Before I say anything else, my heart goes out to all the victims of the terrorist attacks and people who had suffered from any other violent psychopaths. I don’t know your pain, but I sincerely hope that this little piece of fiction could send at least some vibrations through the universe to help our law enforcement agencies to eliminate those bastards. Indeed, we live in the 21st century and there are government institutions that deal with those criminals, and I hope they will become increasingly successful in their fight for our safety, at least with the development of the modern technology.

Next. Thank you, dear reader, for joining Nick on his adventures – since you are reading this, I would like to assume you managed to battle though my scribbles to the end. If you are interested, here are some thoughts (and facts) regarding the novel “DASH”.

Disclaimer – if you have read everything this far and did not enjoy it, or even straight up disliked – dear sir/madam, please seek help – such attitude is not good for your mental health. One should not do anything unpleasant voluntarily for many hours.

First. The novel.

This was a birthday present to my beloved younger brother Tom, who is kind of a fan of xianxia novels (well, I am a bit as well, but maybe not that much). I started to write it just before the Christmas last year (2020) and managed to post it on RR only a year later. Needless to say – I missed the birthday by half a year :/

Regarding my writing – I am a total noob and wrote the text in a simple word document while keeping track of the data in a crudely made ‘wiki’ excel file. When I finally (yes, who would’ve thought that writing is not that easy) finished the book and presented it to Tom in a nice *.pdf format, it turned out to be almost unreadable on the smartphone (where he usually reads novels), thus I got the idea to post this work online. That is also the reason why I could post everything in such a short period – the annoying part was only to cut those word documents in chapters and name them (daaamn … naming chapters is a pain).

Second. I.

I can’t be even considered an amateur writer since this is my only work, but I am handsome, smart and incredibly modest, especially modest.

Indeed, English is technically my fourth language, but I am not some polyglot like Nick was – I am from a small country where it is normal for people to speak multiple languages, thus – it is nothing special.

I didn’t write this novel as some self-wishfulfillment-story, but a light, fun adventure that the target audience (in this case – my brother) could enjoy in the free time (if you did enjoy it as well, even a little bit, from the bottom of my heart – I am really, really glad). None of the characters are based on anyone I know in the real life and, obviously, not me as well. Just in case, I would like to emphasize that the only similarities between myself and the main character is the love for jeans. I don’t understand American football, dislike running (you know – gentleman will walk but never run) and I love to laze around while reading.

Third. The elephant in the room novel.

I know my grammar is bad and I am not proud of it. But if you, dear reader, made it this far, it means you didn’t care too much for it or you have some masochistic tendencies. Either way it should be fine.

If you would like to hear my justification (not an excuse, because there is no real excuse for laziness) – when I began learning German at school many years ago … you might guess what happened – they have so many articles that I got allergies and since that time I get an ugly purple rash whenever I had to learn anything related to grammar, no matter what language. Unfortunately English came only after the unfortunate incident, hence the lack of the basic grammar knowledge. Thus, everything I have written, including the choice of words, structure of sentences, articles etc., was written solely on intuition. Again, please understand, this is not an excuse – this is laziness and I am not proud of it.

Fourth. The plot.

There is a ton of loose ends, including ‘the ending’, but all those are on purpose. The novel is about the adventures of a youth, but not a business project made to earn some coin with the word-count. Yes, there are tens, no hundreds of things I could’ve explored and explained, but I would love if you, the reader, let your fantasy free and wonder how something worked or ‘what happened then’.

As a fan of online novels myself, I don’t particularly enjoy lengthy works (e.g. thousands of chapters) and unnecessary descriptions that make almost half of the read, thus I did my best to avoid all of that.

I agree, my writing skills are not that good and probably I should’ve created more in-depth characters or places, but somehow, when I wrote, everything seemed to be right. Therefore we can make one definite conclusion – I am not the incarnation of William Shakespeare. Who would’ve thought? I know, right?

On a serious note, I would like to point out, that in no way Nick was a genius (like Marianne or Olle, or even Zia or YunYun), and he knew that. Albeit, if he was, then only a genius of hard work and only in anything that was related to his hobbies. All the ‘progressive’ ideas he introduced into the world were copied, but if you read the novel, you saw that he never took pride in that. In addition, the shock and surprise of the grownups around him were hardly about the innovations, but because they came from a kid or later – a youth.

