Reader Interest Poll

I'm wrapping up my revisions on volume three of Faerie Knight, so that I can give the manuscript to Tantor and the last audiobook of the series can be recorded.

This is going to free up the time I've been spending on revising.

While the bulk of my time will continue to be spent on Guild Mage, I've been making notes on potential other stories.

I'm not saying any of these are going to start tomorrow - in fact, I'm saying they definitely won't - but when I need a brain break from Guild Mage, I'd like to get some feedback to help me decide what to focus on.

This won't be the sole piece of input that makes my decision, but I will take it into account.

Option 1: A Cyberpunk Progression story set in NYC. Progression element will be the characters working mercenary gigs for money and spending it on equipment (weapons, cyberware, programs). Corpo bad guys, gangs, and hopefully an emphasis on grass-roots community building in the face of dystopian oppression and corruption. Straight cyberpunk - no magic, no system, no aliens, etc

Option 2: Xianxia Cultivation fake marriage - The Matriarch of the Demon Sect is My Wife! (or something like that). An assault on the Dark Saintess of the Black Flame Temple ruins her cultivation and sends her fleeing. She's found by a farm boy who hides her and passes her off as his wife when soldiers come looking. Cultivation + Anime Rom Com tropes. Equal parts awkward + cute. Progression = Cultivation.

Option 3: Victorian very goth-y vampire story set in NYC (yes, I have an NYC story on my brain, either future or past. I live in CT, so for me its THE CITY. Sue me :) I'm thinking a rev war era vampire wakes up in the MET collection and goes on a revenge spree against the rivals who overthrow the old vampiric monarch of the city. Include a police detective in the victorian detective fiction fashion for good measure. Not much of an emphasis on cultivation, but the vampire would probably count as an OP MC.

Option 4: Superhero/Supervillain Enemies to Lovers. My wife challenged me to write smut. I'm not entirely sure how I would do this without going under a pen name, due to my day job, but I do have a niggling idea about a superhero team being betrayed and one member being captured by a supervillain. Would probably involve BDSM elements. Would either need Patreon exclusive chapters while the tame stuff is on RR, or some other solution. Would be an interesting challenge to write using romance beats, I've never done it before. Progression element would be the supervillain upgrading an iron man-esque suit.

Option 5: Collapse of an Empire in a massive fantasy world. I've had this one kicking around for a long time, but I'm not certain I'm good enough to write it yet. It would involve a LARGE number of viewpoint characters, across different portions of the empire. Two different magic systems, but the primary one is tattoo-based, so the progression elements would be centered on getting new ink.