Paul SB

I’ve gone through and made some adjustments, but I’m mulling over more. Often it only takes a sentence or two to fix things. I’m getting the impression that you are expecting things to go faster, but that requires hacking out the very details that make both the story world and the characters feel real. Real people rarely change overnight, or reveal their innermost thoughts. I could see cutting out most of Act 1 and slowly reintroducing some of it as flashbacks and conversation topics, but even then it wouldn’t quite come out a thriller or action/adventure. That’s not what I’m going for. What would make ME feel more real without completely changing into someone she’s not? She does change later, but it takes some major stuff going down for that to happen. What more do you want to learn about A & R that could be accomplished without adding another couple thousand words to a manuscript that is already long enough that most publishers will trash it rather than read even a paragraph? It’s kind of ironic that my kids think that F is pure cardboard, but you were quite happy with that entry. Pg 1-2. Why is this coming up now? Did the computer just do this on its own? They just retreated into the asteroids to hide from their failed attempt at the end of the last entry. I didn’t think that needed to be spelled out, but it’s a simple fix. Pg 4. P needling ME like this does help make P stand out, though I’m not sure what this does for the story It makes both characters seem like people. P is a tease. It’s a reasonable defense mechanism in her occupation. Pg 5. I think I’ve said something like this before, but whenever ME talks it feels like we’re getting an infodump on the religion rather than hearing a specific person speak I’ve had the misfortune of growing up surrounded by people who were exactly like that. Every time I expected some humanity to come out, they just tossed out more chapter and verse. Pg 8. I think this stuff is fine for A to say, but to me it doesn’t make sense when R is suicidal Okay, what would you have said differently? Pg 9. This continues to raise the question of why they’re putting up with ME to begin with. She’s been their roomie for over a decade. Once people get used to each other they don’t change their status easily. Pg 10. If the story wants us to believe that ME is more complex than she lets on I think it needs to do more work showing that. There’s more coming, but I would like to know more specifically what you expect to see. Pg 12. Not quite sure why they’re talking around the issue of whether A is interested in R in return I’m not sure how you missed that. It’s a huge change in their relationship, one that is going to get seriously awkward one way or another, and A is at war with the indoctrination every society imposes on all of its members. R is too scared to ask the question because she's afraid to hear the answer. Pg 14. I don’t think we need to see all of this internality, especially since it’s not related to the plot It seems like kind of a weird comment after all your comments about depth of character, and when we’re still in Act , and internality is what makes stories feel real to readers (I have on good authority). Internality shows character and motivation, lets the reader know what kind of people they are reading about, and if those people are believable and sufficiently admirable to care what happens to them. Your thoughts?

If I forget and mention it again I hope you don't get too mad. I have a pineal gland disorder that seriously jacks up memory formation, so I forget things like an 80 year old.

I’m emailing this one back to you because it’s quicker than going over all the typos. In the case of Dad you probably need a reminder of the rule. Any time you use a noun in place of a name it gets capitalized. So if you address your captain as “captain” you have to capitalize it (Captain). If you mention your captain, like “My captain said blah blah blah …” you don’t capitalize it. If your urban fantasy has humans who have fey ancestry, you might need some sort of genetic backstory, since modern audiences know you can’t cross species as a general rule. There are exceptions where the species’ ancestors isolated fairly recently, as with mules or ligers. That could easily have been the case with Neanderthals (and Denisovans), but usually the offspring in these matches are infertile. Of course you can always invoke “magic.” That’s one of the reasons I don’t get into much fantasy. Magic becomes a cop-out for anyone who doesn’t want to think too much or do research. You do realize that whole conversation mit Ihre Vater is one big data dump, right? I’m not going to criticize that, as there are only so many ways an author has to get across information, especially at the beginning of story when you have to get your readers up to speed on your world. Still, sometimes it’s worth taking a moment to sit back with the drink of your choice (just not to Hemingway level) and see if you can concoct more clever ways to hint at this stuff. Maybe the scanner has some kind of inscription on it? If Kay was a big Nancy Drew fan and thought of herself as a junior sleuth, she might have gotten a fingerprint dusting kit and found her mother’s prints on it or some such. The only other thing that bugs me a bit is that sometimes the words coming out of the mouths of high school kids sound a little too adult. Maybe if you have the time, watch some movies in high school settings so your unconscious mind can absorb the dialog patterns.

I would have read it by now but I got a shingles vaccine yesterday and had a very strong reaction. I'll get to it once I can walk again.

Okay, thanks for checking.

Once more into the breach?

I emailed it to you last night. I was at work until late, but hopefully you have it now. I wonder if you're the only one who didn't get it or if I did something wrong when I sent it out last week.

Connor emailed me today (while I was at work, unfortunately) saying that he never got my latest submission in his email. Did I do something wrong and nobody got it, or did it get lost in his in box or spam filter? If you got it then presumably it went out to everyone.

If Connor's going to put something up, maybe it will attract a little more attention? Hopefully? I'll be consistent and put one up this week. Are you getting close with yours?

