You had me at obese werewolf
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I’m glad to know someone out there would like to read about my obese werewolf <3
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You don’t know, that’s the thing. You just have to take the leap and write your story anyway. Because trying to write what everyone else writes won’t work either as you probably won’t feel as connected to those stories (although to be fair, there may be cases where you can find an overlap between what you want to write and what is popular, and perhaps that is what you should look for).
Stories with representation of different body types and mental health issues do seem to be quite popular lately though, so I don’t think the path you’re on is a bad one 
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Phew that gives me some sort of relief actually, thank you Lisa!
Funny question: how do we know that what we write is part of what’s popular? As in genre maybe? Or through tropes?
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Go on social media and see what people are talking about
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Tropes and themes, I would say. And I guess you find this out by immersing yourself in media around newly released books, like read lists of what is promoted in your genre/age category. Honestly, my knowledge mainly comes from aimlessly browsing twitter 
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My feeling is that writing something close to your heart’s interest vs just picking a gimmick or bidding on originality is the way to go.
I’m married to an overweight man and struggled with body image and weight loss through a slew of eating and exercise disorders for thirty+ years. It’s natural for me to both see overweight men as attractive and know in and outs of gyms, diets, how people talk on the forums about fitness and training etc. However, for wish fulfillment, perfect body shapes are understandably popular… but I would never make those perfect bodies effortless because I doubt it would ring true with 80-90% of the readers, and would just cause irritation.
In the past year, my immersion in mental health issues brings me to writing characters right now with severely impacted emotional lives.
I wouldn’t budge from Lone Werewolf, because the main character’s struggles to integrate into a foreign language and a relationship with someone raised in a completely different culture and language are my issues. And the internal screaming I experience over the years of seeing what Russian officials legislate and say about (back then) minorities just needed to have an expression. What’s going on there now puts me into position of writing a second book in the trilogy when the second one sits at 65 (!) reads. Yes, sixty-five, half of them mine.
I often have parent-child relationships in my books, because I’ve sojourned on both sides of that divide.
The histories and customs of the countries I’ve read about and visited show more often in my books than the countries I have to look up to write about. Maybe I had seen them as an outsider, but it was with a discerning eye.
I think, when you don’t step to the book with ‘omg, I know nothing about it!’ and you itch to go make a post of ‘how do I do my research on X?’ or ‘Can someone help me with writing a character who’s Y?’ you’re doing it wrong and maybe even for the wrong reasons.
I think the ‘issue’ of the protagonist got to be a splinter not just under their nail, but under your own too.
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Thank you Domi. That is a very fair advice and I agree with everything you said.
I struggle with obesity as well, and with medications plus health issue caused by stress. And not all books have to be dark to portray them (which most are, unfortunately). I’m trying to write books that are very light as well as being human and real (at least from my person experiences, if that makes sense). I also am trying to do research for a book (regency era and I go “omg I can spend years to learn about this and it still not gone be enough! Geese!”) hahah 
but its worth it I guess. Portraying people in a human way (even for fantasy novels) I think is a worth it experience and worth any effort exerted in them
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