Well, well, well.
Look who decided to peek behind the curtain.
My name is Mars—though most of you probably know me as the guy writing The Cursed Extra and that MHA: Gambit fanfiction you're probably reading right now. Yeah, that's me. The same lunatic who thought it was a brilliant idea to juggle multiple writing projects while pretending to be a college student with his life together.
Spoiler alert: I don't have my life together. Not even close.
But here's the thing that's probably not bugging you but I'm gonna pretend it is—why would some up-and-coming author with his own original story waste time writing fanfiction? Seems counterproductive, right? Like, shouldn't I be focusing all my energy on the stuff that might actually make me money someday?
The simple truth is this: I'm using you guys as practice dummies.
Now, before you close this tab and go leave me a one-star review out of spite, hear me out. See, I've got this story called Zeroes that's been brewing in the back of my brain for months now. It's going to be inspired by My Hero Academia—the fights, the powers, the whole superhero academy thing—but with my own twisted spin on it.
And the problem is, I've never written anything like that before.
I mean, sure, I can write some decent fantasy political intrigue and make my mc manipulate people like a sociopathic chess master. But superpowers? High-stakes battles where people throw buildings at each other? Romance that doesn't make readers want to throw their phones across the room? That's a whole different beast.
So yeah, the fanfiction is my training ground. Every fight scene I write, every moment of romantic tension, every character interaction—it's all practice for when I sit down to write the real deal. You guys are going to be my unwitting test audience.
But let me back up and tell you how I ended up in this ridiculous situation in the first place.
This past summer, I was nineteen and staring down the barrel of college applications like they were loaded weapons. Everyone kept asking me what I wanted to major in, what my five-year plan was, what career path I was considering. And the honest answer? I had no clue. None whatsoever.
The idea of spending four years and going into debt for a degree in something I might not even like made my skin crawl. But at the same time, I wasn't about to become one of those guys who lives in his parents' basement playing video games and ordering DoorDash twice a day. I've got more self-respect than that.
So I compromised. I signed up for a single summer class at the local community college—Creative Writing 101. Figured it couldn't hurt to try something I'd always been curious about, and if it sucked, I'd only wasted one semester instead of four years.
Walking into that classroom on the first day was like stepping into an alternate dimension. I was easily the youngest person there by at least a decade. Most of my classmates were middle-aged folks looking to finally write that novel they'd been talking about since the Obama administration, or retirees who wanted to document their stories for their grandkids.
And then there were the ones who were actually good.
There was this woman named Patricia who'd already published three romance novels and was working on her fourth. Her writing had this effortless flow that made you forget you were reading words on a page—it just felt like pure emotion pouring directly into your brain. Then there was {REDACTED}, this quiet guy in his thirties who wrote the most haunting short stories I'd ever encountered. The kind that stick with you for weeks and make you question everything you thought you knew about human nature.
I read their work during our workshop sessions and felt something I'd never experienced before: genuine, burning envy. These people were good. Like, really good. The kind of good that makes you realize you're not the special snowflake you thought you were.
Now, I've always been competitive. Probably unhealthily so. Back in high school, I once spent an entire weekend learning something just because some kid in my math class said I'd never understand it. I turned my entire junior year into a personal vendetta against the valedictorian, studying until my eyes bled just to graduate second in the class. (I still lost, but only by 0.02 GPA points, and yes, I'm still bitter about it.)
So sitting in that classroom, surrounded by people who could write circles around me, my brain did what it always does in these situations: it declared war.
I made myself a promise that day. A really, really stupid promise, but a promise nonetheless.
I gave myself exactly one year to become more successful than every single person in that classroom. And if I failed? Well, let's just say the alternative involved a lot of explaining to do to law enforcement, and I'm rather fond of my freedom.
Look, I'm not actually going to hurt anyone. I'm not a psychopath, despite what Kaelen's character development might suggest about my mental state. But the threat was enough to light a fire under my ass like nothing else could. The thought of having to explain to my cellmate why I was in prison for "competitive writing-related homicides" was motivation enough to make this whole crazy plan work.
So here's what I decided to do:
Step one: Write The Cursed Extra to get comfortable with the whole webnovel scene. Learn the platform, build an audience, figure out what readers actually want versus what I think they want. Consider it my training wheels.
Step two: Write Zeroes in the background while I'm doing step one. Take everything I learn from the fanfiction practice and the original novel experience and pour it into something that could actually be the next big thing.
Step three: Use the fanfiction to build a fanbase who might actually give a damn about my original work when it comes out. Because let's be real—nobody cares about new authors unless they already have a reason to care.
It's a three-pronged attack on the publishing world.
The point is, every mistake I make here, every plot hole I accidentally create and have to cleverly write my way out of, every character voice I struggle to nail down—it's all practice for when I sit down to write something that could actually change my life.
Zeroes is going to be bigger than anything I've done so far. But thanks to all of you, I could actually have a chance.
So yeah, that's the truth behind the curtain. You've been my training ground, my test audience, and my motivation all rolled into one. And honestly? You've been pretty great at it.
Thanks in advance for coming along for the ride. And hey, when Zeroes comes out next year and makes me rich and famous, remember that you were here from the beginning.
-Mars
[P.S. Here are some Volume Cover Teases for it if you read this far!]