Mandamon

First off, notes I made while reading: pg 1: "An icy current surged up from Willow's stomach, rippling over her skin." The opening line is a little strange. I thought at first you meant she was in water, with the icy current. pg 2: I'm interested in who/what made the footprint, and why it's a source of fear. pg 3: "more afoot" -haha. Not sure if that's meant to be a pun... Also not sure yet why Willow didn't just tell them about the footprint. There's not a good reason yet for her not to. pg 3: Ok, giants. You answered my question a few sentences later. pg 3: "Old folk were herding children toward mine while men and women ran across the dusty courtyard" --missing word? pg 3: "Willow feigned confusion, but her body rang out a warning." Something seemed off with this line. You've done something similar in a couple other places. The line is very generic. What warning and how did her body show it? pg 5: after the break, I thought you went into Olga's POV for a few lines, especially with "but for Olga it seemed as if a new heaviness were pressing down her." Then you go back to Willow's POV. pg 5: "turned to find her stood" --she pg 6: "vibrating through whole body until" --missing a word. This whole paragraph has some awkward sentences. pg 7: Olga's sympathy is very sudden. You have Willow thinking she's a stern, strong woman, and then she's crying and making promises. I'm not sure the reason why. As the others said, this is a very solid start. There's obviously a lot of history around the giants. To not be able to even touch a footprint is pretty extreme, so I'm wondering what history is involved. It's a good hook. The religion, magic, and giants are connected in some way, so I'm interested to see how. I'm guessing part of this will be the traditional apprentice/master dynamic with Olga and Willow, but without yet knowing anything about the magic, I can't guess much further than that. You mention briefly that Olga can defend the village with gift, but that could happen in many ways. Your characters are also good, but might be extreme in some cases? Willow often lies and then thinks better of it. It's a solid personality trait, but once she says something, it's as if she can never change it. Is there some other reason for this? I didn't see one so far. It seems excessive. Finally, there's a few places where you have some odd word choices when writing: "foul scar running onto her face" "A dull crack split through her jaw" "An icy current surged up from Willow's stomach" But overall, well written. I look forward to reading more.

I liked this submission. It has some energy to it, except when Rutland starts pondering street names or ultimate morals. And we get Sabine. I find mysef wanting to read more about her instead of Judith, merely because she's more interesting. Looking forward to what happens next! I'm wondering who will find Judith first... Notes: pg 1 "He moved of briskly" --off pg 1: the section with plotting ways to travel gets the point across, but it's also a bit too technical. Yes, it's what he would think, but I don't really care what the street names are. pg 2: "Burt" = But pg 2: "She must cross the grounds at Christ’s Pieces, or at least skirt them, he would go there, perhaps ahead of her, and wait." --big run-on sentence. pg 2: "He would not search for Judith, but for Tarquin." Why? Maybe it's weekly reading syndrome, but is he sure Tarquin will come for Judith? pg 4: okay...there are a lot of street names in this entry... And Sabine. I'm glad she popped up to twist this a new direction. You do a good job of crazy with her. pg 9: Rutland's internal monolgue here might be a little too deep. I had to read it twice to understand what he was thinking about. Got lost a little in the middle. pg 11: "Are you finished your pondering yet, Rutland? It’s very boring, you must realise." --Good old Sabine. Right to the point.

I think everyone had the same problems with this one, which is actually a good thing. As gwslow notes, I totally fluffed the place where I should have explained what Mulberries do... Also, good catches on the problems with timing, and on teleporting as a concept. That's why we have alpha readers!

