krystalynn03

Hey Shadwofax, “The Wildwood was waking up, though it was still the middle of the night.” – I think I understand what this is, but I’m not sure. Part of my brain immediately goes to ROAMWALD! Really interesting. I had never considered the reader having that reaction. I guess my question is this: Did it feel disappointing to you when you realized it wasn’t directly connected to him? “It was a black bear.” – I really hope it’s explained why this thing isn’t in hibernation. Well, I haven’t put a mention of the month on screen, but I guess I better fix that. Males come out of hibernation end of March/April, so that’s got to be the time frame we’re working in. I mentioned that the winter is running longer than normal, so maybe it is already April? Limestone – What? So, is she right by the river? I’m not a science nature expert by any means, but I don’t think you have to have a river nearby currently to have limestone. Those rocks are formed thousands of years beforehand, and they very popularly cause caves since they erode so well (afaik). I checked online and parts of the Appalachia are formed of limestone… The Shenandoah valley apparently has lots of them. (Hopefully ecohansen can chime in here?) “he had a strip of blue cloth and one of the ragged sleeves was shorter than before. The hands clumsily tried to get the blue cloth around Bandit’s leg wound” – this is going to be a sizing thing again. Roamwald’s arms are HUGE. If he stripped a piece of cloth from his sleeve to use as a bandage for the dog, it needs to be dog-sized, which means it’d be so insignificant to the size of his sleeve that it wouldn’t be noticeable in the dark from as far away as Jennie is to him. If it IS noticeable, then it’s way too big for Bandit’s leg. It’s probably long enough to wrap completely around Jennie’s house, regardless of width. I try not to play devil’s advocate too much, because if somebody notices a problem, even if I disagree with their logic, it can mean that I still didn’t describe things well enough, meaning the problem is still on my end. I can change the wording to insinuate the strip is a noticeable rip on only one part of the sleeve, but if he’s as nervous as he is, it would be equally possible that he tore off too much. If he tore off way too much, then it’s only more pathetic that he’s failing at this. I’ll try to make that image better. I like that Jennie decides to go after Roamwald, even though there’s no way she could catch up to him, she should eventually be able to get to where he’s headed. His strides will cover miles in seconds Miles in seconds? Oh no. Not even close. If he’s walking unobstructed, he’s making at best .6 miles in a minute. In three minutes, he’s still walked less than two. He’s walking uphill, on narrow path and trying not to jostle Bandit/Blitz, so he’s going to be going probably half as fast, so .3 miles a minute. Jennie still won’t catch up, but I just wanted to correct you head-imagery of how fast Roamwald is moving. and she’s half frozen (again lol) and tiny so the traveling should be slow. My only concern heading into the next chapter(s) is how her pacing could possibly slow the story pacing. At this point I’m so excited I don’t’ want to have to wait for Jennie to arrive anywhere; I’m ready for her to BE there. Well, rest assured as far as pacing goes, the first thing I did with chapter 14 already in my edits and revisions for future submission is to cut most of the description of her walk following after Roamwald. I could already anticipate that kind of reaction you’re describe, so I’m trying to keep the break between high points as short as I can here because I know the reader (hopefully!) should want to get back to what Roamwald’s up to. Not a lot of nitpicking this week! Woo! YAY! Have to wait for more chapters, BOO! And I don’t think I’ll be ready to submit this week…I feel like submitting 3 weeks in a row is a little too much…so we’ll see. The next chapter is really long, and it needs a lot of work. My eight-year-long-alpha-reader-friend calls chapter 14 the emotional heart of the story, so I better make sure I get it right for you guys the first time around. LOL This definitely feels like a “getting there” chapter and not a “meat” chapter, In older versions of this story Roamwald didn’t show up in the chapter at all, so be glad you’re reading this one… so part of me was hoping for it to be used to add to the descriptions in the area, giving us a better “feel” of everything so we’re mentally prepared for whatever it is that comes next. Setting can add a lot to the mood, and if I were 10 and lost in the woods I’d be trying to pay attention to every little thing that could possibly catch my eye, nose or ears. True, but on the other hand, for every bit of forest detail I add in, the reader is reading through more text to get to the next important event. Maybe a few more phrases toward the end could accomplish what you’re wanting, but I’d be leery of adding too much. The sheep scene dragged for some folks and it wasn’t near as long as this. Thanks, Shadowfax!