I just found out that there is a Japanese word for buying books that you will never end up reading -- tsundoku, as in, my garage is packed with boxes of tsundoku. Tomorrow is another Monday. I would like to post, but absolutely no one has commented on my last one. It's feeling like a bust.

Cool beans! Sometimes furniture can be overrated, though, if it takes up space for books.

You're still an internet orphan? Major bummer, dude!

Back for more! Thanks to all who read and comment. Feedback is what we're here for. Entry 01.11 is debriefing and goal setting. Entry 01.12 our heroes make an abortive attempt to steal the alien artifact that started the whole adventure. It would be easy to assume the artifact is a McMuffin, but that would be way too easy and predictable. For the first part, are my characters' reactions to A's proposal realistic? Do we understand the other characters well enough to see that, or do we need more from some of them. In the next section, do the aliens seem alien enough, and scary enough? In my original, colossal draft I had several entries from the aliens' viewpoint, which humanized them, but also made their future interactions with our protagonists more understandable. Twilight’s Rift Summaries by Entry Entry 01.01 - Introduces two slaves who live on a luxury cruise liner and are trying to escape by meeting someone who claims to be with the local equivalent of the Underground Railroad. The person turns out to be a creep who is trying to exchange a way to remove the cyanide capsules in their necks for sex. Fortunately the ship's priest shows up before the protagonist flattens him with a stool over the head. Supplemental Entry 022TRG1//-001 - Meanwhile, at the HQ of the biggest corporation in the galaxy, the Security Chief meets with the President and the company telepath to discuss a plan to use a stolen alien artifact to bait spies from rival corporations by putting it on a cruise ship. Entry 01.02 - This is a Save the Cat moment for a character met in the first entry, where she consoles a young kid crying in the night. Supplemental Entry 015BBB3//-000 - A mercenary company who have an advanced spaceship sneak onto the cruise ship to steal the alien artifact and are massacred by the company telepath. Entry 01.03 - One of the six bunkmates who is mute and in some sort of cataleptic state (similar to what psychologists call “stiff man syndrome,” like in the Robin Williams movie “Awakenings”) inexplicably wanders down to the lowest deck of the ship. The others follow her and find a strange alien spaceship jutting through the hull of their ship. Entry 01.04 - The mute character attaches herself to a column on the bridge of the alien spaceship, while the rest spend a little time exploring. The ship’s computer informs them that the previous crew are dead and they are now the crew of a ship that has some advanced technology. Entry 01.05 - The escapees (except T) fly a shuttle down to a middle-of-nowhere planet to try out the night life, and immediately split up in spite of A’s insistence that they stay together. A asks R to tag along with P to keep her out of trouble. Entry 01.06 - ME heads straight for the nearest church, and in spite of her own doubts, betrays them. Entry 01.07 - I is sent to keep P out of trouble, but when P slips off to a private room with some random man, R sneaks away, mumbling to herself about not wanting anyone to know the truth about her. Entry 01.08 - ME leaves the church with her mind spinning, looking for the others. She finds P on the dance floor, but someone shoots at them. In the chaos T is stunned and has to be carried out by ME, A, and P. ME swears she didn’t turn them in, though it’s doubtful anyone believes her. With help from the computer on their new ship they find that R has been captured by a labor reseller company. Entry 01.09 - A refuses to leave R behind, so she and T bust her out of her holding cell. Delirious after a brutal interrogation, R confesses the homosexual desire she has hidden for years, which baffles A but doesn’t convince her to leave R behind. Entry 01.10 - This is mostly a flashback, where an unconscious R revisits the moment when she was diagnosed with clinical depression at age 16. On waking she is tended by the frivolous P, who tells her that her secret is out, though it was T, not A, who spilled it. Supplemental Entry 014BFF1//-002 - This entry introduces a major antagonist, who paid the mercenary whose ship the protagonists have stolen to get the alien artifact. As president of the second most powerful corporation in the Meritocracy, he is quite ruthless, as is his second-hand man, who heads R & D and designs biological weapons. Bon Apetít!

Okay, 8/04/25? This one's a bit shorter, at around 3800 words. If I added another entry it would have gone up to 5300, so I'll save to for next time. A few months back I drew some colored-pencil portraits of the six. They aren't great because I'm not much of an artist, but maybe people might want to see at least an approximate action of how I imagined them?

