Mandamon

Hello all, Here is a new version of chapter 3. The last bit is split off into its own chapter and I've put a little more into Origon's development. Looking for: -Does Origon work better as a character? -Does this chapter have a better arc? -Anything else you see

I think I have chapter 3 revised enough to submit next week...

Yay! Congrats! Heh--just tell me where.

I wasn't particularly pulled in by this chapter. I think you have Petro's reactions, as a 12yo, down fairly well, especially some of his thought patterns. However, these folks are all terrified of what sounds like projectiles in general, so I'm not giving high marks to the society they come from. Still unsure about "the girl" and what bearing she has on things. I would think Landon could drop a few hints, especially since the two men come up suddenly. Talk of "the girl" as a goal seems to come from nowhere. pg 1: "Farm. Fence. Farm. The two landmarks..." --Is his Uncle spinning him around in a circle by his foot? That's the only thing I can think of here. In any case, having some trouble on the blocking in the first paragraph. pg 2: "Uncle Landon" --we finally get a name here. "His uncle" was getting a little tiring. pg 2: "His uncle had sharp angular cheeks like a beggar" --do beggars have angular cheeks? This seems an odd generalization pg 3: "bulk of blacksmiths or street toughs" --blacksmiths I can believe, because they train in a particular way. "Street thugs" I sort of put in the same category as "beggars" pg 3: "all he saw was the thing part" --thin? pg 6: "Paladar" --is this Landon? pg 6: "but turned back when a bolt thudded into the ground by my mare’s hoof.” --they seemed to turn back pretty easily pg 6: "“Stop that!” he cursed under his breath. --not a curse pg 7: "Them weapons need to be banned" --crossbows? reassessing time period... pg 8: “Projectiles.” Landon cursed." Not really believing that projectile weapons are unknown or rare. Even before bows and arrows, we had stone throwers and atlatls. pg 8: "No way he could have reloaded in time" --This tells me he's afraid of the type of weapon, not that they are projectiles in general. Might need clarification of what they're afraid of. pg 10: "We’ll know if they have bolters watching when I get close.” --by getting shot? pg 11: "Uncle's white cape" I don't think this has been mentioned before now, or any clothing, really. pg 11: "He’s harder to hit when he moves like that, right kid?" --yeah, still don't believe they're so unfamiliar with weapons that leave the hand, unless there's some particular worldbuilding reason, and I'd want to know that. Also, don't they have shields, if they have swords? Those will defend against projectiles. pg 13: "And then Petro stumbled and fell forward." --lol pg 14: "In the field, if you make a mistake" --isn't this...the field? I mean they're going after some unknown assailants in a canyon, after all. I was wondering this too. I don't see any connection between the two chapters.

@Robinski - random thought, since a couple of us had this same problem: Is there any reason Grimes needs to be male?

I'll be there!

Yep--I have this same problem.

Noted. I think this one in particular threw me off because it had less connection to an expression. I had to read it twice before I realized it referred to the smile.

Should be getting my signed copy fairly soon!

Heh--still having trouble with this myself in LBL comments. I think it works in the book, but I've had to come up with some creative phrasing while commenting!

First, glad to see the story is picking up already. I'm interested to see how Quirk and Moth get along/hate each other. Like Eagle says, not quite sure why Quirk was picked, but I guess he was in the neighborhood. I was also confused on going from 7.8 to 2.86. Seems a big jump from 50 to 20 million. After all, Toni wants Quirk to take good care of his niece, and he's not going to be using the money, is he? Quirk could just chain up Moth, and swab some spit from her when he needs it. Quirk's voice seemed a bit off in this chapter from the previous ones. He's under more stress obviously, but I don't think his personality comes through as well, especially in choice of words. Even when in a bad place, he's charming in the first few chapters. Here he sounds like more of a standard con/lowlife. Pg 2: The comparisons to the fancy hotel don't really work for me. More, I'm just getting confused wondering which one you're referring to, and what this has to do with anything. Pg 3: Lots of adverbs and modifiers in the first few paragraphs. pg 3: "This breathing quickened" --his? pg 5: "Toni sighed the coughed" --somthing missing pg 8: "It’s coded into her saliva gland, absorbed through the dermis.” --uhhhhh....this leads to a lot of unpleasant connotations. pg 12: "never sorry for bring that thing into the world." --bringing Pg 12: is the envelope at the end supposed to be the one from the dead drop? Confused. Pg 12: "Quirk smiled, rueful 2.0" --had to read this a couple times to understand it. You only used this type of thing once before.

