Warcraft Fan Fiction ❯ Turning Red ❯ Intro and acknowledgements ( Chapter -1 )

Bal'a dash, malanore (greetings, traveller). A bit about me and this book: I have played World of Warcraft on and off since vanilla. I absolutely adore everything about the rogue class, elves, stealth characters and mechanics in video games, but I wanted to create a character that doesn’t follow that typical archetype. Someone flawed, with potential.

A couple of years ago, someone asked me what my World of Warcraft roleplay character’s backstory was. She didn’t really have one at the time, so I started writing something and it... got a bit out of hand to say the least! Two years later and I ended up with what you’re reading now. It’s the first time I’ve ever written a book and I’m glad I finished it.

More importantly, if you do read it, I would love to hear your feedback: good, bad and anything in-between. So please throw any morsel of constructive criticism my way (by emailing phoenixbloodheart@gmail.com) because I would like to learn and improve from this. I have ideas for some other (non-Warcraft) original novels in the future and this is sort of my attempt at testing the waters. I’d also like to write more stories based on this novel’s storyline in the future. You can sign up to my newsletter at dominicsacco.com to receive info on these.

This free fan fiction novel is inspired by (but not officially associated with) Blizzard Entertainment’s Warcraft franchise. Please note, some elements from the games have been reimagined in this novel, and all of the main characters in this book are my creation. So, fellow lore nerds who may feel the urge to flame me, please consider these points before doing so!

Finally, if I’m being honest, I feel that Phoenix is probably some kind of projection of myself. That wasn’t done on purpose, but something I realised about halfway through the book. Although I’m enthusiastic, I have a short temper. Writing this character has helped me cope somewhat with my anxiety and at times reckless, emotionally-driven decisions. I have a bad habit of sometimes burning bridges (hey, I’m a Scorpio!) and this book has acted as some kind of therapy for that. I write about esports for my job, so this was a nice release from that too.

Please note, this book has some adult themes in it (sorry mum!) so I wouldn’t recommend it to children.

I hope you enjoy what I’ve created and thank you for taking the time to read this.

Al diel shala (safe travels).

Dominic Sacco

Thanks to Naariel for creating the artwork I commissioned (used with permission for non-commercial use). You can check out Naariel’s website at naarielart.co.uk.

Thanks to my good friend Tom Stratford for turning Naariel’s artwork into a moving image using his leet animation skills. You can see Tom’s website at tomstratford.net.

A big thanks to another good friend of mine, James Batchelor, for helping to proof this thing. He put up with years of grievance having to sit next to me at work so I am very grateful he somehow agreed to help out. Oh and he’s an author himself, so please do check out his work at jbatchelorwrites.wordpress.com. Thanks to other early readers, Roy Hemenway and Louise Wallgren, who helped me fix a few things, and to @thewayitis35 on Twitter, thank you so much, I think you are my first real fan and I really appreciate your support!

Thanks to Leonardo Zorzi for creating Phoenix’s theme song and granting me the rights to own it. You can visit leonardozorzi.com.

Credit to dafont.com for the fonts used on the cover: Augusta by Dieter Steffmann and Seagram by Kaiserzharkhan.

A big thank you to my family, my parents for encouraging me to chase my passions, my wife for putting up with my s*** and my and three children for giving me hope for the future.

Thanks to Vile Thorn and The Rookery for giving me the confidence to grow this character and to The Northern Terror for making my time in vanilla WoW so memorable. Also, thanks to Chiel, Ireshka and The Family, you probably aren’t aware but you picked me up when I really needed it. To all my past guildies, I will never forget the adventures we shared together.

Last but not least, thanks to Blizzard Entertainment for creating the Warcraft game franchise. Final reminder: this piece of fan fiction is non-commercial, entirely free and I will not make a penny from it.