…something awesome. That’s the hope, at any rate. My tangled mess of notes surrounding the preproduction of vol//003 is getting considerably less tangled by the day; I have a clear outline for the very next chapter and a critical chapter in the middle. It’s all coming together. To quote Almost Famous, it’s all happening.
My worry right now is that the story will be a series of odd events involving a dozen plus characters, rather than one single tale that relates to this one thing like most CoA chapters actually are. But, this is the intro to a huge change in the City, so perhaps that’s appropriate? Showing how it touches down on so many lives. I haven’t put pen to paper yet, so maybe I will find a thread to sew it all together cohesively. We’ll see.
Specifically… we’ll see next week. I’m probably jinxing it but I feel like I can get some stuff for y’all to read next Saturday. I’m ready. Let’s do this.
Now then, other than hyping up vol//003, what do I have for you today? How about last week’s survey? 29 people and counting have taken it, so let’s look at the early results. There’s some curious stuff in here.
Character you most want to see in the spotlight is, much to my own surprise… Dave Smith. 16 votes, with his nearest competitors being Penny and Kelsey at 11 each, everybody else trailing behind. Dave? Really? He’s a good guy but is he interesting enough to hold a story? …hmm. Maybe. Actually, I CAN think of a good story to tell with him when it hits the fan in vol//003. We shall see.
Character you LEAST want to see. It’s hard to talk smack about people and it shows; 7 people skipped this outright and the rest of the responses are smattered across the board. The frontrunners are Gus Zero and Miranda Walker, who are newcomers and have some grey area morality, so I guess that’s no shock. They weren’t going to play a HUGE role in vol//003 anyway, so this won’t drastically change my plans or anything.
What do you want to see in a retail book? Well, bonus stories wins, obviously. But the easy second pick are the author’s notes for each individual story. And that DOES change my plans for the vol//002 book. Those notes add a lot of pages, which increases the price of the book… but if it’s a value-add, I should be adding that value. So, I’m going to scrap my plans to focus on missing scenes in vol//002, and instead work on my author’s notes. Missing scenes barely ranked in this poll. I will likely use them as blog fodder instead.
What other works folks have read… Sailor Nothing, Unreal Estate, and anachronauts all get a healthy showing. Less folks read my fanfic, fewer played my games, and I’m actually pleased to see that since I was worried THAT is the seed of my audience which I’ve been retaining for twenty years. I’m proud of the old stuff but I need to grow the audience with the new stuff… and the 7 of you who have ONLY read City of Angles shows I am indeed growing over time. Good. Good.
Preferred way to read stories… the VAST majority said “reading weekly updates” but keep in mind this is only one week of data, between two blog posts. The folks who DO read week-to-week are taking the survey right now. I’m curious to see how this one will evolve over time.
Social media check, actually most readers use bookmarks, or use them in conjunction with social media. The rest are scattered across the usual suspects of Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and the RSS feed. That’s fine, planning to keep supporting those, and will be using similar media in future projects.
Lastly… genres for the NEXT story after this one. The runaway pick is Science Fiction, which surprises me. It seems like such a plain idea at the core. But… if mixed with other things people are asking for here — steampunk, superheroes, surrealism — you could have some fun. I’m very curious though to see how the divide will fall between “adult/mature” and “young adult.” My stories have been very YA slanted simply because once you start NOT cursing a blue streak and putting boobs in everywhere, well, you don’t break that combo, do you? But maybe my audience is ready for something harder. Maybe not. We’ll see.
Thoughts? Ideas? Concerns? Post in the comments below, I’d love to hear. Haven’t taken the survey yet? There’s still plenty of time, so go ahead and do that.
Next week… the invasion begins.
I read some of your fanfics, but I must admit that I wasn’t a big fan and had difficulty following a lot of them. Mashing up Ranma 1/2 with blade runner or whatever that was was a bit TOO strange for my tastes.
I never really bothered with pure Original Flavor style after a point; it didn’t interest me. I think honestly I was yearning to write original stories in original settings but worried that there’d be no readers for it whatsoever, that my readers wanted fanfic only. That’s why UE and SN were like ‘gateway drugs’ which would cross over with an anime-craving audience.
I didn’t dump the anime flavor until I got to anachronauts, and well, by then many of the folks who were reading my stories had already abandoned ship because I spent so long working on NWN mods. At that point I could do anything.