Thanks @Robinski! The new timeline (which I'm going to be doing this week instead of submitting) is that Ori gets Ril, but they take Sam directly to the starmap. Then the idea for apprenticing hits, which leads to the Council, I'm hoping this will work better for the chapter arcs, and also be cleaner on the worldbuilding. Should be able to tighten things up too. Re: Sam being constantly surprised, yes I want to skip over some of the OMG-what-is-that-alien moments to clarify the plot, but I also don't want to shut him down as I explore the anxiety issue. Ugh. It's a delicate balance. Eno = girl vs woman. Yeah, not decided on this. I just had 17yo nephew up to visit, and I still think of him as a boy. But I also don't want to be derogatory. I'm hoping "woman" and "man" will help age the younger characters up a bit vs. "girl" and "boy." Maybe I'll have to bite the bullet and go with "young [gender]," though I don't like that term as much. Sounds too formal to me.

Lol. That's where the cheese comes from!

If it helps, think of this more as Mid-Eastern or Indian varieties of yogurt. Usually spiced, sometimes drinkable. Yogurt is actually pretty old--about 7000 years!

Usually Amazon will link everything together after a few days. If not, email their support and they're pretty quick to fix things.

Thanks @rdpulfer! Yes-they have yogurt. They have dairy, so other byproducts are bound to happen!

Like @kaisa and @Ernei, I thought the writing was better here, but nothing in the story really caught my interest. I also didn't catch this at all. The end of the story just felt sort of unfinished, and I wasn't sure what the italicized parts had to do with the rest of the story. Notes as I read: pg 1: "pulse of the bar" --I think you mean bar=tavern here, but based on this and that it's close to snapping, you could be referring to a physical bar, especially since you use it that way a page or so later. pg 2: "silence a room full of men double her twenty-three years into silence" --redundancy pg 2: "She stuck out like a sore thumb, except it was squarely jammed into their metaphorical eyes. Getting a thumb jammed into your eye hurt, Ariane knew from too much experience." --eh...this is a bit of a stretch in the metaphor department. pg 2: the narrative is wandering here. I don't yet have a good hook to the story. pg 3: Not sure why A. goes directly to punching when a guy asked her to buy him a drink. pg 4: "Get up, and you’ll die.” --yeah...this seems extreme. I mean the guy was probably a jerk, but at this point he only asked if she would buy him a drink. I would think the first step would be to say "no." pg 5: still not really hooked on anything. I don't have an attachment to any of the characters yet. pg 6: “They’ve been preying on the North for decades at this point.” --so did she know the guy was a member of The Black Ice before she tried to kill him? pg 10: “But, this means that I’m alpha. Deal?” --note sure why A is obsessed with this. Aren't the wolves a pack on their own? Why do they need a new alpha? pg 12: “You feeling this is too easy?” --Yes. There's not a lot of tension because they're getting over every obstacle easily. pg 12: "But you reached for your weapons first." --have to agree with the goons here. Random people walked into their cave. They are right to be surprised and hostile. pg 14: still don't get much tension from this. A takes out the group too easily.

I seem to have similar comments to the others. I was also thrown by the dialogue in the first section, sort of confused in general as to why things were happening, and similarly put off by the cop woman's description, like @kaisa. I got that the miner was the same as in the first chapter, but not really sure what the interlude was doing there. The last section with G was better, but I thought the pace dragged a little, especially in the recollection, until right at the end. Also some confusion on which was G's first and last name. I'm assuming G is the last name? pg 3: "“Don’t worry, sir, madam,” the police woman nodded to the donna." --wait, what's going on? I was with you until now. why is the police officer randomly accosting the short man? pg 4: "“I think I must leave you here..." --and then the donna just leaves him. Seems unconcerned about the man waving his arms. Are they connected? pg 5: "“Ah’m a gay, Italo-Nigerian police officer " ...what now? This is getting weird. Is Q there illegally? How did the officer know? Why is no one responding to the strangeness of the situation? pg 6: "With a broad smile, she reached up to her collar and switched off her copcam, then touched the other lapel, probably her audio recorder" --so confused. pg 7: Okay, so Tony wants to see Q. I am still very unsure of why the police officer had to go through all that to arrest him. Still not sure what the short man had to do with things. pg 7: "massive dick of the private variety" --lol pg 8: Hmmm...the interlude with Mr. C is interesting, but not sure what it has to do with anything tacked on to the end of Q's chapter. I'm sure 65 days earlier has some significance, but I'm not picking it up yet. pg 9-10: G reminiscing: good character building, but it slows down the pace considerably. It's also restating a lot of the action from the last chapter, which is redundant. I'm not sure G actually gains any information in the scene. pg 12: Is G's first name Paxton, or last? if first, then why does he think of himself by last name? Pg14-5: ok, was getting a little bored from the talk of trade deals, but you certainly spiced it up at the end!

