AHHHHHH!

I received feedback from my first Beta reader and she’s loving it!

First of all, I had such a whirlwind of emotions from this because 1. Someone is reading the book and 2. They don’t hate it. That makes me so happy!!! When she referred to a side character by name, I was like “You know who they are???” It’s amazing to introduce someone to the comfort characters I’ve been getting to know and have them see them too, and love them for the reasons I wrote them.

But more importantly: the feedback!

She didn’t like the main character’s name- which was alright, because someone had given me that same feedback the week before, and I knew then I really had to change it. I’ve already come around to the new name, but it took another read through of the book to make sure my Control F replace worked throughout the whole manuscript. She also gave me an idea for another hook in the first few chapters, and gave me her impression of one of the handsome ‘bad’ guys- which was that she didn’t think he was attractive at all- and it was something I wanted the readers to think. So I had to go back, spice up his description a bit more, and make him a romantic option. I had also set the year of the fantasy world as in the 3000s, kind of post-apocolyptic, but she said it really took her out of the fantasy world, because she kept comparing it to ours. Instead, I’ll suspend reality by just using “15 years ago” instead of the year date for my flashback chapters when the date is relevant. She is about halfway through the book, so we’ll see how she likes the plot progression from there!

This week, I also finished ANOTHER read through of the manuscript, focusing on catching continuity mistakes and world building plot holes after doing the 2nd draft edits that completely changed a lot of the premise of the book. I think now the story is a lot more layered, with better motivations behind all of the character’s actions, and the villains are much more relatable, and sympathy inducing. Hopefully, you understand their reasons for evil enough you almost want them to win.

We’re on a roll, readers,

Meg