Picking Your Brains and Epilogue Options

First thing: this post contains spoilers for The Bet 28, which just released yesterday. Go read that first!

Anyway, one of the best things about The Bet as an experiment is the fact that you all keep surprising me. Sometimes I will be absolutely sure that you all will choose a certain choice, only to have you go another direction. It's been really illuminating as an author, almost as a way to study audience preferences, and in that light, I would like to pick your brains about The Bet.

One of the things I've noticed since early on is that my readers, as a group, tend to have a "thirst for blood" so to speak. In a popular vote, you all usually choose the option most likely to lead to hot, filthy sex. And who can blame you! This is erotica, right? But since a lot of you want the filthiest option, things tended to go toward Zane's dominance triumphing, Claire submitting completely, and Dan being humiliated behind his back.

Which made the current poll results from yesterday's story very interesting to me. The poll isn't over yet, and the results are narrowing, but even if cuckolding comes out on top, it will be much closer than I expected.

Sometimes I workshop ideas with writer friends before I implement them, and when I told some people about the choice in the chapter, the response was always "Well, obviously they will want Dan to get cucked". Based on previous polls I would have agreed.

My impression from the comments is that Claire's turn toward cruel and villainous behavior might be the missing factor. People are feeling some sympathy for Dan that has been absent throughout the story so far. But... to drill down on that a little further...

The choice I presented in chapter 27 was about how much Claire knows going into the cruise. The option that the group decided was more or less maximum knowledge. She knew about The Bet, knew that Zane had bad intentions toward Dan, and she approved. I clarified her exact intentions toward Dan in 27.5, just to make sure we all knew what we were getting into. The answer, again, was pretty clear. She has chosen Zane, and is done with Dan. These point to a pretty villainous version of Claire, who is exactly the person we see in chapter 28.

So here is where my curiosity lies. Were you surprised by Claire's evil turn in this chapter? Or is this exactly what you wanted, but its a "love to hate her" situation? I'd love to hear from people who voted for Claire to choose Zane, but are voting now for Dan to resist!

Anyway, this series gives me so much excellent info about what my readers like, I would love to discuss this further.

Secondly: I have an idea for the end of this series, but there are two options available.

The first option is to cut the narrative off with some mystery as to what happens to the characters next. The upside to this is that there is some meat on the bone left in the story, possibly even for a potential sequel in the future.

The second option is for all of you to vote on the ultimate fate of each character. What ends up happening to Dan? Claire? I will present four options of varying positivity and negativity, have you vote on each character, then weave the answers into a short epilogue chapter.

What do you think?