Mandamon

Thanks @Silk and @Ace of Hearts! Noted. I'll fix. I think you're right on this, and great example. Legacy was brutal! I had no idea that much time would be covered when I started reading, and it ended up being a bit of an inspiration for this book (except this one's half as long, or less). Adding some more of that in will help. I just mentioned missing something in last week's submission. That's a good idea for an endcap to that arc. Looks like I need to add a bit more background. They're basically out of metals at this point because they've used more than that wanted on protective plates and haven't found any sources yet. Can do. Thanks again!

Thanks @Ace of Hearts! As usual, great comments on the sciencey/DNA side. That will help a lot with edits. I think you have a great idea there--I need to make the "virus" aspect clearer from the biomass rather than fungal, even though that's more what it looks like. I thought about that as I was reading this over. I think I might need to add a bit more at the beginning about family life on the ship to justify this. That would also give A&D a little more time at the beginning of the book. I agree. I'm not quite satisfied with this chapter arc. I'll ponder on what to add.

A bit slow on replies this week. I'd love to submit the rest of chapter 7 next week, and then people can read the whole thing.

Definitely. I'll need to rearrange this book somewhat on the first edit. As it should! Yeah, I need to edit this section, and I know I need to. I was hoping feedback would help me figure out where, and I think it has. Thanks! Heh. Me too. Good catch. I'll elaborate. Noted. This is only half the full chapter, and this will be addressed in the next one, but I agree this ending is a little weak. Thanks @kais!

Thanks @kais I'll probably need to catch up with you on explanations for this when I make edits... Yep! Thank you! I'm sure I will need more of this... Mainly the structural component (though it's also the author ignorance component...). I wanted something that was very high structural strength and something the mat couldn't really get hold of (like a non-porous material), and also they have NO other materials available. There will be some more of this next chapter (sub 9), so let me know if it makes more sense there.

Thanks to @Silk, @C_Vallion, and @Sarah B! Gotta keep the colony protected! I can't remember if it's before or after this, but I have a statement with some of the experience he had fighting on Earth. The were upgraded right before they left, but were soldiers before then. Great thoughts on A! I don't know if this section came off as well as it hoped. It is a bit rambly, and was sort of an experiment anyway. But the hints about mental stability and the implant seems to have landed. It won't be a descent into madness, but A will definitely see some changes. I don't think I've followed up on the theme with the other Vagals, so that's something I need to work on in the edits. Great that you have some experience with prosthetics! Thanks for all the detail. I'll tweak this section a bit so he's not self-adjusting as much. There is a scene later in the book where another person works on it. Good information about the timing as well. Some I can chalk up to accelerated healing with nanomedical procedures, but I'll look at the timeline closer. More will be made clear in the next chapter! Good point. It seems J's sections work, but maybe not back-to-back with A. I can adjust that. I really enjoy her story here... I believe I've gotten that comment before... Thanks! Great comments, and thanks again to everyone. Looking forward to how the next chapter is received...

This is the first half of chapter 7, and we're almost halfway through the book. from here on, the passage of time will speed up a bit, skipping months, and later even years, so I'm interested how it reads! Let me know what you think, and as usual, any and all comments are welcome: plot, setting, character, grammar, etc.

I'd love a spot for Monday the 28th, for the first half of Chapter 7!