Shadowfax, I like how you turned Robinski into a verb. Let's capitalize it always. (That's his favorite thing.) You know, the language thing might be a style question. I'm not sure there's any hard and fast rules to this kind of thing. I think children (the target audience) are much more accepting of things like that because they're more accustomed to accepting they didn't understand something in a text than adults are. I mean it to be there as a kind of boon. It's not necessary to understand--Roamwald's actions are meant to speak for themselves, and if you catch the cognates to English or happen to know some German words, then it's just bonus, but nothing is lost in the scene if you don't know what his words meant. However, if the device annoys 9/10 people, then it's something I still have tread lightly when using, know what I mean? It's really fun to see how differently the same text/devices/tropes can hit different people, but the challenging part is assimilating all the feedback and deciding how to synthesize all of that into a form that best improves the narrative for the most people (while still, of course, remaining true to the story I'm telling). Thanks!

Hey Mandamon, Roamwald and the dog and Leon I hope those felt like good questions in your head, not bad questions. If it felt like curiosity, I'm happy you wondered those things, but if it felt like confusion, well, I don't think I can fix it and it answers itself soon enough. German: Yeah, I worried I hadn't trimmed it back enough. Again, if I had footnotes, the reader who wants to know what he's saying could look, but I don't want anything to jar the reader out of the story, so it may not be a device that works regardless of formatting. I'll see what the overall consensus of annoyance and/or approval is and then make cuts. I know when reading some Japanese in a sub last week when I got to the Japanese I felt locked out of an important part of the story, which jolted me out of the narration, and if I'm causing that same reaction, I need to cull it. Thanks!

INs for the win! (The ES's are probably all running around with people even now...lol)

For example, at one point in the story, you put 'Diana asks' when it should have been 'Diana asked'. Even so, I still think this story would sound great in the present completely. My mind kept trying to read it that way with its edgy, unreliable narrator. Think about it! (persuasion train chugga-chugga-choo-choo!)

"Getting to know you, getting to know all about you..." Julie Andrews and "The King and I" songs aside, I'm curious: what's the breakdown of MBTI here? (Meyers Briggs) I'm curious whether we're all similar 'writerly' types or not... INFJ here. (Those song lyrics sound creepier on the internet and out of context of old musicals...lol)

Hey spieles, At first I wasn't sure what LBL was and wikipedia suggested "light bladder leakage" and I'm sure that wasn't what you meant. Line by line. Right. Also, your response to my concerns about Calgary have really jarred me more than anything in the text. Nothing about him (at least the way I interpret him on page) reads at all like the way you meta-described him in blue here. If you mean for Calgary to be a cold, punk of a pseudo-father...none of that came through for me. At all. What came through was that Oz is young and doesn't understand adults well at all. I can find no textual evidence of Calgary being 'cold,' 'immature', 'annoying' yet 'lovable'. I can find evidence of an edgy man taking care of a kid who wasn't really meant to be his responsibility when he's still (probably?) young enough to be doing his own thing without a stubborn teenager around the house. If he were cold, he wouldn't care about whether Oz got hurt out there or how late he comes home or whether he comes home. Also, immature people don't waste their time worrying about others; they worry about themselves. I can see how Oz would be annoyed at Calgary (typical teen broadening circle of control conflict), but I don't see evidence of Calgary doing immature things. Seriously, did I miss something? Otherwise, what you describe here and what I read in text seem like two different people. That doesn't have to be a criticism in a bad way. People read texts all the time and come away with very different impressions, and that very phenomenon is what can make book discussions so much fun, but I thought you should know. If it's important that he have these flaws later in the book, then I will be really jarred by a sudden, unexpected change in what I perceived here.

Hey, so I do like to go back and read other 'crit'ters and comments back when I like a story, and Robinski pointed out something I don't think I said but it reminded me that I thought it also at the time: I was a bit disappointed that it was pearls missing. If I already told you and forgot, sorry, but I think missing pearls feels like the first episode to every cartoon mystery show ever. I want it to be something more interesting gone unless you're going to play with the trope in an interesting way and surprise me somewhere along the line. (2 cents!)

