This story is a bit more normal than my other two. It will be a collection of mostly linear tales involving various people waiting out a blizzard by getting Cozy and Kinky. Currently there are only two story-lines, but I have more planned. I hacked together the cover image myself (it's pretty obvious that I'm a beginner at image editing). Please let me know what you think.
I like how nice and playful it is, I think you've really got something here. The picture works really well with the initial theme of the story: cozy + blizzard + bondage. It's perfect, frankly, and it does not look like beginners work to me at all. However, I got very confused after the first chapter, because the story switches abruptly from Jaqueline the winter spirit and a decidedly rural/villagey feel to... a beach-themed bikini party on the fourth floor of a (what appears to me like a) big city apartment building? It feels like the start of a completely new story, in which Jaqueline is never even mentioned. This is a problem that pops up again and again, not just in the split between chapter 1 and 2. The "friendly demon" you introduce also never comes up again and the "particularly bad blizzard" is only referred to once, downgraded to a mere "storm". That storm has exactly zero consequences that I can find, other than (possibly?) someone named "Alex" not being present. She also does not appear in the story again, nor does the wheelchair Claire is in, which is never mentioned after the second chapter. And who's Thea? It's OK for there to be background characters and events. Not everything and everyone needs to be Hyper Mega Significant. If your protagonists go to a roadside restaurant for lunch in chapter umpty-nine, it's fine to flavour the scene by describing the trucker in the back as a slightly overweight coffee addict with cigarette stains between his fingers, and then to never mention either him or the restaurant again once the scene is over. But the things I listed above are introduced seemingly as core attributes of your story, in the first couple of paragraphs. If they're never coming up again, why mention them in the very limited real estate that is the first chapter of your story? The good news? This is emphatically not the case of the boring story where lots of different hooks get introduced willy-nilly, just to spice it up. You're spoilt for choice here. "Forced indoors by a blizzard" is not a new idea, but it is a neat idea that you can go a lot of places with. Your own cover picture shows one possibility. Alternatively, Claire being a dom in a wheelchair has a ton of interesting possibilities that touch on the logistics of bondage and submission when you have a handicap. And the mischievous nature spirit who secretly influences silly humans into doing sexy things could be fun too! Unfortunately, though, these ideas never seem to go anywhere, and that's a real shame, because I do like what you're trying to do. So my advice would be to pick one aspect of the story and promote it to central concept, abandoning the others. Remove the first chapter and "just" make this a kinky queerish slice of life story set in an apartment building. Questionable Content with bondage. I'd read the hell out of that story. Or alternatively, get rid of the apartment building and go all-in on the blizzard-in-a-village idea. I would suggest putting in some some conflicting personalities; it's always fun to write characters who don't really like each other (at least at first), and then force them to work together to overcome adversity. The most important thing here is to have the blizzard actually be the driving force by having it both affect your characters' choices and limit their options. Or third, show your nature/winter spirit playfully sexing up people's lives without them ever realizing it. One idea that immediately popped into my mind is her accidentally and unknowingly fixing a decidedly-vanilla relationship by having two people fall back in love thanks to the taste for kinky sex that the spirit kindles in them. Hell, write all three if you want! But write them separately.
Thank you very much, for all your feedback. I'm glad the parts that work, work. Jaqueline is only meant to be the instigator for the scenarios, not a main character. She appears in the introduction and will appear in epilogues, but I don't plan to give her POV. Her main purpose is to connect a collection of otherwise unconnected stories. I wanted to do something more fun than just "here's the kinky stuff that could happen when stuck inside." She influences events. She's the reason May is so horny in the first chapter and has an erotic dream. She'll help their relationship along. And it's hopefully apparent that she's messing with Silvia Love, especially in the most recent chapter. But most (or all) characters won't be aware of her, so her actions will only be hinted at. There isn't much of a difference in my experience. It's usually just, "everything's closed, so stay inside and try not to get bored." What sort of things were you expecting? There will be power outages, and people trapped where they don't want to be; maybe the heat goes out. But there won't be any dire situations. Likewise, Claire being in a wheelchair won't affect everything, but it is the reason she notices May casually closing the door with her foot, and why she's proud of grabbing a bottle of aspirin from May's medicine cabinet. It will come up in more important ways when they have sex. Thea's not a people it's a place, also a video game series. The first paragraph is supposed to be a fakeout, but by the second, I want it to be obvious that Claire was just playing a game (with possible foreshadowing). I'll edit that chapter to make things more clear. I think this leads to your confusion about Sublime being a village; it is a town and some towns have small apartment buildings. Claire's and May's is five floors with 3-4 units per floor. This one hurts a lot. I've come up with almost ten scenarios I want to write, and none of them involve adversaries stuck together. Ultimately, while I do appreciate your critique, I won't be changing the structure of the story. Your three suggestions are probably better, but this is the story I want to create.
I have to love the theme, given my "In From the Snow" is "sex interrupted by having to rescue random folks stranded on a snowy road, oops I guess it's a party after all".