Much stronger plot this time around! It helps to hook me in a lot better, especially as we also have the character study with S and Z. We also get an immediate cool bit of worldbuilding with the crystals. Explaining the purple one deepens the mystery for the red one. S and Z play off each other well, and we get the inverted stereotypes of a large butch woman and a small effeminate man without all the discussion about heritage and intersex. The one thing I noted at the end was that S doesn't have a lot of reaction to the palace being attacked. Is this like a "bring down the monarchy coup" sort of attack or "we damaged the third guest wing" kind of attack? 1) Yes! Some of the prose is clunky, but that's nothing a good edit won't fix. 2) It's not as strong as it could be, but it's in the right direction. I had a note on that below. If they go to the R.A. and see one of the refugees being beaten there, and then find a body later, that would be a lot stronger. Looking forward to more! Notes while reading: pg 1: Might split the first sentence into two. pg 1: "Right in the back corner of the room where she said she was going to be in that mysterious note that showed up in S’s room earlier that day." --there's a lot of very long explanatory sentences in the first two paragraphs. Cutting adverbs and separating sentences will make it flow better. pg 3: This is flowing a lot smoother than before and definitely has more plot along with character building. I think another pass on the prose will tighten things up a lot. pg 4: Good. We have a goal for S. pg 4: "couldn’t afford to weaken itself even in the name of justice." --interesting. Seems S is against changes to the system here, but I thought he was for it before. pg 5: "The angel himself stood on a raised platform in the center of the square" --well, he's certainly easier to find this time around. pg 6: "This is what S needed to protect." --good stakes. pg 7: “It’s not, and I don’t want this blood money.” --Doesn't sound like it's that bad...isn't it donations from the wealthy (under duress...)? --Edit: explained satisfactorily later. pg 9: "He explained before that he was no closer to being culturally Sh. than any other X. despite his mother’s heritage and the splotches of lighter skin across his body that marked it." --a bit awkward. pg 12: "The R.A. doesn’t beat down on the refugees himself" --Wait...wasn't he giving out money to the refugees? Or were they the poor people of the city, but not these refugees? Not entirely clear. pg 13: glad to get some explanation of the crystals and gods. But that also makes the murder scene suspicious. Z found the scene and preserved it for S, but I thought the beatings happened near the R.A.? I guess Z did contact S, however, so that makes sense. pg 15: Maybe needs some more reaction from S that the palace is being attacked? Is Z starting a coup while S is here? pg 16: no other thought on how the palace is currently being attacked? I'm wondering what Z's lover has done.

Thanks @Ace of Hearts! Yeah, I think this is a promise I'm making, and I need to make it clearer that this will happen over the course of the trilogy, not necessarily in this book. One of the parts I'm trying to highlight is that everyone knows they need to build the city or they will literally die. I hate scifi books where characters undermine the very structure keeping them alive, and I wanted to turn that on its head here. But I think I need to make that clearer for the reader. I think a combination of this with the above comment on the gen/admin conflict will help a lot. I think I need to add a sub-plot about that through the book which will both give J something to do and make the conflict with the Gens more obvious. Very good suggestion, and that's probably where C's arc needs to go.

Congrats on putting this out there for us to chew up! It's a big step forward toward a finished story.... General opinions on setting: The setting doesn't matter to much to me, and I've seen plenty of superhero stories set outside of New York. That said, Australia's a nice change, so I'd say go for it. I've never been, so I can't tell you if you captured it. I think @Silk has, though? So first off, the first chapter is so different from the rest I'd call it a prologue. I was interested in the character, but I guess he got killed at the end. I was hoping to see him pop up later, but if not, I'm not sure what the point was compared to the rest of the story. As to the other chapters, looking at what happens in the rest of chapter 3, I think you could easily nix the other POVs at the beginning of this story and focus only on Z. That would give a lot of time to build his character and become attached, so we are "taken along" when he's kidnapped. Right now I didn't have any more attachment to him than to the others, and I don't really know where the story is going. Expanding on the character side might also give you some more content to write. Hope this helps! Notes while reading: pg 1: large description in the second and third paragraphs. I'd prefer some character building rather than descriptions right off pg 1: "They had neglected" --who? This is vague. pg 2: don't really need a description on how electronic information can be in a small package . pg 2: "an apparently unprofessional, but still lethal place" --not sure what this means. pg 2: Okay...wondering if M is dead since it's sort of strange to have a POV character die in the first chapter. pg 4: I'm waiting for this to get to the point by now. We've got a lot of description about this new character, but he hasn't done anything yet so I'm not connected to him. pg 5: okay, I guess he's getting superpowers? The first chapter was a lot more interesting to me. pg 6: the flashback doesn't really move anything forward for me. The resolution of the fight is given in the present, so could the whole thing be in "real time" or could he just sum up the fight rather than having a flashback? pg 6: Another kid getting powers, but I'm not sure where this is going yet. In the first chapter, there seemed to be fulyl developed powers already out in the world. Why are kids getting powers a big thing? pg 6: “Lemonade?” --nice transition. pg 7: We now have four different POVs in 6 pages. I'm not sure where this is going because I can't attach to any one character. pg 8: +1 for queer content, but now five POVs? pg 9: Well at least this is a repeat POV, but I'm having trouble remembering which kid this was. pg 10: so there's some good character building through here, but I'm still not sure where the story is going.