I took these comments to heart before posting and took out some of the German. I hope it reads better now than the version you read.

Hey rdpulfer! Looking forward to reading and reviewing! Let’s get started! The first paragraph doesn’t hook me hard—no immediate question to pull me, but I am wondering about what incidents happen around him, and your narrative voice is good, so I’m confident enough to keep going and find out what you deliver. ‘overwhelming scent of the smelly’ – just now I’m thinking that this is one word too many about the marker. ‘as if was’ – add ‘it’ typo ‘ignoring that it featured…’ This sentence has a good idea, but it’s a few phrases too long. I’d take out ‘that it featured’ and condense to ‘ignoring its absurdly…etc’ Forest Ridge—We’re in a retirement home? This is great. This is not the setting I thought I was in. Based on the first line I thought I was in an office or factory. My interest level has just surged because you’ve managed to surprise me in a good way. ‘Even outside, I felt’ -- Verb tense feels weird. The simple past makes it sound like a one time even, but I suppose you mean to imply something in the imperfect past, a continuing sense of being watched. ‘act like a good little boy’ – Ah, good, we’re getting to the conflict. Hm, I wonder if this is a reliable narrator? Does he actually have a chance to leave the nursing home? I’ll keep reading to find out. ‘inadequate’ – lol, good timing for a little comic relief before the setting gets too dark ‘bank vault opening’ –great image “Jack-bleep,” the – fix punctuation here ‘Number Two’ – I’m disappointed. The dialogue led me to think they had a sarcastic friendship going on. ‘just what he represented’ – The paragraph starts with this idea, but then you don’t elaborate on it. You sidetrack with more history about Matthews –interesting history—but it’s not connected to the initial thought, so I feel more confused that I’m not divining the real problem. ‘Don’t get paranoid’ – so it the narrator’s problem that he thinks something weird about Matthews? The previous paragraph implies that, but that still doesn’t line up with the initial assessment of ‘what he represented’ ‘Its fine’ – should be “It’s fine.” The contraction carries the apostrophe. ‘fabric softener’ – The narrator is fixating a lot on smells. I wonder if this is going somewhere? It’s fine if it doesn’t, but I’m wondering. ‘If I’d knew’ – if this is dialect on purpose, fine, if not, change it to the participle ‘known’ ‘starred’ – stared ‘Night terrors’ – Oh, and he paused. Interesting. ‘…all I care,” – fix punctuation here ‘out of the wheel’ – Huh? ‘trying to convince more’ – I like his faltering confidence ‘bingo’ – What about dominoes? I see a lot more old folks playing dominoes than bingo. It’s fine, just musing here. ‘Siodmak’ – on the first mention I thought it was the name of some prescription drug Why is the food in the cafeteria spice heavy? Spices are expensive, and cafeteria and hospital food are famous for being bland. If this plays into something with his sensitivity to smell, I’d buy it, but right now, that seems a little unlikely. ‘specially-made’ – Okay, he’s saying his room is normal, and now I’m wondering if we’re going to get some setting twist at the end that the time period is way different from what the narrator thinks or something. Curiousity is rising. Good! ‘rebab’ – rehab? Hm, if my theory stands, they’re hoping he’ll remember some significant detail to the reality of the world around him, and he’s not doing it. I don’t understand why Matthews the orderly would have a call higher than the doctor on any kind of ‘alternative treatment’ – unless the treatment is something that Matthews would do that’s not medical in nature per se ‘I backed away from the door’ -- Did he get out of bed? I didn’t notice. “…while,” Diana said, etc. You’ve got a recurring problem (though not always) with commas and dialogue. Probably a good idea to brush up. ‘grass tickled sandals’ – I know what you mean by this, but it doesn’t make sense. ‘one’ is implied with hundred so you can take that word out ‘Diana asks’ – asked and ‘set’ not sets ‘tired to’ – tried to ‘okay,” Diana said – comma fix again ‘keeps’ – kept ‘not it,’ – comma fix simply said, “I need – comma “What if I told you” – missing if I’m not making a lot of notes from the time Matthews suggest hypnotism because I’m too involved in the suspense to low down. Wiat. 29 days. Poked with poison. …FRANK’s A WEREWOLF ISN’T HE?! Overall thoughts: I really enjoyed that you ‘caught’ me with the twist. I’m also really happy that all the details that I caught but I didn’t add up until it was happening. I liked Frank as a character, though Siodmak felt a little shallow and boring, not that he should be too interesting. His role is pretty small. Otherwise, good story. You captivated me toward the end. Please, please fix your dialogue punctuation, though. It’s really distracting. Also, there were a few slips in tense, and I thought several times that the pacing of this short story might feel good in present tense. Have you considered it? Thanks for submitting!

