"Manastorm - The Quickening, Book One" - Tell me your thoughts!

Hello my dearies!
I've got a special task for you and I really do need your help, so please keep reading :)
My two WiPs (Works in Progress) are coming along swell, but I'm ever the worrier when it comes to my work and I haven't had much luck with finding my special someone, betareader-wise. After a bit of thinking and a little cider, I decided I want to try something new:

A story hook poll! Whee!

Eh... What?
My thoughts are as follows - The first pages of a book decide if a reader likes or hates a story.  Those first few pages, or rather the first chapter, also make or break the atmosphere of a book. They have to be just right, hit that sweet spot so to say, to pull in a reader and drag him along (sometimes against their will, ha!).
Do my WiP stories have what it takes? I have no idea!
Which is where you come in. I've added a link at the end of this post that will lead you to the hook of my primary project, "Manastorm". At the end of the hook, you will find a link to a Google Poll site where you will be asked two to four questions with very basic/simple answering options. All you have to do is read through the hook (or read as far as you like, then scroll down to the link), click the link and answer the questions. No registration necessary, no personal info needed, I will not ask for an e-mail address or anything else. (Of course, if you fall in love with the story and want to be notified when it's up for ARC reading or publishing, I do have a lovely newsletter...)

So yeah, let's try this story hook poll thing. Ready? Here goes:

Manastorm Hook Chapter

I don't like Omegaverse. Here's why.

Hello my lovelies!
While I've been busy editing and revising "Unwilling" and "Moonrise", I spent a few evenings reading books from genres people mentioned to me. A good author knows what people are talking about, right? One comment in specific confused me: One reader gave "Unwilling" 1 star, saying that he (or she?) felt betrayed because I hadn't used the term "Alpha" correctly and he/she felt tricked. I had no idea what he/she meant by that, so I went out and bought some books mentioning Alphas or Omegas.
For those of you unfamiliar with words like Omegaverse or Alpha-romance, please visit this link to get a more detailed description!

When I started reading m/m (or boyslove) novels, the m/m genre offered me an escape. With two men in a relationship, authors were able to shake off the standard dynamics between the genders and be free to do whatever the heck they wanted their characters to do. Two "alpha males" (brrrrrgh) could end up in a relationship, as could two nerds, two Joe Blokes could get kinky, a power couple was just as interesting as a houseman/working father couple adopting African orphans. There were no set roles and therefor every opportunity to do something new. And to women readers, it was easy to imagine themselves in this new dynamic and rejoice.
Then along came the Omegaverse genre.

Now, I'm not adverse to kink. I've had enough forays into dub-con and shifter sex myself and I understand the allure of something like predisposed gender roles. It's titillating to watch someone struggle against his genetic programming, even though the reader already knows he will fail and find his place no matter how much he fights it.
After the sixth or seventh Omegaverse novel, something stood out to me though: switch the Omega with a girl and you have het romance.
To me, this is just sad. I switched to m/m because I was bored to death with het romance and the depiction of women in those stories. Fainting, helpless little flowers who bitch and moan and angst away and get dragged around as they scream for help, or break out in tears and run because some dude did something even slightly inconsiderate. Then drama, making up, kissy kissy, the end.

It's sad because there is so much you could do with genetic predisposition. So many opportunities are being overlooked!
Back in 2011 when I started writing "Unwilling", the word "Omegaverse" didn't exist yet. I just wanted to write something a little different from "the usual werewolf flick", to try my hand at the same theme and put a different spin on it. I was excited that so many people liked it, but now that I'm thinking about publishing the story as an e-book, I'm having a hard time deciding on a genre. "Shifters" is almost as prone to prejudice as "Alpha romance", and since you, dear readers, seem to have either learned to skip any and all story that carries even a hint of maybe containing shifters or beings declared as "Alpha", or expect the story to be about archetypical power exchanges, this whole "Omegaverse" hype is making me rather grumpy.

