A running fight

The first sets of feedback from my potential readers has been resoundingly positive thus far. One has told me she had trouble putting it down, and had to tell her husband to shut up a few times while she was reading. Whether that is a good thing or not, I'll never know. (Looking at you K.Hannah, lol)
A second has told me that the little she has read so far has been interesting and she likes my style of writing, another good notch.
A third has been sent the copy for reading and will be over the course of the next few days. She has read some of my other work and seems pretty excited about it. The wonderful thing about all of it is that these three are hardly my target audience, but one quip I tried to play into the book is to encompass many different interests by including many different genres and thoughts to attract a larger base of readers. Incorporating things like suspense, thriller, some drama, some romance - all of it can be used to lure in potential readers that may enjoy other aspects of the writing as well as the parts in which they seem to favor.

The two favored characters from the first "critic", was cited as being the main character and his sister. I find this rather odd in one aspect, as I was hoping the main character would be someone people could or would relate to, but to see that his sister, a character only added in during this writing with no real pre-thought (although there are several entries concerning her on the blog, they can be found here, here, here, there, over there, and finally behind you.
From all of that, came Alana Gladius and she is NOTHING like what I had envisioned her as - which is a good thing. Some of those ideas on those posts were so out in left field, I would be sitting in nosebleed. Where she wound up, as the elder sister of the Gladius trio, adds an extra dimension to the story and lets their show a new angle on the struggle behind it all. Even if her character is only introduced halfway through the book, to know that she made such an impact in such little time - I call that mission accomplished.

Many of the newer characters also came about in their own way after replacing some of the other, lesser knowns from the second draft.  Those characters wound up as nothing more than filler upon a review. These newer ones actually had some life and background to them - adding yet another dimension of the struggles of a strong group doing their best to live through the story as expectations pile upon them. Given these revelations, all in all - it has turned into a successful venture. Time will tell how this ends, but publishing is the next logical step - and that is the step I will be making,