Hey guys, Like I said, the questions and feedback concerns I've got include a few spoilers for the chapter, so look at your own risk. Pacing: If you had this in conjunction with the last chapter(s) (like you would if you had a whole novel in your hands at once), would you be more forgiving of the lower tension moments in 10-12? Or do you hold your opinion as before (for those who felt the suspense dropped too much in 12? There's some blocking in this sequence toward the end that I think is still a little weird, but I'm not sure. Could you visualize positions of characters well enough to understand what was going on? Trees: I need a tree that does what the fir tree does, but I don't think those trees are native to this kind of region. Help! I need a brushy evergreen. Did I play out Jennie's thoughts and actions well? Any repetition or logical fallacy to cull? Any bad wordings? (Even though this is shorter, I spent two weeks cleaning the last submission and only one on this so I feel like some stuff has slipped me by.) Anything else that worked well or didn't work well for you? Thanks!

Stay strong, Shadowfax! We'll all still be here once you're done settling in to a new place. (Dat metered internet, tho...)

If the slots don't fill, could I submit this week? Chapter 14 is really long, so I'd like to submit just 13 this week (less than 2000 words) so that 14 can stand alone later.

Kuiper, Preference: Could you mark out or denote who you're responding to somehow in your comments back? I would have missed that you answered/responded to some of my concerns if I hadn't scanned through the stuff before it and caught the Japanese words. Also, I don't mind not knowing how the magic system works. I didn't say that in my response, but just so you know it didn't bother everyone, I'll give you my opinion, too. First of all, you gave me all I needed to know in the preface. I know this is a second chapter, and if it had been a first, I expect we would have gotten a little explanation in text of how it works. Even so, I wouldn't expect a whole explanation nor do I need one. The magical conceit you're constructing is a bar where the dead and living can enter. That's it. That's all I need to know. Digging any deeper than that would be like reading "The Hobbit" and asking to know how come Smaug exists. It's a fantasy world, and dragons happen. (Hm, I might like that on a bumper sticker.) Otherwise, if anything had affected the plot of the story you told us that felt odd, I would question it--like if there were rules that would have made the characters act differently, I would need to know them. As it stands, I could dispel my disbelief because everything flowed naturally within the confines of a short piece and the nature of the genre. If you put a lot of talk about the "rules", it might telegraph the ending or just make the text bulkier. I'd let this concern sit on the back burner for a while and decide it based on the broader scope of the work rather than flash impression of a partial text, if I were you. Hope that helps balance your thoughts on the issue.

Oh dear! I didn't understand your email till I read it on the board itself and saw the auto-format into a smiley face. Ha!

Bartender: I think she can keep her name. Just make sure in that second instance where Nakamoto asks her name, that her name isn't used by the narrator until after he asks her and then it'll be fine. That way, you can have your apple and eat it, too!

Hey eco, The amount of knowledge you have floating around in your head to share like this is flooring me. Wow! I could add Hemlocks into the forest, but I still couldn't use them in that bit of dialogue since the internet says Hemlocks are pretty darn tall trees, too. Actually, I'd really like to put Hemlocks in since their species has been destroyed so much and I could preserve their memory as part of that ecosystem in this fantasy text. What trees could I choose from that are much shorter? As far as the river goes, I guess my question is this: Are cove forests large enough to have a large river flowing through them? I'm not really sure what a believable size is. The rest of my questions I'm going to send via PM because spoilers are afoot if I publicly ask the questions I really need to ask...

