Libelle

Acknowledgements

I guess it's time for another acknowledgement section. This story took a short while to develop, plan, and write mostly because it's born out of me preparing for the ONC this year. Story time: This is actually my fifth entry for the ONC following Kolibrie, NESG, TWTF, and PTGD. Then, I realized I was actually going to kill myself should I decide to push with five entries. Fun fact, though, I have a total of eight vague ideas for the ONC and I discarded two to end up with the four I did end up entering.

One of those two discarded ones was Libelle. (The other one was Scapegoat but I was too tired in the Acknowledgements section in that one so I just carried the story-time over in here. lol.)

I really liked the idea of Libelle as well as the emotional damage I get to do should I write it. I feel like Libelle's story was too good to be passed up and that the plot literally just slapped me in the face. It's whole, it makes sense, and most importantly, it's an opportunity for me to try out some interesting angles when it comes to writing. As such, Libelle is set in a steampunk world and is a romance story at heart—both of which I'm not sure I'm not well-versed at and probably failed at executing. xD

So yeah, the moment I finished MOFM, I realized there's still 4 months of the year left—enough time for me to play around with new projects as well as prepare for the next year. And the product of that is both Scapegoat and Libelle (and quite possibly the round of acne that broke out because of stress as I'm doing all of this in the middle of uni and practice teaching rage).

With that, the journey with Libelle is really short since I planned this in February, forgot about it until I dug it out around July or something. Then, I fixed the background work in September and finished writing by October. And I couldn't have done it without some special peeps:

To my fam at SWF (TessaTuring, Waterbender_poet, AmnerisTenjo), thanks for...well, everything. XD And Tessa, this is something you can read because it has zero smut. Lol.

To some special peeps who have provided feedback time and again and have been so helpful in getting the blurb to what it is now, thank you so much for the time, the effort, and for sticking with me. To TypedInk, SuVida777, and the-reticent-seer, know that I value your presence and opinions so much and am very, very, very grateful for all that you've given me. Again, thank you so much. Uwu.

To my corner buddies at DreamlandCommunity, thank you so much for staying there and for having my corner role so that I can annoy you with my pings. I may not be able to tag y'all here but know that I am grateful for your presence and your effort in replying to my incessant monologues. Special shoutout to  for doing all the things you did for my stories and for being excited about these new releases. :))

Finally, thanks to Wattpad for letting me post this story and for truyen, teenfic.net, and its thousands of variants for eventually mirroring it and thinking it worthy. Lol.

Thanks as well to my alter ego, Caeran, who pushed through weeks of stress and for trying to scrounge up writing time for this story no matter how hard and how little you came up with. The effort and heart poured into this work are something I will always be grateful for. And for giving up what's supposed to be the semestral break just to crunch out the last 40k words, thank you for that as well.

And to you, dear reader, thank you for your support in this fledgling story and quite a pathetic attempt at fantasy romance. I hope it has been worth your time and if it's not, I do apologize for that. xD

And with that, I bring you yet another finished work in my litany of completed stories. I know it's already at an intimidating number now so to the people who support me in my other stories, whether silent or not, you still have my thanks. I'm forever grateful to every vote, comment, and read I get every now and then.

There are more projects to come (yes, I'm not done!) and here's to me wishing I'd have some time to write this November until the end of the year.

By the time this goes out into the wild, it would have been Christmas already, so with this, I wish everyone a Happy Holidays! May this book be a good companion to you during the holidays and more.

2023 will also be a year of bounty when it comes to written works and new releases. I can't wait to guide you all further into the Arcane Universes. Here's to the journey and to the worlds beyond.