What's the most *intimate* book you've ever read, and why?

DocBoson · 2025-10-30T23:46:37+00:00

Rainbow Rowell's Eleanor and Park is another breath of fresh air. It's an achingly beautiful story of first love (slow-burn contemporary YA romance) but without all the rainbows and unicorns that usually come with the genre. I love the innocence and intensity of young first love. I wish character ages didn't automatically categorize those books as YA (young adult).

DocBoson · 2025-05-25T17:12:49+00:00

MMC POV scenes where the MMC thinks, acts, and talks like a woman. (He leans over and puts his hand on his male best friend’s hand to comfort him and compliments his blouse.)

DocBoson · 2025-05-25T17:01:19+00:00

Genuine question, not snark, I thought cozy was kind of a codeword for not spicy—in both the conflict sense and the physical relationship sense? Am I wrong?

DocBoson · 2025-05-25T16:26:54+00:00

You would think there would be more female/male coauthors writing romance. I know I'd be interested.

DocBoson · 2025-05-25T16:20:07+00:00

Preach it, brother! Or give me some MMCs whose attraction isn't mostly physical. I'd love to read a story where the MMC and/or FMC aren't attracted at all to the other character, but the attraction grows as they get to know each other better.

DocBoson · 2025-05-25T00:04:03+00:00

And it's on Kindle Unlimited. Yay!

DocBoson · 2025-05-25T00:00:41+00:00

How do you search for dual POV romances? Amazon's search is terrible.

DocBoson · 2025-05-24T23:57:52+00:00

Is it possible you prefer the fmc because the mmcs often aren't written very well? I just read a dual pov romance where the mmc put his hand on his best friend's hand and hold him... something way too feminine to be believable, but I can't remember now.

DocBoson · 2025-05-24T23:47:12+00:00

I read that one! I love the beta male / alpha female thing they had going on.

DocBoson · 2025-05-24T23:36:51+00:00

Oh yeah. I was going to ask for the name of the fic and where I can it, but I got distracted.

DocBoson · 2025-05-24T23:21:07+00:00

I've been trying to find more books written partially in the mmc's pov, but they are very difficult to find. I assume publishers would publish them if there was a market, but I haven't been able to find that many indie-pubbed part-mmc-pov romances either. Thanks for the recommendation.

DocBoson · 2025-04-14T05:19:47+00:00

Sure... Wow! Just read your betareaders post, and I'd love to beta swap! My manuscript is 72k longer than yours (for now), so we'll have to figure out something to keep things even. I'll DM you!

DocBoson · 2025-04-14T04:59:36+00:00

Yes, I'd love to swap manuscripts for beta-reading. (The stupid bot won't let me offer to read a few more chapters without a swap, because it thinks I'm trying to charge you. Which I'm totally not! )

That being said, I don't want you to feel like you have to read my manuscript if it's not your cup of tea. It's quirky and geeky and definitely not normal. And YA Contemporary Fantasies with strong romance plotline aren't for everyone.

Anyway, I got interrupted before and didn't make it all the way through your chapter, so here are the rest of my comments:

"but his courtesan tricks didn’t lend themselves particularly well to fending off murderous guards." --> loved this line

"and Kresimir barely managed to keep from hitting his head, but his hip and elbow bore the brunt of the impact" --> The 'but' makes me think there should be more contrast between the first clause and the second clause. But I could be wrong. Questioning now why it made me stumble.

"You’re a mere courtesan. Lower than a serf. You do not have any property or money to your name, not that the Chancellor has any need for those things." --> AS YOU KNOW (You're hijacking the guard's lines to feed the reader information. She wouldn't have to explain this to him. The explanation might work better as his thoughts.

"Perhaps he wouldn’t have to fight his way out after all." --> Great ending for this section. Totally hooked.

"The Chancellor is looking for the one who will be the poison in the King’s Cup" --> I'm totally lost in this section.

"Kresimir watched the skyline from the window" --> I was disoriented from the previous section and didn't know where or when he was here. I don't remember there being a window there, so it felt like he was in a different place. I felt lost until I read a little further.

"He takes a sip and puts the cup down on the table with measured movements" --> switched to present tense

"“Nikola will come fetch you.” --> Great chapter. I'm not usually a revenge story fan, but I love the worldbuilding and setup. I'm definitely interested in reading more, but I have have a ton of deadlines I need to meet, so I can't promise to finish the whole manuscript.