Hey Valthyr, Your writing is concise and awesome, I was easily sucked into the world while reading. I do realize that it's a limited POV, but the people above already mentioned the stuff that bothered me too (like the ​compacted snow etc.). Please do let me know anytime you notice anything in the voice that feels off. Words strike people in different ways, and you reading this in L2 makes me suspect that I’ll get some interesting language feedback from a different kind of perspective. ​I found the pacing was just right for the most part. I felt a bit lost with the introductions of the "male neighbours" in the forge, but that's about it. Originally, I had them mentioned one by one, but a friend thought that it was confusing to have them introduced like that—as if they were suddenly appearing, so I thought I could fix it by describing them all upfront, but I didn’t do it well enough on first try. I really like the way you set up expectations and then soar over them - the father's reaction to hearing Jennie's story is a perfect example of that. Most writers would've had him not believe her, or she'd have never told him - the way you did it is a lot more interesting and fresh. You’ve divined exactly what I was trying to do. I’m glad it hit all the notes I wanted it to for you. ​About the character introductions – […] Nate in the middle - that's where your eyes would be drawn to first, so it would feel more natural to me if you introduced him first. That, and the continuous thing he's doing (hammering a nail) whilst the scene unfolds will give me a background to imagine everything else to (otherwise it felt like the others are just standing around doing not much until I read the part about him working - then I immediately felt the scene differently; I think you could achieve that at the beginning). I hope that was helpful in some way. I will try that out! This was a really useful suggestion! ​I have never, ever kept sheep. That being said, I loved the scenes with the animal - they were both really tense (I was expecting something to happen at any moment; and in a way, it did - she got lost) and funny. The scene had me pinned to Jennie's POV so well, that I forgot to use my real-world brain - I was as surprised as her when she realized she'd gotten lost. Good. Some folks (the ones who have read up to this point) felt like this dragged the suspense back down, but I’m glad you saw the humor. It’s meant to suggest something about Roamwald (that he really was listening to what she said before and cared enough to try to help her family out) and to break the overall plot tension a little before ramping things back up again. I’ve thought up a way to collapse some of the tension of the next chapter into this chapter which would mean dropping the sheep tug o’ war, but I probably won’t actually try out the revision until I’ve completely worked my way through the book and then weigh out that kind of a change on the whole since it got mixed reviews—some liking it and some not caring for it. Since my audience is actually kids (although I want to write the book smart enough for adults to enjoy just as well), I’ll need to think about which version would be most fun for a child to read and go from there. ​I'm already liking Will (again - I haven't read any of the other chapters, so he was just introduced to me). He feels honest and down-to-earth, and his characterization in the two chapters was subtle, but enough for me to be "on his side" the whole time. I don't think he is hiding what goes on in his head (at least not from Jennie) - he believes that something weird is happening out there, and is going to try and figure it out. Again, those are exactly the reactions I wanted. I’m glad to hear they worked. ​Overall: I didn't want to stop reading. The world felt almost tangible - I could imagine the snow, the cold, the woods, the house. And I loved every bit of it. Keep going! Wow, I’m going to hang onto this critique (felt more like a review?) for days when I’m feeling crappy and need a pick-me-up! Thanks Valthyr!

Hiya rdpulfer, - Her father's return is a little anti-climatic. I see that he returns with food with everything, but he just came back from outside - where we know Roamwald is - the suspense really builds and builds during his absence. True, I do have it building for Jennie (and therefore the reader hopefully) only to ask both to wait another chapter to find out what’s going on. Hm, that’s a bit of a problem. I mean, I could tone down the tension some, maybe, a lot easier than restructuring the sequence. There’s some things built into the sequence with the forge house that I can’t drop or it’ll drag down the suspense much worse later… Hm. - Interesting that the Snatcher has a Devil-like quality, at least as the men tell it - kind of reminds me of Old Scratch in American folklore. I’d never heard ‘Old Scratch’ before! - The men not believing Jeanne about the Snatcher feels a tad unrealistic. They spent a lot of the conversation telling how big of threat they are . . . and then they don't believe her because she hit her head? Seems unlikely. I’m going to go back and change that up some. Thanks for noting it. Thanks rdpulfer!

