shatteredsmooth

Hi All, Here is the next piece of Intertidal. I did not reach the end. This was another bad week for writing. This section is a bit messier than the others and I keep reading it over and over not quite seeing what I need to. Help! What parts don't make sense? What can I do to make them make sense? Any other feedback and suggestions are welcome. Thanks! Sara P.S. As far as content goes, I put the L for the two swear words. There is no sex or kissy stuff in this chapter, though there probably will be in the next submission. There is a boating accident, but otherwise, no gore or violence or anything. If you need a recap of what happened so far: Ainslie went to their former childhood summer home and snuck onto the property to spread their dead dogs ashes and plotted to get it back. Then they ran into their friend Pete who that hadn't seen in a long time. Pete and Ainslie spent the night at the cottage that doesn't belong to them and some steamy magical kissing stuff happened.

Overall, the chapter seems a little bit fragmented. I’d be more engaged with R if her two scenes had been back to back. The scene with S was short, just a snippet that left me not quite satisfied. To me it was saying “hey, S is here, and going somewhere now that he am actually out of the house. He is kind of numb and recapping things that happened. He going to do something soon but nothing is really going to happen in this scene.” It seemed like it didn't fully have it's own beat. The strength of this chapter was the M scene. That one was paced well, full of emotion and nostalgia, and makes me want to go and maybe read The Society of Two Houses novella you have. It made me want to know more that history. Other than that, I have just have some little picky comments: page 1: "R... had been good at that part." Should this be she? Using her name makes it sound like she is thinking of her self as someone else. Page 4: "wasn’t going to mention it" Mention what? Page 5 "The scars under his sleeves did not replace the emotion, as much as he tried to make it so" Confused. Not quite sure what this means. Page 9: "The boy is a mistake. I have no idea how he exists.” Confused by this sentence. Not quite sure what it is implying. "when normally he’d be a way for her " Not 100% sure which pronouns are referring to who, especially the her. page 12 "She turned and K...—a System Beast with a name and personality—trundled into the next room" Had to read this sentence twice to understand it. It think it is grammatically correct, the syntax you chose just made it unclear to me on the first read. Page 13 "... over his shoulder, He had ceased regular" Lower case h? "had ceased regular contact with his old friend, for fear of letting their association taking up a presence in the minds of the other maji" Hadn’t you already said this? "to take the burden off him" You were using her earlier and M hasn't realized the transition yet, so it should be she, right? Page 14 "and K... popped him up on jointed legs" Can’t picture this. I was happy to see a mention of K after reading that other story where she had a prominent role. :-)

@industrialistDragon Thank you for the detailed Tarot explanation! That is very very helpful. I will spend some time thinking about it and how best to implement your suggestions. I like your idea of starting with the Tower or the Fool upside down. I have two paths outlined for this story, so which I choose will have some bearing on what I do with this scene. Thanks again. :-) My logic for the three cards was P thinking "If I ask A for any more, they'll say no." I'll clarify what is going on here. LOL yeah, this scene was rather freshly written. Interesting. Hmm Currently, I have a novel track and shorter track planned for this thing. I think I might be able to come to an "end" on the shorter track in this coming Monday's submission, but I'm worrying it is going too feel to contrived. We'll see... Thank you @Robinski for your insight and comments. And for reminding me about the typos.

I really appreciate the comments on the Tarot cards as they aren't something I have a lot of experience with. I wasn't sure how accurate the information I was reading about them was, so this helps a lot! Thank you!!