Here are the comments I made while reading. Supersoup has a lot of good points. I didn't mark it down while reading, but I also enjoyed Hades' relationship with death and the afterlife now vs. in the past. I don't think the first chapter was too long, but I can see points where your readers might not have liked it as much. But that's what you're here for! I think this can easily be a strong entry if you work on the problem that your readers note, but also make sure you keep the parts that everyone likes. Some notes: pg 1: "My realization didn’t stop the shrill ringing sound however. I turned on the light and saw the source of ringing." --repetition of "ringing" pg 1: "Relieved as I was that he was no longer engaged in the acts Charon had so aptly described" --not sure if this was a mythological reference we were supposed to get, or something you're explaining later. There is lots of "name dropping" of gods and demi-gods on the first page. pg 1: "And I do mean all three of them.” The three dogs looked up from their bed to me with temporary interest before even they laid they laid back down and fell asleep. " --Eh? There's only one Cerebrus. I assume you're going to explain later, but it's a little confusing here. pg 1: "And I thought I was a dark one " --"the" dark one? pg 2: Charon hands Hades the keys twice. I thought he was a driver, but then Hades drives himself. (I'll second Supersoup's point above that you could cut Charon at this point. He doesn't add anything). pg 2: You capitalize "Enemy," but we don't have a reference for why this would be capitalized. pg 3: "I fought the memories of her they brought" This seems awkward. Giving us "her" doesn't really tell us anything. pg 4: "The guy who stole fire from the gods to give to man" you could remove "to give to man" pg 4: "The god of the underworld, failing to recognize a corpse, I thought. I must be out of practice." --good line. pg 5: a "pallid" expression doesn't really make sense. Pallid just means pale. pg 5: "But all of us knew from the War there no was no seed in Hermes’ brain " --this seems awkward pg 6: "helped me up like an infirm old man" --this makes it sound like Zeus is the infirm one. Overall, I liked the concept here. The prose needs some more polish. I've marked some of the parts here, but there are several sentences using passive voice, or with awkward wording. Past that, I'm interested to see where this is going. I can see lots of questions dealing with how the Gods are now like mortals and what that does to them. There's a bit of "name dropping" at the beginning, to throw the reader into the story, which sometimes reads a little too blatant. The only other concern I have is writing personalities for such well known characters as the Greek gods. I'm not saying it can't be done, but you run into people saying "that's not what X would do," before you get a chance to show the personality you've created. Anyway, I'm interested in what happens next!

Previously: Kisare and Belili escaped their captivity on the Aricaba plantation, along the way finding that Belili has a lock of magical hair colored brown, enabling her to use the Fruit that grows in their land to do magic. They meet up with Hbelu, prince of the displaced Asha-Urmana people, and plan to work in his village, building a new life. However their old master attacks with his guards. The village fends him off, though he vows to return. Hbelu, the elders, and Kisare and Belili hold a council, and Hbelu decides they must travel to Karduniash to activate the seeds. Kisare discovers she has some color in her hair as well. They start the journey to Karduniash, accompanied by Hbelu, Zikar, and Nidintu, but are soon ambushed a few days out from the village by Aricaba-Ata and Enti-Ilzi. Belili and Kisare escape, but Hbelu is captured. The sisters, with the advice of the scout, decide to follow the noble’s trail. They come across a town, and dye their hair to disguise themselves as Asha-Urmana to search for Hbelu. In the town they meet up with Gemeti, a mysterious old woman, who decides to come with them and make them into nobles. They meet with the local Asha-Urmana, who allow the three to travel with them. Over a few weeks, they learn about being nobles, travel with the Asha-Urmana nearer the capital, and practice their magic. The three leave the troop and set off. All comments welcome!

I really want to type "soupersoup" for some reason... Glad you've decided to submit. It's both exciting and terrible finding out all the things that are wrong or need improvement. But once you see how much better your writing gets afterward, it's completely worth it. By the way, Tor is open once again to unsolicited novellas of 30k-40k! I'll be doing the final bit of editing on my latest novella to submit. I encourage anyone else who has one to submit as well. The worst that could happen is that it's not published, and then you're right back where you are now... http://www.tor.com/blogs/2015/05/torcom-is-open-to-novella-submissions#more

Looks like: Majestic Fox Supersoup rdpulfer Robinski For the 4th. I'm happy to add my next chapter (it's pretty short, so that's good) and have a full submission slate for the first time in a long time! Up to Silk in the end. If anyone objects to reading so many entries, I'll gladly drop out for a week. (Oh, and for Robinski's benefit, this is chapter 14 of 23, so not that close to the end...)

