as the Staile we know now, but Dwei (the lower layer of Staile we are yet to see more of) is based on the initial world, although not entirely. Additionally, the original world had monstrous creatures with the highlight of 'lurkhounds,' which didn't have that name back then.

As for original concepts that made it here:

- Warlock x human pairing

- A powerful enchanting stone that could ruin the world, grant its user enhanced capabilities, and give immortality. But it all comes with a price—a side effect we now know as coldness.

- Human becomes emotionless because of the warlock. Human is no longer emotionless because of the warlock. Originally, the warlock turned the human's heart to stone as he took her to the otherworld to prevent her from being afraid of the monstrous things there. As she became a summoner, she was at his command, and since the warlock was a support unit, the human summoner at his command became the offensive force of their party.

- Warlock made the human's heart cold as a stone for her own sake. Later revealing that this spell of his on her slowly shattered with her growing affection for him. Additionally, he made her emotionless to save her from ever coveting the enchanting stone or possible enemy traps and whatnot.

As you can see, since you've finished reading this book, you can spot how I altered these original concepts and how similar the first ideas were to this one now.

I altered many of these to fit the prompt that gave this story an actual plot—a prompt from ONC 2022, which you can find in the foreword of this book. As for the initial plan for TWA, it was for ONC (Open Novella Contest), so naturally, it was supposed to be a novella and a low fantasy. But at some point, it all got more complicated while I was planning the chapters and everything else. And here we are now! It's officially a novel bordering 65000 words. Not just that, it has also grown to become a series!

(End of TWA's history)

Proceeding forward, this book has become a series! A trilogy series I have named: Their Flowers Series. All three books within the series would be centering around a flower with symbolism in real-time or in the story.