The Trilogy is Done: So… now what?
10/16/16: Updated with chapter 1 for the AntiHero story.
I find myself at an interesting place to be.
I had never planned on writing books. It just… kind of happened. I’ve put no effort into marketing and zero concern about spreading my books around on websites and forums.
Honestly, this is mostly for fun and as a hobby. 🙂
But I’ve told my tale. So, now what?
I’m considering what I want to do next. I have some ideas for books but I’m not quite sure what to do.
I think I’ll post a few test chapters of various things here and see what you all think as we go along. You patient few who actually visit the blog. 😀
Right now I’ve got a couple ideas. Here they are in a generic 1 paragraph format. Full honesty up front, some of these have only a 1 page outline, and others already have a significant portion written. (One of them all the way up to 45,000 words)
- An Anti Hero story(LitRPG)- A sociopathic hitman is whisked away to another world while on contract. Unfortunately the whisking away makes him very visible during the process and he’s shot in the heart, only to die upon entering the new world. He’s reborn and allowed to keep all the memories of his old life, minus the things that had made him sociopathic to begin with. That and everything to him has the appearance and feel of a video game from his original world. What does a ex-sociopathic military trained contract hitman do in a renaissance world?
((https://drive.google.com/open?id=1FGtAw6z8kk50S3MMOEGHEJITcIZa77D1ietJobkxOT4)) - Urban Fantasy- Everyone remembers tales of the boogie man. The monster in the closet. That you’d hide under the sheets to get away from him. What if the boogie man wasn’t only true, but nearly an extinct species? The main character is one of the last remaining boogie men in the 21st century. The rest of his kind being hunted to extinction by other supernatural races, all for fear of the power of a boogieman. Main character is simply trying to survive in a modern world with a supernatural bent.
- Super Hero / Super Villain(LitRPG Lite)- Felix has a pretty crappy super power. He has the ability to modify any item he owns. Except that the amount of power it takes to actually change, modify, or upgrade anything worthwhile is beyond his abilities. Realizing that he’ll never be able to do anything with it, he gets a normal job. This all changes one day when the city he lives in is taken over by Super Villains. Which is to say, not a whole lot changes, but the black market opens some new options for him. He discovers a way to augment his power and make it useful.
Drop your thoughts in the comments if you don’t mind sharing. 🙂 I can’t promise I’ll heed the comments, but I promise I’ll read them.
As a fan of litrpg in general I like the first idea the most, but I would say do what you want. You can tell the work you put into Runner and his stories and that's all I'm looking for.
I like the third one the best. Gotta love those underdog stories. The second one is also interesting and would be my second choice.
I agree with this Anon. Prefer the first option, but I'm sure I would enjoy all of them.
Actually, I want to read them all, just the first option the soonest. But that's the "Devourer of Books" part of my personality speaking.
I like the hitman one the most. Hope you don't take too much of the characters sociopathic tendencies away. We need more true antiheroes out there willing to territory get their hands dirty, not the romanticized ones that are bad boys with hearts of gold.
For me 3 seems the most interesting. RL already has enough antiheroes (evil people). I like redemption stories though
I like the hitman one best too. Not really a fan of a true antihero but if you've removed the worst of the personality traits it leaves room for a redemption arc. Doesn't need to go full good guy, but really reaching for the good choices even if in a ruthless way. I do like the military aspect too, never enough military guys in fantasy settings. It would be a way to be creative by maybe setting him as a caster or healer and seeing how his military background lets him innovate solutions.
Reading the hitman preview you have on Google drive and I was kind of "eh… " then the last bit and I smiled. Definite potential. I'm curious though, is hearing voices typically associated with sociopaths? Seems like a different diagnosis.
I like the Boogieman idea. Somewhat similar theme in Terry Pratchett's book Hogfather, with the original Bogeyman. Interesting material with a lot of different potential paths.
Also, it would open up a whole universe of mythological characters for future books in a series.
psychopathy, sociopathy, and schizophrenia are all different pathologies.
Psychopathy is usually genetic, sociopathy is usually from brain damage or social development factors (and so is *far* more variable in expression).
Socipaths (Antisocial personality disorder) rarely have a correlation with sadism. when it does, it is particularly nasty. The seriously scary nut jobs we hear about have this combination. This is *very* rare. Having two rare psychological conditions at the same time? not likely. Most sociopaths become lawyers, doctors, stock brokers, scientists, etc. The condition is highly correlated with high intellect.
Schizophrenia basically is when the internal narrative the 'thing in side which is my story I tell myself' is either something dissociated from our self, of something which 'splits' and runs concurrently. This sounds extra weird, but it's not particularly strange if you think about it. Most people run mental simulations about others all the time, the question 'why did this person do that? react that way?' is a useful simulation to run. Schizophrenia may be a breakdown of this normal process.
One thing i wanted to comment on is not really any of the story lines but something i believe you do well is the sexual tension. Especially the way you handled the Hannah character. Bring that back.