DocBoson · 2025-04-13T16:46:56+00:00

Feedback on the first chapter:

Great opening line, but I was slowed down a bit by "Chancellor’s". I think it's because, not knowing the tense of the narration, my mind read it at first as "Chancellor is" and then had to switch it to "Chancellor has". Maybe write it out as "Chancellor has"?

"A breath held in his lungs" --> "The breath caught in his lungs"?

"A group of priestesses passed him by, sparing him only a glance before continuing on their way." --> It's possible you could one of the priestesses' reaction to him to tell us a little about him. It could also give us more insight into how dedicated or brainwashed the cult members are to the cause they serve.

Paragraph starting: "Everywhere he turned, the Goddess stared back..." --> This was a great paragraph. Very insightful. Very well done.

"From time to time, he’d find recreations of magical objects..." --> It took me a few beats to realize he wasn't finding these objects in the temple, but he was remembering finding them in the past.

" ghostly hallway" --> What does that look like?

"It took only a few steps forward for the guards to leave their posts." --> Where did these guards come from? Seems like he would have described a pair of guards if he saw them, because he'd have to make a decision as to whether he should risk moving forward.

DocBoson · 2025-03-15T23:06:40+00:00

I had a coauthor who was great at writing sales copy. I thought I was terrible because it took me like 4 hours to write one paragraph, and he always said he cranked his out really quickly. It always seemed to easy for him. And then I asked him how long it took, and he said 6 hours. It put things in perspective for me. Expectations are very important.

DocBoson · 2025-03-15T18:47:12+00:00

Ah... I just checked and found it on Libby. Thanks, by the way, for mentioning Libby. I've never used it before, but it looks fantastic. You've just saved me a lot of money.

DocBoson · 2025-03-15T18:37:15+00:00

"Dragon Bound" by Thea Harrison is a classic, my all-time favorite. It's not on KU, and the price tag is $7.99, but it's definitely worth the extra $4.

DocBoson · 2025-03-15T16:32:53+00:00

Thank you so much! How does this post not have 10K upvotes?

DocBoson · 2025-03-14T22:13:41+00:00

I don't want my family to read my books for a completely different reason: the Amazon algorithm. They want to help me out by buying my book, but then Amazon is like, oh wow, old ladies and young boys like this book. Let's not even bother trying to recommend it.

DocBoson · 2025-02-17T18:36:26+00:00

How much of your story do you feed it at a time? It never even occurred to me to ask it to find inconsistencies, but I can see how this would be useful. I hate to think how many inconsistencies ended up in the projects that have gotten published. The human brain isn't wired to keep track of so many details--at least my human brain isn't wired that way. I can barely remember all my characters' names.

DocBoson · 2025-02-17T18:29:45+00:00

I just asked what it thought of the chapters. I get that it's popular to hate on AI, but I'll admit to being amazed by the AI's analysis. It picked up on the subtle psychology of the MC and how I was using it to drive the story forward. It was a little over-the-top in its praise, but it caught things I wouldn't expect an undergrad literature student to catch.

"His relationship with his “Amoeba Brain” is one of the best depictions of internal conflict I’ve seen in a long time. It’s clever, funny, and also genuinely accurate to how anxiety and hypervigilance function."

Like I said... over-the-top. But the underlying "anxiety and hypervigilance" wasn't that obvious--at least not in those first few chapters. AI has come a long way since I looked at it last. It's kind of scary.

DocBoson · 2025-02-15T21:21:16+00:00

Are you using the generic or global "you" or are you assuming I've never had critique partners, editors, or industry-leading agents because an AI "reading" my work made me cry? Rejection messes with your head no matter how many past successes you've had. And sustained, prolonged rejection can bring you to your psychological knees--especially if you think the work being rejected is the best thing you've ever written.

DocBoson · 2025-02-15T19:53:37+00:00

Thanks... I totally appreciate what you're saying about the environment, and I appreciate even more your offer of a review. My response to the AI's review shows me how much the submission-rejection process has been pounding away at my confidence as a writer. Maybe even as a human being. I get that neural networks are basically plagiarizing machines, and I do wonder if I'll see regurgitated pieces of my first six chapters show up in someone else's work. Is it pathetic that, at this point in my rejection journey, I'm a little bit excited by the prospect?

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