Yes and no. I usually begin writing by reading through what I wrote the day before, and adding in any small edits that I see. However, I usually do not make corrections based on the feedback here. That I collect and use all at once when I go through the first rewrite. There's a lot of things you can see at the end of the book that you didn't have worked out at the beginning, and often I find it's a waste of time to try to add them before I know how everything plays out.

Thanks, Mr. Wednesday! I think this whole chapter is due for some reworks and definitely fewer scene breaks. Good catches on the multiple word uses. I tend to find a neat phrase and then accidentally use it multiple times. Glad you like the character development. I know I need to add some more of that sort of thing earlier on as well. I think you're right on the last section. It might fit better at the beginning of the next chapter. Let me know what you think when we get there.

I helped! And I'll agree on the lack of 3/4 crisis. I'm pretty much revising my work from each chapter as I get the flaws exposed. I think it may be better than just writing by yourself and letting the doubt chew away.

Robinski's good at that sort of thing...

I have some similar concerns to those above, maybe stated in a slightly different manner: First off, I enjoyed reading this. Your style flows well and is easy to read. Half of the first chapter is a description of a funeral. It's a very good description. But I was almost starting to skim by the time I got through it. pg 6: "“Dr. Foster is the main reason you and I are married.”" --to me, this is the hook that draws the reader in, but it's 6 pages into the story. pg 8: "The police never made it in time" --This sounds strange. Maybe "didn't make it" instead of "never made it?" pg 9: "He was clearly experiencing that bitter cocktail of emotions that arises when one finds out that they did not in fact know everything there is to know about the person they love." --this might be stretching the word "clearly." It's a pretty specific statement for Julia to guess about her husband. Overall, this was really well written, and carried me along just on the strength of your prose. I'm interested in Julia more than Christopher. Obviously this is an emotional time for the character, but it was almost too emotional, to the point of melodrama. Everything was very touching and sweet, but after half the chapter I was ready to go on to something new. Maybe this is similar to what rdpulfer and supersoup are saying? I wrote this before I read the comments, but I think it addresses your question about promises: It's an interesting choice to start with a funeral. There's almost a sense of closure in the first chapter, rather than an opening. I could see this being a short story and stopping at the end of first chapter--Julia came to terms with her old self, and finally shared it with her husband. I didn't get much sense of Things Coming to Pass, except for a nudge about the nightmare drawing. So in some sense, I'm still waiting for the book to start. So you can maybe scatter some more promises in there? You never say if Rothschild was caught, so I don't know whether to expect him to pop up again or not. I presume her old life will come back to haunt here, but there's not a lot of indication of that here. That said, this was still very good and I'm interested to read the next chapter.

Thanks to you both for the comments! @rdpulfer: I do feel like I shorted the "training montage." I'll probably add some more to that in the rewrite. I had some other comments on "making" nobles, and what defines a noble vs. a slave, and is there anything in between. I'll add some more detail to this later. Glad you liked the characterization base on hair coloring and arrangement. I was hoping that would get across. As for getting to the capital, thing will be happening next week! @gwslow: I know what you mean about the section breaks. I tried to limit them to when a significant amount of time, or a scene shift happened. I'll try to consolidate some. As mentioned above, the next chapter will give you some changes, and I hope you will see the sisters being more active.

I will certainly read the adventures of Lord Foofypants, Earl of Cupcakeland, but his friends call him Bob. I was hoping you'd take that one on ;-) And Lol.

