I’m making some minor tweaks to The Monster Within, but as I’m going through it, there’s a place where I think the story loses momentum. It’s difficult for me to judge that, now, however, since I’ve read it about a hundred times. Therefore I would really appreciate two volunteers, one male and one female, who haven’t read the story before, who can read it through and tell me which parts seem slow to them. I would like to address the problems soon (it’s difficult for me to not dive in right now, but if it isn’t broken I shouldn’t be fixing it), so I would prefer test readers who read a lot of books and go through them in days or weeks rather than months.

Having both a male and female reviewer is mostly for my own curiosity — it will be interesting to see where opinions differ.

The “brave soul” reference above is because I’m looking for people to tell me about the parts of the story they didn’t like, and many people are not comfortable telling a creator to his face that their work is flawed. (Of course, you’re also welcome to tell me about the good parts…)

While I’m not asking anyone to sign a nondisclosure agreement, I would appreciate some discretion. There are certain parts of the story I would like to keep under wraps so as not to spoil the story for others. You’ll know what I mean when you read it.

Please email me or leave a message here in the comments if you’re interested.