Yep-keep catching these. I'm trying to transition out of boy/girl which is used as a derogatory by the maji to apprentices, but I think also ages the characters down. This will get cleaned up in later drafts. Hm...no, left S and C to get settled, but may need more transition here. Interesting. You'll definitely get a lot more of the political side in the next few chapters. I think @Hobbit was the other way and bounced off the politics but was concerned about Earth. Both are themes. Hopefully that's good and means this will attract a larger section of readers? *shrug* Thanks @Ernei! A little different, based on your feedback, so thanks for the re-read @kaisa! Seems I need to address this more. I'm hoping if I rearrange this earlier I can jump over some of the infodumping. Agree. There's more on this later, but need to bring even more forward a few chapters. I'm also hoping rearranging will help this. Heh--just finished a fight scene with R in Ch 10 that hopefully dispels some of this.

I agree. It also doesn't make the reader potentially run to look up the word.

Hello all, Here is chapter 5, with the 3rd POV for the book, and Sam dealing with finding his home (With another anxiety attack). The first half of the chapter until the ellipsis is anxiety free. NOTE: based on comments so far, I think I'm going to mix up parts of Ch3-6 to make the story flow better, but I still would like comments on how this chapter fits in with the whole so far. Previously: Ch1: Sam gets very cold, loses his aunt, and gets sucked through a hole Ch2: Sam has a big freakout at the new world he's in, meets a strange alien Ch3: Origon is baffled by Earth, Sam has a trip through the Imperium Ch4: Sam rides a tram. Origon talks to the Council and takes an apprentice Looking for: -Connection to new characters and POV. -Is Sam's anxiety believable? -Does this answer questions about Earth vs. the Nether and homeworlds? -anything else you see

Thanks @Robinski! Good catches. I'm not sure where the underline came from... Sam age/size: He's 17-19 in this version (I haven't fixed it exactly). He's fairly normal height, but Kirians are taller than humans. Probably need to go back and make sure I'm not aging him down too much when they meet. The anxiety does make him seem younger, I feel, so I need to watch how I handle that. Council villains: Heh--yeah, I have way too much sadistic glee writing Freshta. It is partly Pixie mentality that they're vicious, but I don't want it to come out cartoonish. Based on comments on Ch3-4, I have an idea how to rearrange these and chapter 5 to help the flow, and I think it will help the councilors as well.

Very helpful, both @neongrey and @Hobbit! Yep. This will be changing. Just need to find a new name. I'll work on punching this up a bit. Sounds like the biggest problems are in character voice and lots of information in this chapter. This and a couple parts further on at first seemed too unreasonable to me, but then given the current state of our government...*shrugs* Hmmm...this might be a problem going forward. Sam's goal right now is definitely to get back home, though he doesn't know how. There's a fairly large section of the next chapter that might help with your concerns. Let me know what your thoughts are after you get to the end of Chapter 5. Regardless, this chapter and the one before might need to get compressed into one to get to that point sooner. Alternately, I could switch the order of events, which might make Sam's objective clearer.

Oh, wow. Yeah, that's a Stormlight Archive length book. Need to cut that down to about 150k at the very most to make it viable for a first time author, through agented channels, and even then only in epic fantasy. Other fantasy limits is around 120k. You could also make it multiple books.

That would help a whole lot. I completely missed that this was a thing. I think we've only seen Savae do magic, Lasila's one time, and the dress magic? Might not be remembering everything. If we see a few other characters doing magic, even if it's expensive, that will demonstrate that it is a common thing. Hmmm...good point. I was going from what I remembered, and the submission with her bout with magic was several months ago, so might be WRS. I might be equating that she couldn't repeat it and is worried about it as "denying." A sentence or two about how she remembers how performing the magic felt, even though she can't repeat it, might serve to shore up the reader's impression.