And how would your mind work if you were suddenly in a child’s body? Would you think the same way you do now? How a child’s body influences the mentality of a person, even if it should be kind of a grownup-like?

Another thing worth mentioning is Nick’s quick and ‘convenient’ advancement in the social status – mixing with the royalties right away. Here, the friendship with Zia was only part of it and went ‘naturally’. But, what would you do if an unidentified potential threat came to your doorstep? And what would you do if that potential threat was not threat at all, but maybe a blessing.

If you read the novel till the end, you saw how much the advanced Qi masters trust their intuition (hence the king giving his token to Nick early on) while at the same time identifying and verifying the potential threats. Remember, when 3 Al’s were brought back to Aurora, king ordered to dispose of the child in case of a slightest potential danger. Similarly, letting Nick reside in the Royal woods was most convenient – the potential threat was at arms length and an ‘elegant’ trap created by the king. Besides the obvious – it was easy to keep a watch on him, the potential perpetrator had to go through the least hurdles to try something ‘funny’ and would be caught quickly. On the other hand, if he turned out to not be an enemy – kingdom would gain another great general and the king could ‘throw him out’ of the Royal woods and deploy elsewhere at any time. It is one thing to let a child live in a shack in his favorite woods, but the other – a grownup, right? Thus the authority that king granted Nick was illusory, at least in the beginning. Although for me it feels obvious, I understand that other people might think otherwise.

Be as it may, I tried to picture all the characters and events in a logical fashion, although most likely there are some (many?) mistakes and you, being an attentive reader, noticed those. Well, I’m not a god and am allowed to make mistakes ;)

In addition you, probably, noticed quite a few ‘lucky coincidences’ – I can only say ‘Qi works in mysterious ways, my friend’, and maybe one day I will come back to this question and explore more.

Another note on the naming of some characters and locations – for my own amusement sometimes I chose thematic names (like how royalties in Aurora had their names (in different languages) in some way related to the sun or the capital of the Nola kingdom in the middle of the jungle was called Selva, jungle in Spanish) and few were dedicated to interesting historical figures, like Alexander, Elizabeth or even Marozzo. But don’t read too much into it, there are no deeper meanings. Of course, there is a ton (well, more like dozens) of small ‘easter eggs’ throughout the novel, but if you didn’t notice such, it doesn’t really matter.

My favorite parts. Without any doubt I loved the mini-arch with the three rank sixes the most, but I am not confident in my writing skills at all and can’t be certain everyone else would feel similarly. The same goes for (imho) the most heartbreaking moments of this novel when Nick met his barbarian grandparents – I really, really wish my writing was better to represent the myriad emotions the characters lived through, but … well … I did my best (or I did what I did, because even with how heartless I personally am, I literally had tears in my eyes throughout writing that arch – yes, even though I am a grownup male – weakling, huh?).

Back to the ending (paradoxical?). All the main events of the novel were planned like they were, before I started to write the novel, especially the ending. I understand if you, the reader, feel somewhat cheated when the main character didn’t become the master of the universe or a god, or something like that, but this is not that kind of a novel. This is the story about adventure. Indeed, there will be things happening on the Dragon isles and there is something on the other side of the globe, but (even though I know what happened there) I have to leave something for your imagination or … for the future.

Fifth. The future.

There is a problem. My brother’s next birthday is approaching at alarming speed and I’m afraid that with how lousy and cheap I am, I will choose to write him another novel, just so I don’t have to buy anything. In my miserliness I even started to do the research for the next project during the last few weeks – pitiful, right? Well, be as it may I currently have two ideas to choose from, but we will see how it goes. In any case the next work will probably be a bit darker and less cheery, but it is most likely a safe bet that the sarcasm will still be there along side my weird sense of humor (hopefully).

Thank you for sticking with me all this time, dear colleague ;)

(yes, colleague! Although I could be considered a half-baked author just because I wrote a few chapters, I continue to consider myself a reader, thus – we are colleagues :) )