I've been fortunate enough that the majority of reviews for my books (as few as they have been compared to many books) have been positive. By one means or another, (and/or an updated cover) my first book remains my most popular.
Among the handful of reviews that are not-so-positive, pops up a notion now and then that "It started out good, and then..."
Yeah, I get that, I can see why that can happen. Lifehack was born from a set of four not-so-short stories. In the first one, our hero is mostly alone, doing a typical survival v zombies thing.
After the first quarter of the book, (passing from story 1 to story 2) she is basically rescued, much less alone, no longer living in that oppressive claustrophobic threat that seems to be a mainstay of typical zombie fare.
Around here, there's a bit of a shift into ROMCOM territory. And people looking for a ZOMBIE BOOK... are prone to get turned off. The other side of the coin is that people not really into general zombie stuff have really enjoyed it.
I warn people as such... "If you're a big zombie book fan, this isn't it." I don't dwell on gore nearly as much. It's there, it impacts our hero, but I don't feel the need to run the readers' faces in it.
The tonal shift from the first quarter to the rest of the book comes down to the book not being grounded in one consistent theme in some ways. First-book-itis, maybe.
This inconsistent tone is also reflected in the Lifehack series as a whole. The following book, Watching Yute, is drastically different. There are some zombies in it, but they barely muster a side-story, with the nanotech aspect being the bigger threat.... and in much more subtle/tangential ways. The book is also a huge downer, on purpose. I love it, it wrecks me. But it's a HARD turn from the hijinks of LIfehck
Then the series caps off with Echeos of Erebus. The hijinks get ramped back up a bit, the depressing bits get toned down, and we end up with a sort of balance of action/drama between former 2 books, Then glaze it with extra nanites.
As a series, my first 3 books weren't planned very well. I still like the books, and the world they formed, but it didn't help foster a readership that could justifiably be off-put by the drastically shifting tone from one book to the next.
AS SUCH- the Rubberman series was planned and laid out from the start with a skeletal framework that could host several stories that felt more consistently .... related to each other. As I write book 3 of Rubberman, (Rubberman's Exodus) there is going to be a dramatic shift- but it was planned all along. I've just passed what will probably be the 1/3 mark in the book, and I'm writing the beginning of that shift.
10 years down the road, will I be seeing reviews saying "Huh, Exodus started OK, but..."? Well, too bad. Can't please everyone. And there HAS to be some shifts in tone. Consistency for consistency's sake would be dull. Rubberman's Citizens is a little bit of an outlier from the bulk of the series, with a handful more action, and taking place mainly in one section of the series' 'geography'.
There's a balance to be had. Will the balance I settle on please everyone?
Absolutely not.
Will my next series have a balance that pleases everyone?
Absolutely not.
Am I going to let that keep me up at night?
Guess.
.
Among the handful of reviews that are not-so-positive, pops up a notion now and then that "It started out good, and then..."
Yeah, I get that, I can see why that can happen. Lifehack was born from a set of four not-so-short stories. In the first one, our hero is mostly alone, doing a typical survival v zombies thing.
After the first quarter of the book, (passing from story 1 to story 2) she is basically rescued, much less alone, no longer living in that oppressive claustrophobic threat that seems to be a mainstay of typical zombie fare.
Around here, there's a bit of a shift into ROMCOM territory. And people looking for a ZOMBIE BOOK... are prone to get turned off. The other side of the coin is that people not really into general zombie stuff have really enjoyed it.
I warn people as such... "If you're a big zombie book fan, this isn't it." I don't dwell on gore nearly as much. It's there, it impacts our hero, but I don't feel the need to run the readers' faces in it.
The tonal shift from the first quarter to the rest of the book comes down to the book not being grounded in one consistent theme in some ways. First-book-itis, maybe.
This inconsistent tone is also reflected in the Lifehack series as a whole. The following book, Watching Yute, is drastically different. There are some zombies in it, but they barely muster a side-story, with the nanotech aspect being the bigger threat.... and in much more subtle/tangential ways. The book is also a huge downer, on purpose. I love it, it wrecks me. But it's a HARD turn from the hijinks of LIfehck
Then the series caps off with Echeos of Erebus. The hijinks get ramped back up a bit, the depressing bits get toned down, and we end up with a sort of balance of action/drama between former 2 books, Then glaze it with extra nanites.
As a series, my first 3 books weren't planned very well. I still like the books, and the world they formed, but it didn't help foster a readership that could justifiably be off-put by the drastically shifting tone from one book to the next.
AS SUCH- the Rubberman series was planned and laid out from the start with a skeletal framework that could host several stories that felt more consistently .... related to each other. As I write book 3 of Rubberman, (Rubberman's Exodus) there is going to be a dramatic shift- but it was planned all along. I've just passed what will probably be the 1/3 mark in the book, and I'm writing the beginning of that shift.
10 years down the road, will I be seeing reviews saying "Huh, Exodus started OK, but..."? Well, too bad. Can't please everyone. And there HAS to be some shifts in tone. Consistency for consistency's sake would be dull. Rubberman's Citizens is a little bit of an outlier from the bulk of the series, with a handful more action, and taking place mainly in one section of the series' 'geography'.
There's a balance to be had. Will the balance I settle on please everyone?
Absolutely not.
Will my next series have a balance that pleases everyone?
Absolutely not.
Am I going to let that keep me up at night?
Guess.
.
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