Hihi! This is Vodka of QT Brewer, the lead writer in our circle. This'll be long and self-indulgent, but I've always wanted to try my hand at writing afterwords, and this is the first book I've finished and published in full, so bear with me! I'll do my best to make it fun. Plus, there's some details about volume 2, so stick around if you're interested!
So here we are at the end of Just Because I Wear a Collar's first volume? Did you enjoy it? I'll confess, when I first came up with the basic idea—OL summons succubus only to become her impish sub—I didn't expect that I'd still be focusing so heavily on it nearly three years later! It was a spur of the moment story, written in the midst of a bad period in my life where I wanted nothing more than to make something light, upbeat, and sexy that I wouldn't have to think too hard about as a way to cheer myself up. It did the job, of course. Writing Rina, Haqua, and Mio was too much fun for me to not smile the whole time, though I ended up giving things way more care than I intended to! I wrote it and rewrote it a bunch of times, then remade the entire thing from scratch late last year into what you've just finished reading: A story made with a tremendous amount of love, care, and yes, a ton of thirst. Silly as that sounds, I'm really proud of what I made here, and I'm so happy that other people have enjoyed it. Whether you have a subby heart like Rina's, you're a tease like Haqua, an earnest little demon like Mio, or you're just into yuri and polyamorous love stories, I hope you found something of value in here.
When I first remade this story, it was with the hope that it'd be picked up by an indie light novel publisher. Naturally, I got no response. I was pretty dejected for a while before deciding to put it up here, and my self-doubt had convinced me that the story was actually pretty bad. To say the response has been heartening would be a massive understatement. It's not only gotten me out of my funk, but made me pretty eager to continue this story, so thank you all so much for that. It's thanks to you that the second volume is currently underway.
So let's talk a little about that! I won't spoil things, but if you want to go into volume 2 blind, skip the next paragraph!
As is likely pretty obvious by now, the second volume will largely deal with Rina, Haqua, and Mio taking a trip to hell to meet Adri and her wives. While you won't see all 36 of her wives, you'll meet a fair few of them, and some of them take pretty prominent roles in the story, so I hope you'll come to love them as much as Adri does. I know this might seem odd, but I wanted to take this volume as an opportunity to really hone in on Iori's character and bring her more squarely into the main cast. Iori didn't exist in the original story, and was added into the remake to better flesh things out. Still, she's pretty firmly a side character in volume 1, and I think it's time she get her chance in the spotlight, where she'll really come into her own as a character, so in many ways, you could say that Iori's actually the protagonist of the second volume alongside Rina, with focus divided between the both of them. That said, Mio and Haqua will still be just as present as ever, and they'll still have tons of fun with Rina, so don't worry for a second, there'll be plenty of barking to go around, ahaha.
Though it's still pretty lighthearted and simple, it'll be a longer, more plot-heavy volume, so there's gonna be a bit of a gap between now and when I start publishing volume 2. I can't say how long it'll be, but I'm going to do my best to make sure nobody's kept waiting too long, and to bridge the gap, there'll be a short story starring Mio out in about two weeks. I had a lot of fun writing it, so I'm keen to share that with you all soon! I think I wanna write a few short stories starring these girls. When you have a cast of succubi who can freely alter their appearance and use magic, you've got a lot of freedom in what they can do together, so it'll be fun to explore some sides of them you might not get to see in a main volume.
Anyway, I've said my piece! So let me give a quick thank you to my partner, the other half of QT Brewer, for editing every bit of this story and really refining it into something special. She made these characters 10x more fun, and I'm so honored to have someone like her backing me up at every turn.
Oh, and we've also opened a Ko-Fi account! My dream is to write full-time and work with an artist so that I can one day publish copies of these with character art and inserts for key scenes, so if you like what we do, please consider leaving a small tip! It really motivates us both to keep going. If you can't though, that's perfectly OK! Just knowing you like our work still means the world to us.
This is Vodka from QT Brewer signing off~! Take it easy, everyone!