The Newt and Demon-The End

Yeah, never thought I'd see those words on the Newt and Demon. Which is interesting, and I want to put some of my thoughts about it here in this post so anyone who has read through (from the start or otherwise) can know how I feel about this whole situation.

The start:

The Newt and Demon wasn't a book I wanted to write because I was going after a market, trying to appease some reader I didn't know, or any reason based around marketability, readability, publishability... etc. I wrote the first chapters (about 20) of Newt and Demon because I was quitting. I had been writing for almost 3 years at the time, and no one read anything I wrote (likely because it sucked a whole lot.) I was doing market research, checking trends, and so on. But one day, when another series flopped, I said to myself "screw it, I'm just gonna write a book about an alchemist."

The basis for it was a Skyrim playthrough with Needs+ and Frostfall. I made an alchemist character and survived, which meant I just collected herbs in the towns, made potions, and survived. Of course, the concept for the story went really far outside of that idea, but whatever. That's where it came from. It was completely opposite for everything else I had written at that point, and for some reason I really liked it.

Nothing happens... for about 3 or 4 books. I mean, okay. I know I keep running against the "not cozy" designation, but I think that's a big conversation for another place. I love writing the first book completely cozy, but... Then something has to happen, or I get kinda bored. While I think I've almost mastered that pacing, it isn't present here.

The Run:

I posted my first few chapters with no idea of what novelbuddy was or how it worked. One day, I woke up and saw that my story was on the front page. Woah! Cool! What the hell does that mean? Someone told me to start a Patreon. Woah, my numbers are still going up. Neato. Someone told me to approach a publisher. Nifty, they seem kinda interested. Oh, they signed 8 books. This might be serious.

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Once Newt and Demon hit Amazon, I didn't really know what to do. I had a few projects in progress that didn't really reflect everything I had learned from this story.

The Conclusion:

I think I've carved out a very specific niche here, and I'm working every day to figure out how to keep it interesting going forward. After writing Gladesbale, I'm being more cautious with my stories. They go through a tighter process before they even hit novelbuddy, which includes running on Patreon and through beta readers before I'll even think about going forward. Newt and Demon was lucky in that the first book actually works. If I wrote it today, I'd change a thousand things to make sure I was checking all my boxes.

One thing I thought was a mistake was the ensemble cast. But, I think that's actually a strength. The progression of the story would've been completely different, though. I've learned that if you want to have a story in Cozy, you need to make damned sure the story doesn't disrupt the slice of life elements. Instead of having all the stuff happen to Broken Tusk itself, it should've been removed. You can also overcome this by having your MC be completely overpowered in a way.

There are examples of good execution here, but the main point is to have your MC be disinterested in the main quest. They'll interact with it if they need to, but otherwise they're more interested in their thing (whatever that thing might be.)

Thank you

Lastly, I want to say thanks to the readers. I never thought I'd make a penny from writing, but I'm doing okay. More than a full-time job? Nope, not even close lol. But the point is that I want to make sure I'm always trying to get better at this and the name of the game now is mastering the progression of the story. Hitting those beats while keeping it in-genre is my next hurtle.

Right. So, thanks for sticking around. Hopefully you liked it. If you didn't, hopefully it helped pass the time. If you did enjoy it, keep an eye out. I've got a lot of new material coming out within the Newt and Demon sector. We're calling it the Newtiverse. Yay.