Feeling sick and pouty
Along with a sinus cold I can’t seem to shake, I just got a rejection of “Bloodstained Innocence” from my publisher.
They basically want me to take a secondary character and make it all about her. Most of their issue is on marketability and I get that. Most of my readers come from lesbian fiction, so having a story about a bisexual male is a bit of a stretch from that, even if the character link to my other lesfic urban fiction. They suggested I take a secondary character (a lesbian) and make the story about her, but since the story is about Chi and Ash, a lost little girl in need of a family, and a man whose life changes when the little girl enters it, I’m not seeing how such a drastic change in character POV would be good for the core purpose of the story.
I got a writer friend whose going to look over it with me, again, and see, but I’m certainly at a quandary. Do I gut the story and rework it to make it more marketable, or do I keep the POV the way it is to maintain the original purpose for the story? If I stick to my guns, then where to send it next? Yes, the main POV is a bisexual male, but there’s not really sex in the story as is normally expected in bi fic. A good deal of POV is from Chi (the little girl) so I’d hoped to gear it as more of a YA friendly piece. Maybe that’s a mistake, I don’t know.
I can’t say I’m not disappointed. I really believe Ash and Chi’s story deserves to be told, and that Terri (the lesbian sister character) has her own story she deserves to have told in its own time. Perhaps this is just the way it feels now, but changing the POV to Terri would be like changing Ash’s sex, so drastic of an alteration that I feel as if the spirit of the story would be compromised. I’m normally pretty open to changes I feel better a story, but this level of change just feels wrong. I really do believe in my heart Ash and Chi’s story deserves to be told, the trick now is to find a place for this flavor of urban fic, that won’t expect me to add a bunch of sex for the story to be acceptable. The coolest thing would be to mainstream this one, if I could.
Some good news, all my eggs have hatched.
They basically want me to take a secondary character and make it all about her. Most of their issue is on marketability and I get that. Most of my readers come from lesbian fiction, so having a story about a bisexual male is a bit of a stretch from that, even if the character link to my other lesfic urban fiction. They suggested I take a secondary character (a lesbian) and make the story about her, but since the story is about Chi and Ash, a lost little girl in need of a family, and a man whose life changes when the little girl enters it, I’m not seeing how such a drastic change in character POV would be good for the core purpose of the story.
I got a writer friend whose going to look over it with me, again, and see, but I’m certainly at a quandary. Do I gut the story and rework it to make it more marketable, or do I keep the POV the way it is to maintain the original purpose for the story? If I stick to my guns, then where to send it next? Yes, the main POV is a bisexual male, but there’s not really sex in the story as is normally expected in bi fic. A good deal of POV is from Chi (the little girl) so I’d hoped to gear it as more of a YA friendly piece. Maybe that’s a mistake, I don’t know.
I can’t say I’m not disappointed. I really believe Ash and Chi’s story deserves to be told, and that Terri (the lesbian sister character) has her own story she deserves to have told in its own time. Perhaps this is just the way it feels now, but changing the POV to Terri would be like changing Ash’s sex, so drastic of an alteration that I feel as if the spirit of the story would be compromised. I’m normally pretty open to changes I feel better a story, but this level of change just feels wrong. I really do believe in my heart Ash and Chi’s story deserves to be told, the trick now is to find a place for this flavor of urban fic, that won’t expect me to add a bunch of sex for the story to be acceptable. The coolest thing would be to mainstream this one, if I could.
Some good news, all my eggs have hatched.