Reddit reviews Palimpsest: A Novel

Hi there, first of all, well done on finishing your projects. Many people wouldn't have got as far as you have. As to why your story might not be connecting:

a) your cover art isn't working for me. I found both the font and the imagery to be a bit bland. Think of the last time you bought a book solely based on the cover. What was good about that cover? What grabbed you? The last book I bought for the cover was Final Girls It's a thriller so the cover works well for the genre, and the bold font, hot pink color tells me it's going to be more fun than gory, also the imagery is relevant to the story. That cover made promises and the book inside kept them. What promises are your title, font and imagery making?

b) your blurb, "Tom is a haunted man..etc" is kind of hazy. There are a lot of 'is he?', and 'will he?' which would only work if the blurb had made me care about Tom. But I don't yet. This is the blurb for This Savage Song (fantasy/young adult). "Kate Harker and August Flynn's families rule opposite ends of Verity, a grisly metropolis where violent acts summon real monsters: bloodsucking Malchai; clawing Corsai; and soul-stealing Sunai. The truce that keeps the families at peace is crumbling, and August is sent to spy on Kate. But when Harker's men try to kill her and pin it on the Flynns, August and Kate find themselves running from both sides, in a city where monsters are real..." I get a good idea of who are the good guys (Kate and August), who are the bad guys (the monsters and also Harker's men), how bad things happen (violent acts), an alliance (August and Kate), what we don't want to happen (the peace to crumble), what position do August and Kate have in their world? (they belong to ruling families). So it's not quite a logline, ie. one-sentence synopsis, but it does spell out what to expect of the setting and the plot. Your blurb is mostly focused on the setting/world and tells me very little about plot. eg. does your MC want something? Are they being directly threatened? how does Tom fit in his world?

A hazy, non-linear plot can work, see books like [Palimpsest] (https://www.amazon.com/Palimpsest-Catherynne-Valente-ebook/dp/B001NLKXDE/ref=sr_1_2?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1506592127&sr=1-2&keywords=cat+valente) but I think they require a lot of trust from the reader and rely more on the beauty of the writing.

c) I learned about loglines in 'Save the Cat', and it taught me to avoid a story if I couldn't sum it up in a sentence. I actually put aside a book I'd spent a couple of months on because I realised the main character didn't want anything. He was completely reactive. Again, this might work, but it's harder to sell non-formulaic stories to both publishers and to readers.

d) yes, you've spent a long time on your current books but in Brandon Sanderson's (Mistborn) lectures (see youtube), he says this is perfectly normal. He tells his students they should expect to practice for 10 years before they put out publishable work. He also said that he worked on a number of 'first' novels. ie books that could become series, but he only wrote one book at a time. You can always write a sequel if the first one takes off.

e) I'll finish on a question. What is your end goal? Do you want your books to be widely read, to make money, or simply to be finished and published? If the last one, well, you are already there, and you don't need to worry about popularity or money. But if you want money, you probably need to change things up. Put the sequel aside and work on something else. Submit your next (unpublished) works to agents and publishers. Get their expert feedback. Write short stories. Read more in your preferred genre to see what others are doing, and don't get trapped in your first series. Good luck.

If you don't mind all of the characters being animal-people, I highly suggest Kyell Gold's "Out of Position". It's hands down the best gay romance novel I've ever read (and there's a sequel!). Sure, the furry stuff can be weird at first, but it's written well enough that most people can look past it. Plus, it's a Kindle book, you can always sample the first chapter. Link

If you're looking for something of the bi pursuasion, I've heard good things about Catherynne Valente's "Palimpsest". I've only read the first few chapters, but it seems fairly decent so far. I'm not sure how much of a "Romance" novel it is however... right now it seems more like a "Fantasy Novel Who's Central Plot Revolves Around Sex", which is almost as good, right ;P? Link

i'll admit, I've only seen Legend once! I'll have to give it a re-watch to see if it fits with the themes i'm going for.

Palimpsest is a novel about a sexually transmitted city that can be reached only in your dreams. https://www.amazon.com/Palimpsest-Catherynne-Valente-ebook/dp/B001NLKXDE?ie=UTF8&btkr=1&redirect=true&ref_=dp-kindle-redirect

>Everyone lucky or doomed enough to go to Palimpsest, a city visited only in dreams, awakes bearing a tattooed map of its neighborhoods. Each of four travelers linked by ink stains in a frog-headed fortune-teller’s shop finds an unimaginable fate in the city, such that waking life becomes a search for readmission to Palimpsest. Sei dreams of trains, November of mechanical bees, Ludovico of the unwritten etymology of the city, and Oleg of his drowned sister. Palimpsest becomes what each most desires in ways only a city of sentient trains, mechanical insects, and shark-headed generals could. History unfolds as the four learn the ways of Palimpsest and discover the price of becoming more than tourists. Each has found something he or she lost in the waking world that is reimagined in the ways of Palimpsest, and nearly everyone who goes there yearns to emigrate. Overflowing with poetic images and epic repetition, Valente’s story washes us to an unexpected shore. --Regina Schroeder