Yup, the votes were pretty much split half-half! I mean, OK, technically Devlin "won" by a small margin but it's not anything like the 80/20 split I had been expecting!
Hmm... this is going to be interesting planning the Oxford Tearoom books going forwards. 🤔 You see, I always struggle because I worry a lot about pleasing readers and now I feel like whichever way the story goes, half the readers will be disappointed! Oh dear!
Although, to be perfectly honest with you, most of the time, it's the characters themselves who decide. I know it sounds crazy when these are fictional people made up in my head but I do often find that I have all these plans for how things are going to go in the story... and then when I actually come to write that scene, the characters just won't behave that way!
I mean, of course, I could "force" them - I'm the one typing the words, after all! 😉 - but then the whole thing starts to feel wrong and I usually end up grinding to a halt and getting completely stuck in the dreaded Writer's Block. 😱