Hi all and CrumblyWriter,
I read Stranded last year and apparently CR posted a draft of it's sequel on his site at the beginning of this year. When I went to the page that had the story, there was a 404 error. Now it's not there at all.
Has the "Unwelcome Guests" series been put on hold?
Sadly, when I posted the story online, it got no response at all. When I pressed, I got a uniformly negative response from the few people who responded.
The story had a bit of a history. I originally yanked the story, but decided to ask a beta-reader for an objective opinion. Their response was: it's got less problems than your other books, so I went ahead and released it. However, after that I reworked several minor issues (the main character's annoying personality traits) rather than the central issue: that there's no consistency to the story. It starts off following one character, his sister and an alien, then switches to Otis and a vet traveling cross country, then switches to Otis and everyone from "Stranded", and by the end of the story, no one cares about any of the characters since they kept getting yanked off stage.
As a result of the feedback, and the underlying story issues, I unpublished the book. I plan to eventually rework the story, but with around 12 'works in progress' waiting for me, it may be some time before I get around to it. :(
I left the story up on my site (the crumblywriter site, not my main vincentberg.com site) and also on finestories--mainly to see whether the scores would increase over time (they didn't)--if you're interested in reading it.
Sometimes stories just don't pan out, despite the best of intentions, and often for reasons we aren't even fully aware of.
Are you ever going to post that Not Human trilogy to any of these sites, SOL, finestories, etc? Or are those just for Amazon only.
Are you ever going to post that Not Human trilogy to any of these sites, SOL, finestories, etc? Or are those just for Amazon only.
I always publish my books first, to see how they stand on their own. After a couple months, when the sales drop off, I post them to various sites to boost the sales. The 'bounce rate' (free readers to purchasers) is incredibly low, but it's still sizeable, plus SOL (in particular) is exceptionally good at providing feedback about what works and what doesn't work.
So yes, I'll post it to SOL in the near future. I won't post it to FS since it has a pseudo-incest theme. That's also why I temper how often I post, so I can allot enough time between stories for me to finish the next story.
I'm also considering revising another story, The Nature of the Game, because it didn't sell particularly well and I'm unsure whether I simply couldn't tap into the gay marketplace as an outsider, or whether I had story issues which hurt the overall story.
By the way, it's the Not-Quite Human trilogy.
P.S. If you read "The Lad Who Poked the Devil in the Eye", let me know what you think of it.