The cheap house was in Maine, where Ainslie is thinking they should move to -- but yeah, that was an actual real estate listing. Re the cost of things on the cape -- I'm not sure how much of that was in this section, but the price the land A's family sold for (around 500,000) was around what my family's land/ cottage that needed to be torn down sold for. That was about 5 years ago, so I will double check to see how the market in that area has changed. ...OK, A's family's cottage is pretty much my family's former cottage, but everything else, the characters and plot, are purely fiction. This is sort of a depression related decision, not a rational healthy brain one. I'll try to make that a little clearer. A is sort of crossing out of a period of depression into hypomania. Or I'll change it in some other way. I'll have to print this out soon and go on a hunt for missing words and the repetitive descriptions. Thank you for the feedback. :-)

Feel free to ignore the following ramble about setting. Google says they are legal in Maine. Bangor is a much much much smaller city than something like Chicago and NY, but I wouldn't be surprised if there actually were sniper florists in the Bangor area in real life...not necessarily mob snipers, but snipers never the less. Northern Maine is a world unto it's own. When I look at Google's list of states where they are legal, you probably have options with much bigger cities that are more likely to have mob snipers... I'm just bias and want more people who aren't Stephen King and who aren't cozy mystery authors pandering to tourist to write stories set in Maine. End ramble. I'll keep this in mind as I tend to make those kind of descriptions more frequently than I probably should. And regarding the limitations, the ones you describe sound good if they are at least partially introduced early on.

I think you are right about this. It would need some work on slowing down to help the reader picture who is where and maybe a little tweaking at the end, but it could make a short story. To be contrary, I did read a book called Year of the Knife by G. D. Penman that started with a battle where the MC seemed so powerful and tough I wondered if they could get taken down, but then the next chapter introduced a more powerful enemy and showed some limitations, like the MC had pretty much drained herself in the first battle and didn't have a whole lot of energy left. I might have complained about this in my review, but more because that first battle had just been to plant a seed for something that would happen later, so by the time I got to the end and looked back at it, it felt very contrived. I do agree with this. I like when someone has the potential to be all powerful but there is a catch. A time limit or a dire consequence.

I'll have something this coming Monday (2/25).

I'd be on board to read more, though I'm not 100% certain is this actually the right opening for the book. Granted, I haven't seen your outline and you haven't written a whole draft yet, so I can't put much if any certainty behind that statement. I struggled a little because I had a hard time picturing the set up at the begining, but like you said, it is rough and sort of a test chapter. I liked the voice, was curious to know more about the main character, and the florist/sniper seemed like a really interesting person. I think you had about the right amount of detail about the powers the characters have, though some things could be a little more clearer if you move forward with this. I'm getting sort of a Mission Impossible meets S.H.E.I.L.D feel only with more realistic science involved. OK, but those cities also don't actually have enhanced people either, so... But on the other hand, are those types of guns you mention banned in Boston? Because Chicago and NY have plenty of urban fantasy stories already. K had a good point, but said powerful MC had shown a little doubt that he's win. Still, that isn't a deal breaker for me, especially not this early in the draft, because you can go back later and change what you reveal when. Plus, there is always a bigger fish. And I'm kind of a weird reader when it comes to tension. I read more for the characters and their personalty than anything else. I might be the minority in saying I'm okay not being concerned about their ability handle things where most readers probably want to be somewhere between confidence and doubt.

If that is the case then my reaction was probably what it should be.

I am very happy to catch back up with Sam, and like this version of the first chapter much better than the last version not just because I've now read book 1, but had not yet read it when you sent the first version of this. I like that the entire chapter is from Sam's point of view. I love his internal monologue about thinking everyone hates him, that he is being selfish etc because I do that all the time. You also somehow manage to make it cute and sad when he does it. The chapter had a clear arc -- getting out of the house, and I am curious about the strange ringing and how Sam almost unconsciously made changes to the bird's notes. The memory problems are almost making me think something about the timeline shifted because he sent the drain to the past -- the result of some sort of time paradox -- by going to the nether he ensured the drain that drove him away from Earth showed up there, and by actually sending the drain and completing the loop, he lost a piece of his memory. Someone please let me know if this theory is way off or illogical. I agree with @kais about how Sam seems to have regressed to where he was at the start of book 1. He had made a lot of progress in book one. I can see how the trauma of what happened could undo some of it, but I'd think in some ways, it might also lend him a little more strength or awareness. Maybe. Yes! I love how Star Wars did those Dramatis personae things. If you think the summary of the last book is necessary, you could include a one page of what happened last time, which I think Jim Butcher always did in the Dresden Files. With the Dramatis personae as long as it is, I might skip it even if I had read the whole series. One grammar note: "Now unperturbed by the noise now it was gone." I think there is a word missing. This was it for now. I'm looking forward to more next week! There is more next week, right?

