Update on "Shades of Night"

Beta readers, anthologies, and what my main character looks like

I’m so excited! Like branch-bearing doves in the wind, my first beta readers have returned to me. 🕊️

MidJourney’s interpretation of one of the settings in Shades of Night

I am feeling impish today—in a chaotic-neutral sort of way. I think I might be in a good mood. You see, I love my little book. Even if it doesn’t sell millions of copies, I’m so proud of it. I thoroughly enjoyed watching readers interact with my characters. It feels nice to be told that something you made is good from strangers who are paid to tell you that it’s not.

I write this kicking my feet in excitement. If I could, I’d put my crocs in sport-mode and do a backflip.

In seriousness, the feedback has given me strength to return to the latest draft and tackle all the little things it needs. There are pockets of the book where my writing is subpar. Given that it’s in its final stages, I don’t need to do a total overhaul but I can see where the quality of my work is lacking. I cannot afford to be lazy about it.

Upon its release, it could happen that KrimsonRogue¹ gets his hands on Shades of Night and rips it apart in an eight hour YouTube review (though to even consider that level of critique and attention might be narcissistic on my part).

Not all comments were positive, of course. There is always room to improve. It was very interesting to hear where my story was weak from a reader’s perspective.

Here’s a summary of my little list of corrections:

• I must lengthen the ending for better emotional payoff (I will need to spend time thinking about how to do this…),

• give more backstory into a particular character,

• and revisit character descriptions when a large amount of time has passed.

So far that seems to be it, but we shall see whether any new critiques pop up.

On a fun note, I wrestled for a while on the model for my main character. So far readers see Henry Cavil. While I understand why many would visualise him (because of The Witcher), I think his facial features are too fine for Alastair. I ended up finding a perfect base in a professional fighter who—in his prime—fit exactly what I wanted, cauliflower ears and all. I bring this up because I have to return to all my characters and be sure to remind readers what they look like throughout the story. Alastair was one of two characters that I managed to describe properly.

My beta readers are happy with him, which is nice! This comes as a surprise because he (Alastair) is very difficult to write. I don’t know if I was overthinking.

This is not Alastair but it encapsulates the gigachad energy I’m channeling when writing him.

Now, for some housekeeping. I cut a significant portion of my forward. What I initially wanted to do was include an anthology that provided background and world-building to my story. In the end, it made my book over 300k words—a third of which happens before the main storyline begins. I am a big believer in that a story takes as long as it takes, but I think 300k for your first book might be overkill. In terms of its reception, most struggled waiting to get to the plot.

A character in Shades of Night imagined by MidJourney

I would like to release these as short stories. I should see when I would have time or if this is a good idea at all. I think I’d like to release everything at once. That is, when it comes time to publish my book I think I will also publish posts here to include a serialised version of the anthology.

Next Wednesday, I’m going to release a sort of “look book” for my story. I don’t know if it will hurt or not, but it’s been so much fun building visuals that I’d love to share!

Thank you for reading this rather lengthy post. I hope you found it entertaining and that you look forward to further news on Shades of Night.

♥️

For more scribblings, see here!

1. I spent a week watching his review on Lightlark and it shook me to my core.