Not literally whatever you like; you can't have my soul, money or my first-born child (will negotiate for subsequent ones). What I can offer is time. I can beta read for you, critique a work in progress, edit, or anything else I have the skills to do. What I have is a 100k romance novel that needs reading. It's on the suspense-y side but doesn't fit a true suspense romance structure, so I'm calling it contemporary romance. I don't mind if that isn't your preferred genre - it isn't mine, to be fair - but you have to at least not hate it. There is one chapter in the workshop if you want to check what kind of thing you're getting into: https://www.writingforums.org/threads/jar-of-hearts-chapter-2-looking-for-general-thoughts-and-impressions.141403/ I should have caught the vast majority of typos and grammar errors. I'm looking for someone who will just sit and read it and note down their thoughts every now and then - how you feel about the characters, if you think you've figured out the central mystery, if anything seems out of character, unrealistic, or otherwise jarring. Please PM me if you're interested and let me know what I can do in return. I read and enjoy more or less every genre.
I'm ecstatic to now have six beta readers. I have also been told that people may be associating 'romance' with 'Mills & Boon' so I want to specific it is not that kind of book. Whilst it does centre around a relationship the focus is on character development and the secret that one of the main characters is hiding from the other. It's not a book where they sit around moping and thinking about how much they love each other and it's not erotica, though there are a couple of sex scenes. I'm aiming for around 10 betas if anybody else is now interested!
I think it would be good to ask some of your beta readers to review your work sequentially, rather than all in parallel. Feedback will inevitably result in changes. You might then want your text to be reviewed again. Since only a limited number of people will be available to read your work. You might not want to use them up all at once.
Good advice - it's exactly what I'm doing. One person has already read it and I have one (hopefully the last) lined up for January. Here I'm looking for people who can read it over the next two months.