Hearing thoughts. A figures it out in the next chapter, though I can try to make them notice sooner if you think that might help. I'll see if I can wrap it up in next's weeks sub. Thank you!

Content tags: I put an S in the subject line for sexual or suggestive content. There is some intense (?) making out, but no actual sex. If the characters do have sex later in the story, it will be a fade to black type thing. Hi All, So last week, you were all waiting for something to actually happen in Chapter 3. So here is the rest of Chapter 3. Something happens -- kissing and some magical weirdness. Is that the right kind of something? I had been hoping to send more, but all week I was in panic mode about attending my first con, and while it was much less scary than I expected, it was still draining, and I didn't write much over the weekend, let alone edit. You might be right about this not being a novel. I'm not sure what it is. Normally, I draft in a linear way, but with this, I have a begining, an end, and a collection of disconnected scenes in the middle that I wrote out of order. I'm going to try and string more together for next week. I'm open to whatever feedback you have to offer. Sorry this is a little late. Sara

I might not get mine out until the morning, but it is going to be on the shorter side. I could send it now, but there will be significantly less typos if I wait.

Thank you @industrialistDragon!

I did most of these earlier in the week waiting for a student while the wifi in the building was down, and in my pre-con panic, I never uploaded them. Mostly, @Mandamon says everything I would've said. Normally I'd do a second pass, but since you are just about ready to send this to your editor, I'm just posting what I have. page 2 "The shower had been glorious, as had the faces of every one of the factory workers they’d had to walk past to get to them, M quelling questions with her glare as she led them on" Confusing sentence "They’d slept through the entire night." So no waking up to talk to eachother’s ghosts when they are in close proximity to eachother. Interesting. Maybe they won’t need the ritual after all if they just move in together. “You’re not having second thought..." Slightly jarring transition. The organization of the first half of page 2 was a little hard to follow. Page 9 "She landed" Xie?" Wait, this was intention? Is O thinking xie is M I found the few pages confusing. I had a hard following all the action with the diversion and the glass tubes. I think it might need to just be a tiny but slower there. Otherwise, I think this was a good ending to the piece. It was fun, everyone got what they wanted, and it leaves room for the reader to imagine several options of a happy future for these people. Yes. 100% agree. I didn't quite pick up on this, but that might have been because I got a little lost at the end.

I'll have the next chapter or scene from Intertidal, though it might not be as polished as the first installment.

Interesting. Originally, I wrote this with that anthology in mind, but thought there was no way I was going to wrap it up with in the word count, got overwhelmed, and decided to rework the other one to fit it. Good catch! They didn't do that. It looks like I messed up the wording there in one of the twenty hundred times I changed that sentence trying to decide what their BA and MA were in. Yes technically, but some stores in my area label any wine made with a fruit that isn't a grape a "fruit wine." I'll change it, because it does sound kind of silly when you point it out. So if I'm not mistaken, in Massachusetts, you can't technically own land below the high tide line (though there is some ambiguity people some people technically own salt marsh), so the little strip of land between the water and the high tide line is legal for A to walk on. I'll clarify that this is what they are on. Yay! Thank you both!