I didn't actually mind the POV switches here, except for the first one, which I've marked below. It is a little schizophrenic, but it does bring us closer to both of the characters. Pg 2: "‘The second thing I will ask is how you came to this state, but first please give me your name.’ Her words were clipped, her tone short. Blacklake supposed that he deserved that. ‘My name is Rutland Blacklake, although my given name was John.’ Why would I tell her that? --POV indeed! I think this is a switch from Judith to Rutland, and you seem to stick with Rutland after, but it's very abrupt. (edit: this was the only quick switch I saw. All the others were well delineated) ‘My name is Rutland Blacklake, although my given name was John.’ --Is this something that would have been common, to adopt a different name? It sounds almost as if he's using "Rutland" as a title, like "Lord Foofypants, Earl of Cupcakeland, but my given name is Bob." pg 3: "She thought t gave rise to darker feelings " --something missing here. --Also, I find this whole section interesting. It's Judith's POV, but since Rutland can read minds, it works for him to narrate her feelings rather than her. Pg 5-8: We get a good sense of how Judith is droning on, and I would say it gets a little boring for the reader as well, but on the other hand, it does get her nervousness at showing the drawings across well. Pg 8-10: Also a good discussion of her pieces...if you like that sort of thing. I sort of skimmed through it a little to get to the point of the section. Again, it does what it intended, but do the drawings tie into the story in any way, aside from the reaction of life vs. death? pg 11: "Blacklake had deliberately closed off of his inhuman senses when they met on the street some time ago that day. " --Do you mean her turned it off when she met him in the rain, or before then? Also, if this is the case, how is he reading her mind in the section on pg 3? pg 13: "managed to engage him on the subject of hanging in Fitzbillies" --what does this mean? I like the revelation at the end that Judith figures out he has feelings for her. But at the same time, I don't think Blacklake's menace as a predator is that high in this story. He's said he is, but we haven't really had a lot of examples. It would be more creepy if I was afraid he might do something to her, but I'm not at the moment. Things are progressing, and I'm looking forward to what will happen when Rutland, Judith, and Tarquin all converge.

Previously: Kisare and Belili escaped their captivity on the Aricaba plantation, along the way finding that Belili has a lock of magical hair colored brown, enabling her to use the Fruit that grows in their land to do magic. They meet up with Hbelu, prince of the displaced Asha-Urmana people, and plan to work in his village, building a new life. However their old master attacks with his guards. The village fends him off, though he vows to return. Hbelu, the elders, and Kisare and Belili hold a council, and Hbelu decides they must travel to Karduniash to activate the seeds. Kisare discovers she has some color in her hair as well. They start the journey to Karduniash, accompanied by Hbelu, Zikar, and Nidintu, but are soon ambushed a few days out from the village by Aricaba-Ata and Enti-Ilzi. Belili and Kisare escape, but Hbelu is captured. The sisters, with the advice of the scout, decide to follow the noble’s trail. They come across a town, and dye their hair to disguise themselves as Asha-Urmana to search for Hbelu. In the town they meet up with Gemeti, a mysterious old woman, who decides to come with them and make them into nobles. They meet with the local Asha-Urmana, who allow the three to travel with them. All comments welcome!

Well, I guess I'll start with the requests... I'd like to submit chapter 13 next week if there's room.

Well, if you don't like "The City," but like books with "City" in the title, I'm currently reading "City of Stairs," which is quite good. It's an alternate Earth where a minor country rose and killed the main continent's gods. Then the aftermath happens.

Fine with me. Go ahead.

Lol. Maybe I will!

I was trained on classical violin, but I've been known to do some bluegrass and irish music as well...have to shake the rust out of my fingers. Robinski--have you not read any of the Stormlight archive? I'm surprised. I'd love to see some of that story here, Mr. Wednesday. Sounds like a good change.

Tweak the nose of 3rd omnipotent....I laughed for a good five minutes at that. I imagine a protagonist in 1st POV writing a book in 2nd person to tweak 3rd omniscient's nose while breaking the 4th wall...

First off, I enjoyed this, even though it left me with more questions than answers. Pg 1: I'm interested already by the rain searing, and what cost it entails. Pg 1: "dismissive" might not be the right word here? She would be dismissive OF the pain. Pg 2: I like that the light is playing with her. It reminds me of a cat playing with a patch of light Pg 3: While she's chasing the light around, is it still raining ? You don't mention it, or the pain, again (edit: you mentioned it right after I wrote this). Also, is the sun peeking through clouds? Why is it dissapearing in one spot and appearing in another? --I think you address this point later too. It might just be there's not enough mention of it at the start. Does the rain make any physical mark on her? Does she actually get burned, or is she just feeling it? You make the sun a character as much as she is. Does the rain have as much of a personality? Do other objects or natural forces? Does the sun make the wind blow, or did it talk to the wind? I was a little confused at the end as to why a handful of gold dust would make the whole land fill with light. Didn't her mother bring back handfuls of dust before? Or did she bring something else? Overall, a cool story. I still had some questions on: why the rain hurt, what the sun was, and where the new sun came from (though I assume that was Sare, somehow). Still, for the length of this, it works. You never really answer any of the worldbuilding questions, but it kept my interest throughout. There were a couple places where the sentences got a little wordy (which rdpulfer describes above) but aside from that, well written. I didn't have a problem with the new POV at the end, as I assume Sare isn't around any more to be one. You could do the same thing though narration, but it wouldn't have the same connection to people like Torin and his father.

