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My fantasy cum sci-fi story, "Speaking With Your Demons" wrapped up yesterday. While I got a lot of responses early on, the responses faded away over time (I guess too few plot surprises), so I was happy to see the scores jump after the conclusion.
This was an especially confusing posting, since I was posting different stories to different sites (SOL, Sci-Fi and FS) on different schedules. I'm not sure I'll be stupid enough to try that again!
My next story, A House in Disarray, is ready to go, though I'll probably wait at least a month for the other stories to conclude and give me time to finish off my next story, "Lost With Nothing to Lose", Not-Quite Human part 2.
Just an extensive side note, for those interested. I was trying to post a comprehensive box set of my six-book Catalyst series, but was never happy with how it was turning out. I finally decided to bite the bullet and revise the entire series.
What this means, is that I'll probably unpublish the entire series, and possibly remove the stories from SOL, though I haven't decided on that yet. As such, you may want to grab the books or save the SOL series if you want to preserve it.
The revision is going to be a multi-year effort, so it won't happen overnight. But I'll probably remove the books early to help foster interest in the series before it's ready to post.
The revision won't change much plot-wise, but will remove the various story bloat (threads that don't ultimately lead anywhere), and update the writing to my current standards. However I also plan to temper the unrelenting harem motif. There will still be quite a few sex scenes (the character's advancements are largely triggered by acts of intimacy), however most of the group sex scene will likely get cut, and the sexual progression will be slower. So far, the stories are almost 50% shorter, without losing ANY plot detail, which is pretty substantial.
Seems like readers aren't fond of the newest chapter (18: Crossing the Line). Either that, or a new reader REALLY didn't like the story premise.
Spoiler Alert: The chapter deals with Phil losing it and going on the warpath, taking everyone by surprise, so I can see people having a negative reaction to it, but it leads directly into the next section (VI: Dragons of One's Own).
Feel free to lambast me for it, but please, specify the reasons so I can either respond or take your opinion into consideration for future updates. :)
Following a forum discussion about story graphics, I realized I never submitted the images in my published book, "Speaking With Your Demons". Given the lack of suitable images, I only used them for each Section header, so out of 22 chapters, there are only six images, but you should notice them whenever they appear. Chapters 1, 6 & 8 should be up now, so you may want to go back and check them out.
The Demons Within is almost done, only one final chapter, the story's epilogue, to go. Don't get discouraged yet. Despite how bleak things look, the story continues.
In related news, I'm finally publishing the sequel, Speaking With Your Demons, this Saturday (supposedly Saturday is the day to publish, as that's when most readers purchase books, and all the mainstream publishers are closed for the weekend).
With that threshold crossed, I plan to release the story to SOL.
I've noticed that the readership here decreased at a few very specific chapters. Please, I posted this story here first so I could gauge how the story is perceived. If you notice any weaknesses in the plot, or you had any specific issues, NOW is the time to tell me, before I post the story everywhere else.
Speaking With Your Demons takes the story in a very different direction. It's nowhere near as dark as this book was. It's also much longer (more chapters plus longer chapters overall) and introduces a new cast of characters (some new and many old favorites).
Several editors, lead by Thornfoote, TeNderLoin and Omachuck (all of whom edit for me, and several other authors) are organizing an Editor and Proofreaders Appreciation Day (shouldn't that be "Editors and Proofreaders'"?) to recognize the contributions of, you guessed it, editors and proofreaders.
I fully support the idea, and we're hoping to spearhead an organized contest at SOL and its associated sites (this one included) to highlight their contribution (we're still working out the details behind the scene).
As I've long maintained, despite their excellent work, any remaining errors in my text are entirely mine, as I placed the errors there and either hid them so cleverly they weren't detected, or refused to correct them because of 'Style differences' (serial commas and the like). They did the best they could with a lunk-head like me, so I'm not about to criticize them for my taking an unpopular (with some readers) Style decisions.
Correction: I forgot to credit the original proponent of the idea, Jay Cantrell. Thanks to him for initiating this action and all of his hard work over the years, too!
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