I think you fixed most of the issues I had with this, but the relationship between L and the mother still isn't entirely clear to me. It's clear L cares about her, but I feel like I'm missing something, though I'm not quite sure what that something is. If the others don't feel this way, then it might just be something about my reading of this and not actually a problem with the story. As I read comments: Page 3 "If he had been there—well, he wasn’t certain what he would have done, but he would have at least tried." ]Early in the story like this, new readers might not quite get what a maji could have done, though it is hinted that they have abilities. Maybe try something along the lines of, "he could have done something with the symphony to try and…" but worded better. Page 19 to 20: I like the description of L's room better. It seems more like that of an adult, sentient being that a child's. The mention of surgical tools was a good breadcrumb for him later tending to the mother. Page 20-22 I like L better here. This version seems more like he could be one of the autistic students I work with in the tutoring center. To me, L's behavior now implies he is too focused on one problem to see the bigger that one he probable doesn't want to think about or can't cope with thinking about. Page 23 "It now covered L’s lower body, gently pressing in." Like one of those strangling weighted blankets? Just the idea of those things makes me feel like suffocating, but that is my own brand of sensory issues. I’ve heard those actually help some people. Or is this something else entirely? More like being suspended under water? Touching on certain pressure points? Not super clear. And where did O get the idea from? The friend that was like L? House of Healing? How did he know it was going to help and not make things worse, because I think it could've backfired as much as helped because not everyone with sensory issues, autistic or not, reacts the same to that stuff. It's not a bad concept if it is explained a little clearer. " seemed unprepared at best. The females must truly have little to do with the male of the hive." Does enough to address her lack of preparedness to deal with L Page 24 "This was being a majus" ]I’m really starting to think of the Maji as Jedi without all the restrictions of the Jedi code and a different method of powers…but a similar role only with the council having more power political clout or at least a sort of UN type thing. Page "I will not be throwing up." The first italic was a little jarring since there hadn't been any, but the rest flowed well and this one made me smirk. This whole reaction, including this line, was a great fit for O's personality. "He had to move" Wasn’t he moving if he was following her? "hulk" All I think of when I see this word is the MCU hulk. Page 34 — Why a dash? Page 35 "...growling..." Kind of an odd images. Growling feels a little awkward in this sentence, and seems to subdued for charging into battle. Growing, while something I occasionally do when frustrated, is more a backed into a corner scared or a very frustrated with something reaction. I think riding into battle atop your mate/lover/partner's (if that is what the mother is to him) shoulder requires a verb that might imply some kind of battle cry. "act of altruism save" Something grammatically wrong or missing? "They held a burial for K and L's unborn sisters" The wording here made me think K was dead. The funeral was for k and it was also for l's unborn siblings, though I think you just meant the siblings? Should it be K's and L's sibling? Overall, I think this is better. The arc is clearer. O's motives are clearer. I sympathize more with him in not liking the council even though part of me still might agree with them about interfering with the pixie stuff. The end does a good job setting up for him to become the type of character he is in Seeds. I am curious to see what the others think of the autism rep. I don't 100% trust my opinion alone.

Hi All, A little back ground: I got impulsive and pitched a WIP during Carina Pitch and an editor requested a proposal (due March 4) including a minimum of 7500 words of the manuscript. Attached are the first three chapters. This was the pitch: Enby/M friends to lovers: Homeless & unemployed, Ainslie’s life has hit rock bottom. When they meet up with an old friend, a tarot card obsessed drag-queen named Pete, they follow the cards and series of hunches on a quest for a fresh start & new home. Does the story I have sound like the one I pitched? As far as sub genre, do you think this feels more like magical realism or light contemporary fantasy? The mc's pronoun is they/them/theirs. The editor who requested the ms uses those pronouns, so I'm guessing they won't be a problem. However, if you notice places where it isn't clear who the pronoun is referring to, please let me know. Other than that, I'm open to any type feedback. Thank you! P.S. There are a few swears, but otherwise, I don't think there is anything that needs a content warning.

Of course!

Thanks for reading! Maybe this will motivate me to go back and work on this one again. It's been on my to-do list for a while.

