I received the proof of the print edition of The Vampyr Series omnibus (V.R. Cumming) in the mail today. This thing is massive. While the cover size is 6x9", the same as the individual novels in the series, the spine is about 2" thick. It needed to be. The print edition is 776 pages long and contains over 390,000 words of story.

Yeah, big.

First thing after I got it, I flipped through it, checking page counts and print quality, noting formatting errors, and so forth. I found a typo in "We All Fall Down" (the short story included in the omnibus) which made me laugh. My team and I put a lot of care into creating these stories and readying them for publication. To find an error years after a story was published is exasperating, but we're only human. We do the best we can.

I ended my perusal by reading the epilogue of The Master Vampire, the fourth and final story in The Vampyr Series. Here, in a single printed page, was the culmination of five and a half years of writing. My journey through creating and publishing this saga has been as emotional as the on-page journey of the characters.

It was an emotional journey for readers, too, judging by the reviews. I can't speak to that. I can only speak to my own journey.

While holding the bound omnibus in my hands, I remembered my own love of the Vampyr. The initial excitement when Eric came to me with a story to share, the thrill of crafting the episodes that later became The Vampire's Pet, way back in 2014. I remembered the joy of discovery as Eric, Gigi, and Jason's story unfolded on page after page and episode after episode.

And I remembered the hardship, too. Propping myself up in bed in a hotel room, running a low-grade fever while pushing to finish The Vampire's Favorite. The difficulty of not really connecting with Gigi as I wrote The New Vampire. Struggling to find a way to wrap this complex story up in one final book. Crying for hours when a reader flung vitriol at me because I was working on other projects, and again when a different reader hated one of the covers.

Then the relief of getting the last word of the final book down on the page, and the numbness when negative reviews started rolling in.

I burned out on this series, not just on the series, but on writing. It took six months for me to finish another story, and over a year for me to complete another novel.

But holding that book, I remembered how much I love the story world. I remembered falling so hard for a character that I couldn't not write his story.

390,000 words over five and a half years. That's a huge chunk of my writing career.

I realized something else, too, something I completely overlooked when I finished the final book in the series last fall: The Vampyr Series wasn't the first series I created (it was the third), but it was the first one I completed.

That, in and of itself, is a huge accomplishment. How many authors have had the opportunity to watch their books grow into a fully finished product? How may have been able to attract the fan base that The Vampyr Series has garnered?

So yes, it was difficult, in some ways the most difficult writing I've ever done. But the positives far outweigh the negatives. Would I do it again? You betcha. In a heartbeat.

But this door is closed for the moment and other doors await. As I tell V.R. Cumming's readers: Peace, my friends, and happy reading.