What do your fans mean to you?
I've never had a lot of fans, so I when I do get feedback, I tend to be attentive. You can even gleam something something valuable from negative feedback. Before Smashwords, I posted almost all of my work on DeviantArt. A lot of the comments were positive, with only a few good critiques, which I applied. While I think having fans is great, it's also an opportunity to delve into a pool of information, provided my mental scuba is up to snuff. That said, fan feedback is valuable, especially considering the many oddball ideas I come up with; sometimes one needs to bounce back and give my brain a good jog. I think there's a good opportunity for symbiosis, where the fans and I can help with creating even better stories. So yeah, they're pretty important.
What are you working on next?
I'm actually in between three stories, though two are taking precedence right now (unless fans demand a sequel of Dragon Days, then my priorities will shift). I'm currently working on a sort of Adult Swim-inspired novel called Reverb. It's for an older audience (17+), with dark humor and action being the prevailing elements. It's a world with humans and Echoes: the progeny of past deities, which means I get to have a lot of fun with mythology and mixing creature types, from demons to dragons to werebeasts and everything in between. It takes place in the modern world, so the feel is certainly different from Dragon Days. However, there are a few characters that will translate over into it (wink, wink, nudge, nudge). I'm having a lot of fun with it.
The other is called Aetherborn, which has a time stamp around the 1700s. Again, my love of dragons makes its way into this story, as well as a Chakan-inspired character. It's much heavier on horror, but there's a bit of romance in it, as well as humor (sorry guys, I got to laugh a little when writing these). It uses a different magic mechanic that I'm enjoying so far, and deals with shifting between the Terraworld (physical) and the Aetherworld (spiritual). Any of you who have played Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver will probably have a good idea of what I'm going for.
The third is my darker twist on The Beauty and the Beast, the Disney version. While I know making innocent things grittier is becoming common, one of the things I want to stress is that I will always have my funny parts. All dark and brooding is no fun. If you had to put this in theaters, it would definitely get a PG-13 rating, but I'd prefer that rating to be affected by the themes rather than just gratuitous geysers of ichor and entrails. It's my first real attempt at romance, so it's interesting to write, but tricky.
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