Hey there, Spieles, Pacing seemed fine. I kind of wonder if the dad really needs to meet the whole house full of men. My thought was that he would start with the man he had the best relationship with and talk it over first.Well, yes and no. If I don’t introduce these men here, then I’ve got to slow down the narrative later when the suspense really is a lot higher than it is here. I mean, Nate or Will could suggest they have this talk not in front of an audience, but I’d lose Oscar’s participating in his dad’s 100x told story and I’d lose the line about her hitting her head. Hm, maybe if I escalated her reaction to the men laughing at this, then I could shift the conversation out of that locale and fix up a comprehension problem I gave some folks by not having Will describe what he had seen enough. I think always better to introduce one by one. Right now I don't remember any of them specifically. It's just the "male neighbors."And for the most part, that’s all I need the reader to know. For later plot purposes, I need the valley not feel like Jennie’s immediate family and her relatives are the only people living there. Will is the DAD! Okay, I was so confused for a moment. I’m getting really, really mixed reviews on the naming. Some people want me to keep the narrator calling Will ‘Papa’ all the time and other people think it’s annoying when I denote the family relationship as a name because they feel as a reader, that I as writer, think they’ve forgotten and so the repetition sounds annoying. I’m going to struggle with this for a while, I think. Jennie’s parents are going to play a role later without Jennie present, so I’m really struggling with keeping the narrator so limited that they are always ‘Papa’ and ‘Mama’ to the reader. We're in limited POV so I'm not too worried yet. I'm still confused as to why Jennie didn't tell them the Snatcher said he wasn't a Snatcher. Even if it was dismissed as another ploy - it seems like it should belong in the full briefing.Good point. That line wasn’t always there, and it impacts the way she’s thinking, so I felt there was an inconsistency there, especially with her introspective scene following after. This is rather personal, but Jennie's exclamation points are starting to grate on me. Because she says "Snatcher" a lot - it kept making me think of the girl with a really high pitched voice from the movie Prancer. I don't think they all need to be cut or anything so dramatic, but I wanted to make you aware of it.I don’t think I’ve seen Prancer since I was little, so I can’t make the connection you’re making, but if the exclamation point is overused, I want to fix it. I’ll take a look. Thanks for all the feedback, spieles!

Hi there Mandamon! pg 13: Why didn't Papa see the tracks? Did Roamwald erase his tracks? I would think even if he swept his tracks, there would be something left. Something that big can't disappear without a trace. I think the confusion here is because I didn’t allow Will enough dialogue. He’s not a long winded man, but I should have had him describe more specifically what he did see. This was a recurring problem in most of the feedback I got, so I definitely go back and clear this up. Thanks for mentioning the confusion. This entry flowed well. I didn't have a lot of comments except for the above. I'm still struggling with how a group of people that big are hard to find. As to your questions, I thought the last chapter dragged a little. We've already seen Jennie running out into the forest, and especially because she didn't find Roamwald again, it took away some of the tension for me. I was afraid of this to some extent. While musing on this and ecohansen’s comments, I’ve considered a way of collapsing the upcoming chapter into this chapter to speed things up a bit, but I’m not sure if I can fully collapse this sequence in a way that keeps the suspense completely up. I wasn't too into her chasing the sheep. I want the family to get access to more food, but at this point the tension is ramped up enough that this feels like going backward (this sort of answers your first two questions). I’m trying to connect your thoughts to see which phrase is modifying which phrase. Is the backward tension feeling about a) visiting with neighbors finding the sheep or c) chasing the sheep? I hope you mean C because I’ve got a plausible change in mind that I mentioned where I could fix that pretty quickly. Reactions to Jennie seem good enough. As I said above, I'm glad she didn't immediately hide it, but there still was some hushing up so others wouldn't hear. I guess it's best not to cause a panic until the snatcher has been verified. Yes, I wanted to evade that cliché, but I also wanted to evade the ‘nobody believes her’ cliché as well. I think I’m on thin ice (cliché!) with the reaction of the men as is. Nate listens to her seriously, but overall, they dismiss her at the end in conjunction with Will’s admission that he didn’t find actual footprints. If I shore up that dialogue, maybe have Nate repeat ask Will about what he saw in the woods after Jennie’s been shooed out of the forge house, maybe I could emphasize that Nate discounts it based on Will’s description rather than Jennie’s. I want to keep as far away from the ‘adults never listen’ thing as I can. I can tell Will knows his daughter and that she wouldn't just make up a story. I actually think the characters in the smithy might be more accepting. After all, they know Snatchers are real, so there should be some willingness to at least check out the rumor. Yeah, I think I’m going to have Nate press Will a little harder to telegraph that. Thanks Mandamon so much!

