Hi folks! I'm looking for some feedback. Bear with me, this is going to be rambly.
I've been having a lot of trouble writing for the last few months; I'm managing to maintain Marked for Death because I have so much momentum and an established audience, but working on other things has been too hard.
I think maybe I'm getting past that; I got excited earlier today and did some note taking / basic outlining, but I'm not sure what the best thing to work on would be. I have a couple of ideas that I've been considering and I'd be interested in any thoughts you have.
First, I have been kicking around an idea for a paranormal romance novel featuring a polyamorous lead character and two partners who, unbeknownst to her, are shapechanged non-human immortals from opposite sides of a millenia-long clash filled with generational hatred, politics, war, and ruined dinner parties. The planning is super early days and all this might well change but I'm envisioning the two guys wanting to make it work with her so they can't actively kill each other and must instead settle for sniping at one another. My original conception was that she had two partners at the moment, one who actually is human and one who has been concealing his paranormal nature. The human can occupy something of the same slot as Samwise Gamgee in the Lord of the Rings: he's the honest, down-to-earth guy with no special powers or skills but a lot of heart, who acts to support his friends and hold the party together even when tensions are high. Or, alternatively, maybe that's not enough and I should leave him out. Dunno, i'm waffling on that.
Anyway, the big problem would be the families of Jethro and Balzac (not their actual names!), the two paranormals. As soon as they find out that their scion is dating a HUMAN (gasp! the shame of it!) there's going to be trouble. Once they find out that she's poly their will be vapors being had, and when they discover that one of her other partners is from the Other Side...well, 'avoid ground zero' is always good advice.
As stated above, this is all super unplanned and just a wash of ideas kicking around in the old noggin', but I'd appreciate any basic thoughts on the lines of "yes, that sounds like it would be interesting to read" or "is this a kissing book?! gagging noises"
The other option would be to do a rewrite on Patchwork Realms. The premise is decent: a fantasy heist novel starring an isekai'd powerful and intelligent dog who just wants to go home to his family, and maybe get some bacon. The character of Athos (the dog) got positive reactions from everyone, as well as being fun to write. The setting, the eponymous Patchwork Realms, consists of a world where bits of other realities drift in and out sometimes, bringing people and places and treasures and gods and different physics and even entire magic systems oh my with them. Given that it's a heist novel, I don't want to reveal too much about the background but the umbrella plot is 'Athos is recruited onto a team to steal a thing', whereas Athos's arc is from a newly-sapient, naive, overly trusting pupper to a more mature person with clearer understanding of the world.
The problem that PR had in its first draft was that it was too scattershot and the pacing was terrible. There's a lack of focus as too many plot threads crash together, most of which are distractions that prevent Athos from actually making progress on his goals while forcing him to go off on side quests. The pacing is overly rushed with no time to breathe between events. Of Athos's three companions, Eugene is a fleshed-out character that is intended as a hate magnet while Estelle and Marcus are so bland that I had to look up their names before I could write this sentence.
So, yeah. Decent bones, some meat on them, but a lot of woodchips mixed in that would need to be thrown out. Were I to take PR on as my next project I would do some outlining and then do a complete rewrite, not a revision on the existing material. The words would all be new and hopefully therefore fun to read if you read PR before. Some scenes would be recycled -- probably Athos's arrival in the graveyard, probably the fight with the wolves, maybe a couple others, but overall it would be novel, pun intended.
Anyway, thoughts welcome. Do either of those ideas interest you?
One final point, and I apologize for having to put this here: I'm soliciting suggestions on what you would like to read. I would be very happy to receive any thoughts you have on the book ideas I've shared above, but please understand that (A) I might or might not use them and (B) if I do, you are not gaining any moral, financial, or legal rights to the book. In the past I had someone tell me "oh, well, you discussed Two Year Emperor in the comments on Reddit each time you posted a link to a chapter and some of what was discussed got used in the book and therefore it belongs to all of us and you shouldn't be putting it into Kindle Unlimited where I can only read it for free by making and then canceling a trial account." I would like to get to the point of being as full-time professional author at some point, and that means I need to be able to monetize my work. Unfortunately, Amazon owns the lion's share of the ebook market, so I will need to publish with them. Also unfortunately, putting the book in Kindle Unlimited requires that the book not be available for free and putting it in KU really isn't optional, since it typically generates roughly 50% of an author's income. Chapters would continue to be available here on Patreon and obviously if you have downloaded them then more power to you. (I honestly can't tell if anyone downloads the zip files I post here. I doubt it, since at one point I put out a zip file of a 'chapter' that actually said "hey, I just wanted to know if anyone ever reads these, drop me a line and I'll give you the actual link." Only one person ever pinged me to get the actual link.