Why?

I wrote my first book, How To Rape A straight Guy, in 2007 off preliminary work I'd done a few years earlier. It came together like I was finalizing a tenth draft. I worked in enough details about Curt to center the story, the structure flowed out like clockwork, I wasn't sure what the ending would be till I got to it...but it fell into place. I think I did two drafts, one of which was really checking it for typos by reading it backwards (a trick I'd learned while writing screenplays and it sort of worked on this, but not totally). I didn't have an editor, yet.

To be honest, the book does read more like a novelized screenplay, that's how fast it moves and how minimal the details were. But it was sufficient enough to catch people's emotions. It's my most reviewed book, on Goodreads, and most of them are along the lines of --

This book really gets under your skin. You can't help but feel for Curt, for all he's been through in his life that's made him into the person he is. Truly amazing, though really sad! EM

Of course, I also got some truly vicious reviews, but that was to be expected. Even the original publisher was uncomfortable with the title and one group refused to publish it because of the violence at the end. But it's been my best-seller. Still is. And so far, it's been the easiest to write.

I know I'm trying to dig deeper into the characters and stories I'm telling, to keep them from being too surface, and sometimes I set myself difficult goals...like with APoS, trying to tell a story in the vernacular of a boy from Derry, NI when I've never lived there...but even a simple erotic-revenge-thriller like CK is driving me to distraction. And now Leonides has joined that group.

I've rewritten the first 24 pages to better position the story and character...and have the strong feeling I'll be incorporating Blood Angel's storyline into it, as well, but as observed by Leon. I'm also considering doing the 5 part deal, like I did with Hunter. Not individual ebooks; that didn't do what I thought it would in building interest in the full book. But still, each section would deal with a point in time as Leon navigates through a thousand years of human existence. In short, a beast of a novel. When I'm already working on another beast of a novel.

It's like I want to keep shooting myself in the foot. Why?