I'm going to have something new for Monday.

Adding this to my TBR pile as something to read and maybe share with co workers.

-Is it enjoyable? Somewhat. I kept cringing at how L was portrayed and treated. Curiosity about how bad O was going to fail kept my attention, except he didn't fail in the way I expected. He got his act together and actually helped. I liked learning about pixie culture and the symphony and thought the description was clear. On a sentence level, the writing was enjoyable.-Is the magic system and worldbuilding clear? Very.-Are the characters engaging? O was when he treated L like person, but then not so much was he was thinking cringy things about L. Pixies were a little flat.-Does the story make sense? Yes if the whole point was setting up how O ends up sort of deciding go off and live a life getting involved in everything and perpetually ignoring the council? I think it built to that okay, but the end felt a little too soft and rushed. Because O didn't really change or learn much. I agree with @kais about the end. -Anything else you think of (even down to grammar and line edits, if you want. I'm not picky.) As a writing tutor at a community college, I spend a lot of time working one on one with students on the spectrum. They are all very very different from each other. Without using the word autism, you labeled L as autistic on p. 21 with the rocking that is commonly associated with autism even though it only represents part of the spectrum and with "...who was similar in some respects to Lauka. The symptoms presented differently in..." But it was kind of what I think of as the cliche autism portrayal, though I guess @industrialistDragon's use of the term "Hollywood Autism" is probably better. I was really confused when you mentioned toys on page 23. In the previous section, I was under the impression that this was an adult make who was making baby pixies with the Mother. The efficiency work that it is implied he does seems like adult work, but the physical description, mention of toys, and way the other pixie treat him imply child, and it is disturbing to think of a child or child-like being also functioning as a reproductive instrument. This whole paragraph @industrialistDragon wrote really sums up my thoughts in a much more articulate way than my monosyllabic notes of "yuck, ick, and cringe" in response to the infantile and animal like portrayal in certain lines. And this: The male pixie has a lot of potential, but it just was not handled well at all. The MC in Seeds was still treated like a person even though his anxiety, at times, was just as crippling if not more crippling than this pixies autism is in parts of this story. I have Sensory Processing Disorder without Autism though at times it seems kind of muddled with my anxiety, or causes half my anxiety or is just the cycle of doom in my brain that makes me wish I could live underwater. Anyway, before I go off on a not quite coherent tangent, I think @kais suggestion might actually be harder to write and not fix much. Readers would probably still assume autism. O wouldn't necessarily know what sensory input L was reacting to, and there would need to be more emphasis on the sounds, smells, --sensory details the narrative might not pay as much attention to. And still, all the childlike and animal like descriptions still need to go away. To me, it would make sense to just take out the demeaning stuff. L is clearly intelligent and very logical -- the other characters need to acknowledge that throughout. Changing from autism to just SPD really doesn't do anything except redirect a stigma. Do whatever research you have time for and let it inform L, but more importantly, change how L is treated by the characters and the narrative voice. Non autism related comments: Page 26-27 Starting at "The warrior exploded in a burst of freezing blue flesh." through "He knew this scene would haunt his dreams after he returned to the Nether." This reaction was flat and threw me out of the story. OK, it really wasn't much of a reaction. The fact that O killed someone was really an afterthoughts, any emotion about it magically fixed by one deep breath. It was so no reactive that I didn't believe it would haunt him at all. I'm sure I've written scenes like this myself, but still...there is a lot of potential for character development here if you work on it more. Page 29 "like one of the other species butting into a Kirian philosophical debate. Fortunately..." I'm confused by these sentences. Page 32 ". It wouldn't be...dignified."Cringeworthy but awesome because I think this screams O as I am getting to know him. Page 35 "his change. even with" capitalize E Page 38 "...hands trembled when he’s given it to..." typo I think there is a ton of potential in this story, but L and the way he was treated consumed my attention and made it hard to see the rest of the story.