No matter how well an "Omegaverse" themed novel is written, I don't like it. And I, oh, so hate how popular that genre has become, because it pushes aside the kind of werewolf-stories I actually enjoy. In my opinion, the distinction between "Shifters" and "Omegaverse" should be more explicit. One should be about what the name implies, meaning shifters in each and every constellation the human mind can come up with (and with no rebukes for using words like "Alpha" or "Omega"), whereas the other should be only about het-with-an-m/m-spin plots.
Unfortunately, to get there, authors would have to abstain from using each and every category even remotely connected to their theme. Readers draw connections between the chosen genre/category a book they like has been placed in and its contents. They understandably get angry when after ten books from the "Shifters"-category, the eleventh suddenly doesn't have the constellations they liked most. Problem is, that eleventh book gets a one-star-review, no matter how well written and interesting it may be, and it's all because of this habit of mixing categories.

I personally would rejoice in a clearer distinction of what category a book is placed in. What do you think? Do you enjoy Omegaverse? Do you hate it? What about Shifters stories? For both: Why?
Maybe you can help me come up with a solution for my situation :)

Love,
Hannah

My first official review!

Getting your first review is a special moment in the life of every author. Reviews are like badges you get for work done well, and they are handed out by the people who matter most: Readers. I'm so hyped right now!
I already mentioned finishing "Shapeshifter", my first story ever, I think, but now it also got its own review - check it out here!

Why are Bad Boys so sexy?

The if's and why's of stuff are what spices up life! After all, if someone asks me, 'why do you always write about bad guys?', I like to be able to answer. This means, I have to think stuff through that usually doesn't need a lot of thinking. If you like something, it's enough to know that you do, right? Right.
Unfortunately, the gap between 'that asshole' and 'that bad, bad boy' isn't wide enough to risk ending up on the other side. If you, like me, want to write about the right kind of bad boys, it's important to know which way to go, so I pondered over this for a while and wrote down the few cliff notes I noticed. Here goes!

The forbidden fruit

We all know lots and lots of good, solid, nice, helpful, a little boring people. Those aren't bad qualities at all! It's good to live in a world generally void of crazy people. Makes a lady willing to leave the house in the morning and all that.
Fiction, on the other hand, should be a sanctuary, a ways to escape every-day-life, something new and fresh and titillating. Most of us will never meet- and like- a bad boy in real life, because they are, well, bad. A book, story, movie, TV-series, on the other hand, offers a safe, sane and entertaining way to get a taste. Just a little lick to spice up your mind and then get back to your (hopefully) just as safe and sane real life.

Dangerous people and the dream of protection

I guess I won't have to explain to you what Stockholm Syndrome is, but as much as this plays a role, it's not what I mean with the dream of protection. Stockholm Syndrome plays to the need to live in a protected group, to keep yourself out of harm's way, but it only describes a special set of circumstances. If you're not in harm's way, you can't really call your attraction to a bad boy "Stockholm Syndrome". You'd have to be under duress for that, sorry :)
A blatant display of aggression does trigger something in us, though, as long as it isn't directed at us. I don't mean bar fights or aggression issues, I mean controlled, prepared willingness to defend yourself and use the most effective means at your disposal.
Bad boys control their surroundings and themselves, and that's sexy. They don't light a cigarette in a hospital because they don't know that they aren't supposed to smoke there, they do it despite knowing that, and in full awareness of the repercussions. That they get away with setting their own rules speaks to us mere mortals, and it makes us want to be one of them.

