Project R

Complicated.

Project L is a basic vampire werewolf story. Not much different from Twilight meets Underworld of any of the other million supernatural love stories before them. Reviewers here are clearly not reading Twilight so I'm getting reviews I can't use effectively.

Issues: . Laine is internally happy. She doesn't brood. She's not selfish or mean, and is coming from "low" to her magic and the millions in the bank locked away for all her life.

Makes sense to post a story I can get more mileage out of. Project R is more of Underworld meets Constantine. The MC is losing everything and will do anything to get it back. There is no formula of boy meets girl or even a hero win. No formula allows me more freedom to onboard suggestions. Better suited for this site.

@Rachel: I did some digging into the gender issue.

So scholars generally say angels are androgynous. I dug into why they say so, and it seems to boil down to the bible using a male pronoun, so no one's really too sure if gender really applies to them.

In other words, we don't believe there are female angels simply because the bible never mentions any. I find this assumption rather fascinating to be sure.

Of, so since I have created my own gender problem, I have been careful throughout both Project L and Project R to never cal them "men" and "women" which would be human terns created long after angels existed. For the record, I'm unconcerned with achieving biblical accuracy, but I wonder if scholars have penned themselves into a logical quagmire where if a female angel one day showed up, they may have to ask her to cease to exist.

Sara Selg is the name of one of my reviewers.

UF?

Hmmm going back to the well for another shot for J3nna cover. Third time's the charm?

You aren't the only one thinking there should be blue in her outfit... the only problem is I haven't been able to make it work against a primarily green background. Also the specific scene in the story portrayed on the cover, she's wearing black and white (I'm a big fan of that energy rush when the cover-scene unfolds in the story).

I think someone also suggested Blue lettering

Even Dune took time to gather a following. Do you do any book signings?

Getting close to the end of R2. As I mentioned in my latest review, I really have no idea where the story is going. It's been mostly action-oriented chapters in various settings that don't connect well for me. I'm not sure how much of this is part of the genre and involves stuff I should already know as background.

To me it's a lot like a new TV show so far, with many apparently unrelated episodes, generally set in the same universe and involving some of the same characters, but you don't really know where anything is going for a season or two because the writers/showrunners often themselves don't know. The importance of non-main characters is also not knowable for a time until they reappear, if ever.

I read the content summaries of all four R books so far and reread the one for L. Nowhere is there a real summary of what the story (as a whole) is about. The third post in this thread is as close as you've come to a description, which is most noteworthy for saying your not following a formula. Since you're going to have to write a real blurb eventually, why not take a crack at it and drop it into the content summary of book one?

Naturally, I'll keep reading, but it would be nice to have a better idea of what to expect so that I can see a progression in the plot and characters, and not wonder if the latest series of events have any lasting impact on the story as a whole.

Hope this helps.
Dirk

Also, Rabbit Girl from R4 is on the way out the door. When I penned the outline, she seemed a logical extension of the beastlands... but felines are so strong in R3 that I think I'll streamline the leporids out completely. Elm can be from Trag's rival pride (not that Trag has a pride but I can change that too).

The harpies are out. I was checking other stories (eg the competition) and found them too common. I'll use "crower" instead.

Sirens are headed out. Also too common. I like their footprint on the story, so they can turn into mermaids (assuming mermaids can attain human form) which will put them in the class of water demon which aligns that spectrum of the world. Or I could make them selkies, which would be awesome but would eat a lot of page space

It's probably too much to change at this point, but inverting the introduction to start with home, followed by adventure, would probably help make it a more traditional story. Currently, things definitely seem to come out of order. You could set up her fallen status, her mother's death, her family, and the losses she's suffered up front, then fill in missing details as the story unfolds. It avoids a lengthy break for character development once the action gets going. That doesn't stop you from having a short action scene at the start. I use that in Galaxy Tales and Saving Connor to hook the reader long enough to get through the slower MC introductions.

Oh hey... I'm back online. Wow. Laurie's been scrubbed from existence