Hi there, Ecohansen! I don't remember if you've given us the exact location of the story, so I'm not sure which species of pine predominate. This is one of the recurring problems I’ve had with this manuscript, which I didn’t even realize was a problem till I started getting feedback at chapter one! I didn’t describe the setting of the valley well enough at all at the beginning of the book to have readers picture what I’m intending at all, so even if you had been around for chapter one, you’d have been just as unsure. It’s a huge problem I’ve got to fix, but judging by your submissions and commentary on it and others’ writing, maybe you can point me toward constructing correct details. Granted all of this is fantasy, so I’m not trying to exactly replicate real life ecosystems (and this is the only book in the series where nature is this important), but I’m imagining the valley set in a geography/climate similar to areas of the Appalachia. I know that’s a sweeping statement as the Appalachia spread so long and wide that there are many different sub-regions, but that’s the feel I want—a chain of mountains long enough and large enough that they could significantly impede travel for a pre-industrial society and house and separate different races and cultures. I can’t say too much on that because the history’s far more detailed than geography and I don’t want to reveal anything there as some of it’s pertinent to Roamwald himself and it’s incredibly pertinent to the plots of subsequent books. I’ve considered emulating the cove forest sub region of the Appalachia. I read that they have a lot of vegetation, but I don’t know that it would allow for a river like the kind I’m imagining, and the river is not something I can take out of the book. Of course, you’re right about the pines, and that was lazy writing on my side. I put that throwaway word in there because I wanted to make a comparison, but I live behind “The Pine Curtain” and I know very well how tall some pines can get. I’ll fix it, but the overall struggle of making the nature of the forest right persists! Dissembled rifle Is the rifle a lie? Just like the cake. I’ll fix it! “Did you see tracks?” Nate asked. “Footprints. They'd be as big as a wagon, probably.” Papa rubbed his chin. “Nothing that seemed right.”: rang false. If the dad is a trapper and woodsman, specifically looking for evidence of a large creature, he wouldn't have to think about whether he saw gigantic footprints or not, and Nate shouldn't have to explain that tracks are footprints. I realize that Roamwald doesn't leave conventional footprints, but this seems like info that would be volunteered instead of mused out. You’re right. I need to make his explanation here better. It’s important that I keep Will as an introspective character because his ability to stay calm in tense situations is needed later in the book, but he should explain more both for the reader’s sake of understanding what he did/didn’t see and for the sake of logic. “more compacted” Since we're in Jenny's POV, “compacted” seems too contemporary and technical. Maybe something like “hard and smooshed together” instead. Hm, compacted does seem very scientific. I’ll try out something else there. Tied to a large cut chunk of tree: How did giant Roamwald tie a knot in a tiny rope with a struggling sheep on the other end? He must have very, very dexterous hands... That is a good question. Yeah. A real good question. This plot point is eight years old now, and I’ve never, ever thought about it quite like that. I mean, I used to tie knot while sewing with tiny thread by rolling them back and forth between my fingers until it formed its own messy knot, but that wouldn’t work on a sheep because you need a loop. I don’t know knot-making, but I would guess he would need the kind of knot that makes a loose loop which he would make before touching the sheep and then slide the knot down the rope toward the sheep’s neck second. Also, spoiler: On the other hand, a tied rope is a much better option than a pen, since there's no way you could use whole trees to build a pen that would keep sheep in. I'm assuming that when Roamwald stole the sheep, the rope was already tied to its neck (why?), so maybe he could just use a large rock/ small boulder to weight down the opposite end of the rope. --And by the way, do we eventually learn the sheep's backstory? SPOILER. They had ruined in their own tracks: Huh? Unless 'ruining in' is a tracking term I'm not familiar with, I don't know what's going on here. Given how snowy everything is, it shoulld be very easy for her to follow her tracks home. Even if she did a lot of small sidetrips, it shouldn't be hard for her to find the overall path. I fixed the typo of the ruining ‘in’ bit, but I’ve got an idea after reading everyone’s comments and ruminating on them a couple days of a better way for Jennie to get lost that will speed up the pace in these chapters and hopefully resolve some other issues other folks pointed out at the same time. Strangely enough, I actually have chased a goat across snowy ground before, and finding my way back wasn't a problem at all. The goat acted as a bit of a snowplow... Maybe if you had it start to actually snow, you could explain that she was worried that the snow would fill the tracks before anyone could backtrack and find the sheep. This is a good idea I was considering until I thought of a way to compact a later event into this one and speed up a sequence I’ve always been afraid was a bit draggy (and several people agreed with that suspicion so I know for sure I need to do something) Since you asked about realism with the sheep, […] The Welsh mountain sheep never went on walks, but they were even more stubborn than the goats. They were actually pretty strong and formidable creatures. This is a fantastic detail…the kind of thing that only someone who’d worked with the animals in daily life would have ever noticed (and not the kind of thing people mention in expository books). Thanks for building my background knowledge! Also, there's a reason goat's milk is more common than sheep's milk: dairy goats can be productive for about 10 months of the year, but dairy sheep can only produce for about three months after the lamb is weaned. Therefore, there's a good chance that the sheep will eat their winter stores without providing milk for very long, even if she is producing at the moment. And sheep are pickier eaters than goats are. I'm not sure if a family on the edge of starvation would want a sheep for anything except meat.... Also something I had no clue about. Thanks again for new knowledge and insights! Thanks so much for all the comments, reactions, and knowledge—and for jumping in to the story so many chapters in. /k