Thanks to @shatteredsmooth, @C_Vallion, @Silk, and @Sarah B. The current running theory is this ended up in spam because I sent it from Iceland? *shrugs* Yep! Those are plants. I'm glad everyone's pretty much enjoying the biomass POV, with a few tweaks. I can make those few points clearer. It's so much fun trying to look at the colony as a completely alien thing and then dissecting it. I think this tension is coming along well? A's arc in this book is not actually a very positive one so I'm hoping this sort of creeping uncertainty comes across well. I'm having a lot of fun with her in the second book, though! C knows many things. Agree with both of these. I think I need to put a few more problems in front of J to solve. For the second part of this, I'm wondering how well this is coming across. This was modeled heavily on my experience with incompetent management, so J is supposed to be proactive, but not sympathetic or competent. She's in many ways the villain of this story. That said, C is almost a Mary Sue. They are (hopefully) proactive, competent, and sympathetic. It's definitely a tongue-in-cheek commentary on society, but I'm wondering if I'm going too subtle with it. Thoughts? Doh. Thanks. Yep! It will go far beneath the ground as well. That might be a good idea. I think this and the previous chapter probably need the most editing on the next draft. I wondered if anyone would catch this! Yes, it is very quick. They're near the equator, so it's a year-round growing season, and they started plants as soon as they landed. I'm assuming some handwavy future fertilizer too. C's name is actually a current Dutch name, and I liked the way it sounded ;-) Thanks all!

Here is the second half of chapter 6, in which thoughts are thunk, fruit is investigated, and connections are missed. Note, the first half of this, which went out last week, might have ended up in your spam folder? Let me know what you think, and as usual, any and all comments are welcome: plot, setting, character, grammar, etc.

Seems like it's pretty quiet around here, but I'd like to submit the other half of this chapter next week, and hope to get some more eyes on it!

Hello from Iceland! We're coming back from our trip in a couple days, but I wanted to keep up with submissions. This is half of chapter 6, and I'm wondering if it may address some of the concerns that came up last chapter having to do with conflict in the colony and what the biomass is doing. Let me know what you think, and as usual, any and all comments are welcome: plot, setting, character, grammar, etc.

Hoping to submit half of the next chapter on Monday the 14th! I'll still be traveling, so I might be a little late/early/who knows.

Thanks @kais! Excellent feedback as always. Yeah, I think this is one of the weaker ones. And don't worry--the biomass is the POV at the top of the next chapter! Check. Probably the lack of the emotional layer editing. I actually had notes in the text to ask you about this part, so... Ha! Okay, so this and all the notes on the fungus are excellent. I'll probably need to send specific parts your way for error checking. That said, there's also stuff I want this to do that fungi can't do (like growing on water, and potentially in people) since its not actually the same as terrestrial fungi. Maybe we can devise some handwavy things that still make sense scientifically. I'll ping you about it when I'm doing edits on this one. Thanks again!

Thanks @Silk! Lol. Yes, everyone's in suits. I'll make that clear. Ah. Maybe I need to add something here. I was intending, since they need to build all sorts of infrastructure for a city, both above and below ground needs to be cleared, to a certain depth. Nope. Another good catch. I realized later in the book I hadn't showed enough of the biomass. I'll add more in on the next edit. Yes! Great feedback and that helps me with what's missing through here. The emotional layer usually comes in the second draft for me, so this is a great place to add in that interconnection. Another good point and something I need to clarify sooner. Lol. I'm sure it's fine. Good comments. I need to add in more here to connect this with the last section and show healing injuries. Per my outline, this is only about 3 weeks later, so she's definitely still going to be feeling things. I may need to move this around. Yeah, I was going for a combination of genetics and environmental pressures from space. It's been about 14 generations. Don't know if that's accurate or possible. Good catch. I'll add a bit. I think this is going to be a big part of the next edit. I'm writing the second book now and starting to find some setup lacking, so I'm going to go back to this one and edit as I find more spots like this and get more feedback.

I'm going to hold off this week as I'll be traveling to Iceland (yay!) for my first real vacation in two years. I will try to read submissions, but will probably be late. I'll be back next week...

Thanks @C_Vallion! Great feedback. Yep, this was bugging me as I wrote it, so I'll add some support to either why he forgot it or some other reason to make him think it wasn't a big deal. I can make this clearer. I was intending to show that they brought down their own water, but are planning on having losses since they're not in a contained environment (the ships) any longer and that along with an expanding population means they will need more. For instance, just watering crops will consume most of their water stores. Will do. There's a lot more on this later. A little bit of both. This will get explored more, but I can also make it clearer earlier. Thanks!

