Dark Omega

ABOUT THE EDITED VERSION

Hello dear readers!

What you've just read/are reading is the final edited version of Dark Omega, the so-called Q3 2020 Edition (aka the Wattys 2020 Edition). There have been several iterations before this one, with the most important being the completed novel, aka the Q1 2020 Edition. 

This is where I explain what's changed between the editions:

0. It's the same story, but better. By better, I mean better pacing, better character arcs, and a more coherently presented whole.

1. The biggest difference is that the final edition ends BEFORE the original edition did. Marcus breaks out the Maiden, and that's were the novel stops. Everything after has been moved to the next novel in the series. Why? Because the old ending was rushed, action-packed, and generally shoehorned in. Now there is more time to fully develop the story, rather than compress too much action and many big reveals into too few chapters.

2. POVs. The entire novel is now fully 3rd person past tense. It used to be that Haides was 1st person, to differentiate him. And to some extent, that worked extremely well. But in other ways, it did not work well at all. I was very uncertain about this at first, but now I'm EXTREMELY happy with the transformation.

3. The structuring of the plot is somewhat different, with many alternate POV chapters either restructured,  moved further back, or moved to the next novel. There was nothing wrong with those chapters, but they just added bloat rather than help meaningfully move the main story forward. Overall this gives better pacing and focuses on the key character arcs, rather than try and fit too many side stories.

4. Dead weight has been cut. I actually manage to remove quite a few redundant and overly wordy passages. I don't think I've ever managed to do that before with anything I've written. But more isn't always better. Quite the contrary. I'm telling a better story because I'm not distracting the reader with irrelevant exposition.

5. More setting information, but better distributed and worked into the story. This is related to 4, where I've cut stuff, only to work even MORE STUFF into the story by integrating it seamlessly into narrative and dialogue, using fewer words. Incredible.

6. Names. Some character names have changed, simply to make it easier to tell names apart. I don't know why, but clearly I love characters with names starting with 'M' and 'A.' So several minor characters have new names - Melkor is now Kwame, and Agnete is Imogen, for example - but you'll instantly know who they are. In addition, some names - Haides being the most obvious change - were slightly adjusted to better fit the setting. Overall this doesn't change the story at all.

That's it, really. Tons of minor edits, clearing up text, fixing typos, etc. THOUSANDS of such tweaks, but nothing a reader would notice, I think.

And now the elephant in the room: do you need to reread Dark Omega if you read the old edition? You don't HAVE to reread it - it's the same story. But if you do reread it, I think you'll like it even more. You'll also be better equipped to tackle the sequel :-)

Felix M. Bloom