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Now that I've completed the story (at least on FS and Sci-Fi), I've gotta ask. While I've been bitching about how unpopular the story is (few readers), despite people enjoying it once reading, I'm curious what specifically is preventing people from reading the story (since it's likely to impact my next books, as well).
Is it the zombie genre, the story description, doubts about the topic? I've had complaints of "not another zombie tale" as well as "Oh, no, this isn't a typical zombie story", so I'm still unsure what's throwing readers off.
I never expected this to be a popular book, as zombie stories are notoriously poor sellers, but I'm stumped by readers' refusal to even consider it, despite knowing how I approach stories and typically turn them on their heads, taking them in unusual directions.
What kept you from picking up the story, and what might have convinced you to give the story a chance, if you were just seeing it for the first time now?
(Sorry to sound whiney, but the reception to this story is bugging me.)
Note: Cleaned up the screwed up Note.
It's interesting, but "Zombie Leza" is now both my highest (on FineStories) and my lowest-rated story (on SOL). That reinforces my 'age differences on the different sites' supposition, though I have no basis for the claim.
However, as I suspected, the scores have risen significantly. Hopefully this will reassure skeptical readers when the story finishes--as it's NOT a traditional zombie tale.
On another positive note, someone pointed out an typo in chapter 11 (it was a homophone: "grizzly" instead of "grisly", so it was easy to miss), but noted it was the only error he noted in the story so far. That's always reassuring, while also pointing out that readers are still looking out for me--pointing out the easy-to-correct mistakes.
Well, as I'd hoped, despite a poor initial inception to my "Zombie Leza" story (scores of 6.42), the scores have been rising as readers get familiar with the story. One interesting note, though, is that while the 7 scores are higher than the others on SOL, the scores on FS are leaning heavily in the 10 scores. I'm not sure what's the cause of this, but I'm guessing (purely conjecture on my part) that although many SOL readers cross over, that FS has more younger readers (14+, which is my suggested reading age for the story) who view zombie stories more favorably than the older SOL crowd. However, there still aren't many readers taking a chance on the story (the story's only getting 1,000 reads per chapter, vs the 6,000 my stories tradtionally get).
I'm still hoping that once the story completes, more readers will decide to read it, just to see what it's like. Like most of my stories, I rarely take a traditional approach, turning regular genres on their heads. This story is very much like that.
I'd like to thank everyone who stuck with the story, as these are the chapters where the story really gets interesting.
After a long pause, I've got a new story, "Zombie Leza". While zombie stories aren't everyone's cup of tea, I think you'll be surprised by this one. As usual, my stories are not what you'd expect, as this focuses on not killing those who you depend on.
The prologue is a typical horror approach, but that's merely to set up the situation the characters are facing. The real story starts with Chapter 1, when Leza is first introduced.
While I got the message that everyone prefers longer stories, this was written before I got that memo. My next story, soon to be published, returns to my more meandering style.
By the way, tomorrow (April 26th) is the last day of an eight book giveaway for "The Demons Within" on goodreads.com (see my website “The Demons Within” available for pre-order for details).
Well, we're closing in on the end of the story. Because several of the chapters are very short, I'll be combining them, which means the story wraps up this week with two chapter Tuesday (24 & 25) and two on Thursday (26 and a preview of chapter 1 of "Lost With Nothing to Lose", Not-Quite Human 2).
Once the story wraps up, I'm going to take some time off. Due to some medical issues (a drug interaction which resulted in a dramatic loss in productivity over the last six months), I'm struggling at the moment. I finally quit the problematic medication, but I don't know how long it'll be before I return to a stable equilibrium (more than a month, minimum). As a result, I'll sit on the next story for about two months to give myself time to a normal writing schedule. That'll give me time to finish my next story while "Zombie Leza" posts, and hopefully get a decent start on "Lost With Nothing to Lose" when that story posts.
I'm fine by the way, thanks for asking, but I like spacing my stories out based on how long I need to write the next story, and as I haven't been writing, the time required takes longer.
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