They stand out from the crowd

There are actually loads of psychological studies about the phenomenon of "bad boy attraction" in the world wide web, so please feel free to google yourself into a psychological studies coma if you'd like to read more!
I'll just do the quick-and-dirty short version here, so here goes.
First of all, bad boys tend to have markers for a number of behavioral abnormalities, like narcissism, sociopathy, psychopathy and so on. People with such a behavior challenge have proven to be especially skilled with playing a role to get into women's panties (or a guy's skivvies) - seems like the lack of sociability might be a good incentive to treat group behavior like a skill to learn.
But! Not only do most "bad boys" know how to charm a lady, they also stand out because of how evolution taught us poor humans to identify patterns and notice abnormalities. That means, if a bad guy and a good guy both appear at the same time, we still notice the bad guy sooner, because he tickles our instincts, which in turn tell us to pay attention, gosh darn it!

They are crowd pleasers and a foundation for the hero

This is my final point on the topic of bad boys, and it's one I've only recently started to notice.
The media landscape has gone through a lot of changes over the last decades. Put the audio series of the first "Superman" next to the most recent "Superman" movies, and you'll see what I mean. Characters have become more three-dimensional, more real, more diverse. Good guys nowadays have their own flaws and quirks, some could even be considered bad guys if you cut them out of their environment and have a good look at them. Examples, anyone?
Riddick, for one. He's a bad guy and he isn't shy about it, but because of what he does and how he decides, we still like him. What about Dexter Morgan from the TV-series "Dexter"? Can't argue that he's bad, oh so bad, but we still like him in a disturbing way.
It's gotten to the point that we'd have a hard time distinguishing good from bad, were it not for the surrounding factors and hints, and this is where bad boys and bad guys come in. They not only show us that evil can actually look good, they also underhandedly point us towards the "good guy", without forcing us to choose.
They also show us that bad boys don't equal bad guys, but that's a topic for another time. :)

So, what's your favorite bad boy, and is he also a bad guy?

This is why women read gay erotic stories

The world of romance novels is big, loud, colorful and open to everyone, be it woman, man, teenager or mature adult. In some ways, the romance genre could be compared to the old porn saying: 'If you can think of it, there's a novel about it.'
For most of my life, reading romance novels was some kind of forbidden pleasure that I wouldn't talk about, hiding books beneath my bed, in cupboards and later in kindle categories my friends didn't bother to look into ('German classic literature' proved its usefulness many times over).
Only when I started writing erotic novels myself, I finally came to the realization that romance is actually the most popular genre out there. I also realized that I had a hankering for gay romance that bordered on odd.

What reasons could a heterosexual lady have to prefer reading about two men (or more) in love to reading about a man and a woman, or two women?

1. It's hard to find heterosexual romance novels with creative interactions and non-standard relationships.

I'm not saying that there aren't any romance novels with dominant female protagonists, but they are few and far in between and most of them still end with her giving in to him and falling in stereotypical love (thanks to Kristin Miller for already putting this together so nicely). As much as a lady likes to be swept off her feet by the love of her life, if she wants to do the mental swiping, it's pretty hard to find a matching story. Which brings us to the next, important point...

2. You can always choose your flavor with gay romance.

This has nothing to do with genre and everything with the two (or more) main characters. A female reader has no hang-ups, personal experience or other influencing backgrounds when it comes to male-on-male-action. We do not feel as involved, as vulnerable, as set in a role, when reading gay erotic stories, which means we can actually pick which of the characters we'd like to 'feel' while reading.
Author James Buchanan was interviewed on this topic, so please feel free to read the transcript for a more detailed analysis.

3. To women, it's just wonderfully kinky.

You know what you probably won't say at the next family dinner? "I read this great gay erotic fiction last night!" Okay, to be fair, some of us might actually say that, but I tried it once and got confused glances and a nervous "that's nice, honey," as an answer.
But when we womenfolk are alone, what's more wonderful than a good, long dive into the dark depths of lust? Homosexuality still has this touch of forbidden desire, especially if you yourself aren't homosexual, and contrary to popular belief, it's actually quite thrilling for me as a woman to think about all those kinky things 'the others' might do in the security of their own beds.

So, what makes you choose gay romance/erotica over heterosexual stories? Please comment and share, I'd love to read your thoughts!