Check. I think most have said to cut this down, so I'll focus on that. Got it. Can do. Yes, this is about the point I realized I needed some more description earlier in the story. That will be in the next edit. I'll also work on that! Thanks @C_Vallion!

Perfect. I like this idea. I'm fine with some handwaving, since this is alien DNA, so maybe there's a different sort of virus recombination, a bit more complex than RNA, that could actively edit the DNA to allow it to perform complex functions? I love this as well! My intention is that yes, this organism can splice out parts it doesn't like. As long as it's cool enough and at least passes a squint test by someone familiar with genetics, I'm good. Cool. Yes, this is sort of the case. The Admins and Vagals are almost mythical, so there is a sort of reverence that will have to play out before the gens actively start resisting. I'll keep this in mind for further edits. Thanks again for the extra help!

Excellent feedback, @Ace of Hearts! So you've sort of guessed at a couple things I plan to do with the biomass, one of which is already in the novelette in Distant Gardens that comes after this book, and some others sort of come later in this one and in book 2, which I'm writing now! Thanks so much for the rundown on genetic material. I know about enough to be wrong about it, so that explanation will help shore up this section. I'm interested what you think of the rest of the book, though I imagine there won't be enough tension for you. I can replace some of the slow sections in this and the last chapter with more of a buildup. What I want to do with this is show that these people are smart enough to know that they have to all depend on each other to build the city because they literally have no one else. More of this conflict will come in the next two books, though. Quick note on general genetics stuff with the biomass: It can definitely communicate across areas, which is what makes it resistant to change. What I'm hoping to show (eventually) is that the biomass has basically a lot of DNA strands and types, but can actively choose which part is expressed, meaning it can have fast growth and change (like bacteria) but can also develop complex systems when needed. Do you think that's something that could work? I might get you and Kais to look at specific genetics sections of the whole book, if that's ok, to see if they're realistic.

Congrats on submitting! It takes a lot to put your work out there. I think your prose is good and it's easy to read. I didn't notice any typos, so that's a good first step. This seems to be a fairly generic fantasy, with no real mention of where it's happening, what sort of people are fighting, or why. I'm not really drawn in yet because as yet there's nothing in the worldbuilding to catch my attention. You do have a good character and are already building some backstory, which is excellent! That's a good way to have readers connect with the story. The problem is, I don't really like G. He's whiny, he has no experience, he's pulled around by B once any action starts, and he doesn't have any reason for me to cheer for him. Writing Excuses had a great episode on "Character Sliders" several years back, where you can imagine three aspects of a character: Sympathy, Competence, and Proactivity. A character will all three levers all the way up will be an unstoppable self-insert. However if all the levers are down, there's no reason to like the character. It's good to have some mix. Right now, I have a little sympathy for G, but his "Competent" and "Proactive" sliders are all the way down. Changing this around a little will make it easier for the reader to connect. Hope this helps! Notes while reading: Pg 1: pretty good opening paragraph! The only thing I'd say is to add specifics. Maybe one or two words about where this fight will be. pg 1: watch the adverb usage. There are a bunch in the first few paragraphs. pg 1: "How could he survive any violence, let alone lead a hundred men into raging battle?" --aha, here's the thing he's doing. Maybe move this to the first paragraph. pg 1: oh, there are other people here too! pg 2: "Apparently, the people of this country extracted a sweet nectar from these trees, which they insisted on drizzling over every meal." --oh no! They're attacking Canada! pg 2: "G shook his head and returned to admiring the leaf in his hand" --starting to go off into the weeds here. pg 3: bit of a maid-and-butler here with the two discussing G's past, that they both know about. pg 5: They've talked about leaves and a ten-year-old fist fight for three pages now... pg 8: I don't have a lot of sympathy for G yet, and he's not competent, or proactive. He's just sort of a weenie. pg 12: "Next to them, one of the newcomers began to protest," --I had to go back to find when others joined them. There's a couple sentences about them, but all the talking sounds like it's just G and B, so it's a surprise when one of the others speaks. pg 12: "“Is that they will be looking for G" --Do they know who G is? Have they ever seen him? Is he dressed differently?

Thanks @shatteredsmooth and @Sarah B! Great feedback. This will help me add some more detail. I suspect part of this is due to different reading styles and not as many people reading hard scif-fi as much, so I'll see what other opinions folks have. That said, looking back on this chapter, I think it's one of the weakest in the book, so this is a good place to shore up with some extra action or drama. Maybe something with the upper and lower class tensions. I hope so! Let me know what you think as we get there!