Glad I didn't ask for any...

Hey there Robinski, Chapter 10 & 11: I took your advice about chapter ten and (after slimming everything in this sequence down as much as I could) I put in a description at the beginning of chapter 11 (was the second half of 10 when you read it) where I noted in brief who all the characters were. So far, nobody's mentioned any problem with the men, so I think (thus far!) your suggestion got that problem fixed. Re: Fraud Are you a fraud or did you just eat the cake while it was still batter? Besides, your input's benefiting everyone else as I'm trying to dig out the boulders before submitting here (not to mention all the annoying typo-pebbles).

This review's going to be short, but honestly, in some ways it's a lot harder to give than some long reviews I've done. Last week, there were some quirks in the narrative that stood out as sequences of text that need to be fixed, but those problems have gone deeper in this submission rather than going away. The things that I didn't care for about Moon and Salane have become their defining features in this next chapter, making me dislike both of them. Eclipse himself has gotten such a varied description between Moon's dialogue previously and then his rather blah presence in the scene that I'm not interested in him at all anymore. The magic system is still interesting, and the promise of an interesting world to adventure through sounds great, but delving into a fantasy book with characters that annoy me isn't going to keep me going. I thought last week, perhaps, that your characters were going to have weaknesses inherent to being young, naiive, and self-absorbed, but the author was going to keep that in check somehow, but I'm not sensing that anymore. By the time Moon and Salane were bickering/whining at each other about how to get down at the end of the chapter, I was done with the characters. I scanned through the comments other people had left already on the board to see if the next chapter improved, but it seems that it's an exbo-bomb, so I checked out. This is hard feedback for me to leave, but it's honest and constructive. If you work Moon into an interesting character and make Salane not whiny and weak or at least make their flaws feel purposeful, then I'd come back to the story, but right now this is not something I'd keep reading. Characters are the biggest thing for me in a book and they've crossed over the line into do-not-like territory. Keep writing. Just because I don't like this iteration doesn't mean revisions can't turn it into something I'd give a very different of.