@ Mr Wednesday: Welcome to Reading Excuses! Love the avatar pic. You managed to pick up the thread of the story well, so that bodes well. As always, if you want to read any of the previous chapters, just send me a PM with your email. On thoughts in italics: I usually put "direct" thoughts in italics, and leave "narrative" thoughts un-italicized, if that makes sense, but I can see changing that phrase to a direct thought to bring the reader more into the POV. Good catch. Yes. the fertilizer comment is on Kisa being meticulous. Good catch on the bucket metaphor. I thought that read funny. Glad you liked the oxen. That was a fun part to write @Turos: Welcome back! I look forward to reading your latest. good comments (from everyone) on what a "transformation" entails. I do describe it later, but it might benefit from a little more description now. Also, there is some discussion in some earlier chapters about why this group is transporting the trees on wagons. Yes, everyone else plants them. I don't have a Gemeti POV at the moment, but I toyed with adding hers and another POV to the story while writing. I may go back and add some in the rewrite. Very kind words on publishing! Nothing yet, but I'm submitting this one after I rewrite. I may try to self-pub a novella in the space-opera universe that I'm editing at the moment. I managed to snag a place on the Writing Excuses retreat this year (on a boat!) so I'm pumped about that. Hoping that will help me improve to where I can publish something.

Interesting. I made these notes, as always, before reading the comments, but I seem to have tagged the same things rdpulfer did. Anyway, here's the notes I made while reading. Pg 1: A good juxtaposition between the dean's thoughts and what is said. However, the whole meeting was very short and strange. Basically, Blacklake walked in, got paid, and walked back out. Did he even need to see the Dean? Pg 2: I like that he uses walking to not get overwhelmed by hearing other's thoughts. Pg 4: The interruption of the memory is pretty abrupt. You might define "the first" what "to cross his path" to help us get into the moment. It took me few sentences, but I think this is placed after Tarquin and Sabine turned him? pg 5: "Four in fact, he recounted them in his darker moods of which this had become one." --awkward sentence pg 6: "The rain had doubled its intensity and he turned up his collar." -Did you mention previously that it was raining? pg 6: "To his right was the open grass of a law, smaller than Parker’s Piece. " --a law what? pg 7-8: the description of the Tontine Inn makes it seem like this was also after he was turned, but didn't that happen after the fact? Or am I remembering wrong? -edit: you then say he was turned after. It think I'm confused by descriptions of the monster he was and the monster he became. There's not a lot of definition as to what they were, exactly. The descriptions that spring to mind are "rapist" and "vampire," but that doesn't seem quite right. (rdpulfer's "stalker" is probably better. Maybe?) pg 11: you draw a good characterization of Judith while she looks through her pictures. The "essay" on the candle burning is a little from left field, I thought, even if it's accurate. pg 13: "The waitress, he had no idea of the time now, but thought from the sky that it was late in the day" --awkward sentence pg 14: so Tarquin will show up. Hmm. I want to learn more about what they can do, but I'm not sure if that has a place in the atmosphere of this piece. Blacklake's biggest antagonist seems to be himself, which is hard to get right. You mention Sabine and Tarquin, but they haven't appeared (yet), so Blacklake's breakdowns seem emotionally distant, without an external cause. Tarquin's conversation with him helped that out, but it's coming pretty far in the story. I almost called you on the intrusion by Judith's POV in the middle (you know me...) but I think it does show her side nicely, especially since, with Tarquin coming, things will probably get tense. I'm interested to see what happens next, now that there's a little more drive behind the story.