Waiting For Sunrise

Preface

My sister was a prolific writer who often shared her stories with me when I was growing up. Most of them were about vampires. I, too, wished to put my thoughts to paper. While several ideas came and went, mostly high fantasy romps, I rarely had the discipline or attention span to finish any one story. But in my late teenage years, this changed. I wrote my first manuscript, choosing a vampire story set on Earth in modern times, of which I was very proud of. I knew, as a teenager, I had a lot to learn about writing, but the accomplishment bolstered my flagging confidence.

In an attempt to improve at my craft and prepare my story for publication, for I had lofty dreams at this time, I sought out a beta reader. As I had written a story about vampires, I sought out someone else who was writing about vampires with an agreement to swap. The results was having the first few chapters torn apart line for line. While I found this fascinating and helpful, it was also daunting in realising how much more work I had to do. But I was open to the criticism. But then came the large wall of text telling me that my story was a meandering mess with an unrelatable and wooden protagonist, shaky plot, pointless characters, and too much purple prose. The finishing blow was when I was told my ending was disgusting. That word alone left me deflated. I decided the story might not be worth all the work that would go into fixing it, and abandoned it.

Fast forward to the end of 2023 and I, by some happenstance, came across the forsaken manuscript. It had been over a decade. Nearly two. I was going to just delete the file as the old bitterness came back, but instead I decided to give the book a read through a more mature lens and see if I saw what that beta reader saw. By the end, I was nearly in tears. There were themes in the story which hit me even harder now that I had lived a little than they would have back then. Feeling a call to arms, I set about proving this story's worth. In 2024 I began editing, and have since written two new drafts of Waiting For Sunrise. And here, today, you will see the results of someone picking themselves up out of the dust and getting back on the horse. it is by no means an opus, nor earth shattering with its original ideas. But it stands in defiance of defeatism.

It has been a long night for this story. But it's wait for sunrise will, hopefully, soon be over and it can come into the light.

Notice:

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The Pre-chapter author notes will usually indicate if there have been updates to the chapter, including a date the changes were added. Some changes may be put in spoiler tags because they may be spoilers for first time readers. This is under the Updates heading.

Content warnings, in addition to the general ones shared after the preface, may also be issued on a chapter-by-chapter basis, but will be contained within spoiler tags under the Content Warning heading. If anyone ever wishes to suggest I add a content warning to a chapter, please do via comments or fire off a message to my inbox. As the sensitive content tag suggests, this story will deal with some topics that may be upsetting to some readers. For some people, reading about it may be distressing and I care about the safety of my readers and wish to forewarn them so they can either brace themselves or choose not to read further. There are characters who will have cavalier attitudes or may make tasteless jokes about serious matters, but I want readers to know that I do not condone these attitudes or behaviours.

I also wish to address the topic of sexual content. The website indicates that the tag is for explicit sexual scenes. There are no explicit sexual scenes in this story. Therefor I did not include the tag. However, sex is a frequent enough topic that comes up in the story that I wish to forewarn anyone uncomfortable by even the discussion of sex or sexual behaviours. I will also address an elephant in the room. The main character, Irene, is still in high school, as are other characters in the story. I by no means condone the sexualisation of minors, anymore than I condone the violence that happens within these pages. Nonetheless, compromising situations or remarks involving or aimed at minors does take place in this story as a means to introduce conflict and tension.

Content Warnings

This fiction may contain scenes depicting subject matter that can be disturbing to some readers. The narration may include:

Depictions of violence, such as:

- Graphic descriptions of violence and injuries
- Gore
- Violence towards minors
- Torture

Substance abuse, such as:

- Alcohol
- Drugs

Sexual themes

- Sexually suggestive language
- Direct references to sexual acts
- Sexual humour

Sensitive content

- Human trafficking
- References to rape
- Death