Hello again, thanks for taking a look. I'm glad you like the doctor. You won't see her again until near the end of the third book, and she's in the fourth as well, though in both cases in minor roles. M is a major player in the corporate intrigue, but his prophetic dreams lift him above that role later. As to the corporate intrigue and the escapees, they are on a collision course, which will become obvious in next week's entry. I would be inclined to ask how much of the material before that point is worth keeping, but I would much rather wait until you (and anyone else who cares to jump in) get to the end, though the slow week-by-week process makes that kind of broad perspective much more challenging. I was able to fix the epigenetics bit with a single sentence. "Every bigot who’s on top of the totem pole wants everyone else to think that they were born superior, so other people won’t try to compete with them." That's really the point of genetic determinism - it's a way for high-status people to discourage lower-status people from competing with them. Thus we have Social Darwinism and the myth of the meritocracy that underlies a whole lot of our society's lies. Thanks for pointing that out. If I separated the flashback scene from the wake up scene, the second part would be really short (around 600 words) and feel like an afterthought. I could break the two scenes and then expand on the wake-up scene, but I'm not sure how I could keep that going. P is their Chief Gossip Officer, so I'm sure she could come up with all sorts of juicy things to say, but that might be more boring than character-building. As far as the virus goes, M said pretty clearly that he wanted something to distract the president of Spencer Corp from his black op. The details of the virus don't much matter, though it does show how slimy corporate leadership gets. I could trim that bit back by cutting out the back and forth between him and Other M about the pros and cons of the two candidate viruses. Later!

Patience! I must have patience!

Hello again. Here's the next installment, which starts with a flashback and ends with the introduction of a protagonist who is going to be with the whole series. If you haven't read the earlier material and want to go back and comment on it, you're welcome to. Likewise if you just ant to read the summaries in the email then move on to the current submission, that works too. Let me know what you think ...

Hopefully we'll hear from you soon. Have you read any of my submissions, or have you been too busy?

Monday again? 7/28/25. Am I all alone here?

Thanks again for taking a look, and taking the time to comment. There's a lot going on here, and it isn't all stated directly. The most basic theme of this series is diversity. Most people think of diversity as being a matter of courtesy, or a reason to hate and fear others. In biology, diversity is a matter of survival. Throughout this series we run into different sapient species who have entirely different reproductive systems, pointing to how natural diversity is across species. But within our species there is a lot of diversity most people are unaware of and/or misunderstand in very bad ways. Thus the thematic importance of the gay character. But that is also intended to parallel the dead-end nature of cut-throat capitalism, how it so fundamentally short-circuits actual human nature, and ultimately leads to the collapse of societies. That's some of the big picture stuff that these stories are getting at. You're not wrong about the story also being about found family and the ties of friendship, too. Any good story can be read on multiple levels. P. 3 I added this to show a little more of the chaos in ME’s mind, and make the coming violence feel less out of the blue: "The dance floor wasn’t exactly packed at that hour, but between the loud music, flashing lights, and the state I was in, the place scared me. It scared me more, though, that the local priest might send labor resellers after my friends. It didn’t make sense. I went to the temple in the hope that they would be able to put my friends back on the path of righteousness, but at that moment all I could think was that we’d be captured and made examples of." I also went back to the first entry to drop some hints about ME’s status. You’ve heard of Social Darwinism, I assume. The upper crust of society, and that’s true in any area, including the church hierarchy, not just the business world, consider the lowest class of people to barely qualify as human. Anthropologists use the term “ritual pollution” to describe things that are considered so unclean that nothing can ever purify them, and contact will pollute you. That’s how Jews and Muslims feel about pepperoni and bacon. It’s also how Hindu’s feel about their lowest caste, the Dalits, and Shinto about their lowest caste, the Eta Hijemin. Ecclesiastic labor are there so the Church can say they are tending to all the flock, but without having to interact with the unwashed masses directly. Regarding P.6, I’m not exactly sure what work would be necessary here that isn’t just them talking about their relationships. Can you think of any way to show the ambivalence? They have been bunkmates and essentially family for many years, but ME’s status means she hasn’t suffered the kinds of abuses the rest of them have, so there is a bit of a gap between them. P.7-8, since none of them have any sort of combat experience, they wouldn’t have a whole lot of ideas to go on for planning the rescue. At least they didn’t try the old prisoner trick, like George Lucas resorted to. Would it help if someone stated this directly? P.9-10, there are multiple reasons for them to stick together, survival being a main one. As old Ben Franklin once said, we must all hang together or we shall all be hanged separately. Or as A said, they’ll pick us off one at a time. That and sharing bunk space means they have been one another’s confidants for a long time. Maybe I can find a place in an earlier chapter to paraphrase the Franklin quote. P.13, presumably future technology will make biological imprinting on weapons possible, but that’s likely to be expensive, so ordinary people would only be able to afford guns that work like they do today. Guns were made so that anybody can kill anyone, which is why many women see them as a great equalizer versus men’s average 20% greater body mass. Did you ever see the Simpson's episode when Baby Maggie shot Mr. Burns? P.15, the fact that R has kept this secret for years and only spilled it after undergoing a brutal interrogation does tell the reader some important things about her. In an upcoming chapter P speculates that R might be demi, meaning not sexually attracted to anyone she doesn’t already know and care about. Nowhere is this ever elaborated on, though. I figured the readers can reach their own conclusions rather than spoon-feeding it. A couple hints were dropped in previous chapters. Do you think those hints need to be expanded on?

I was thinking that's a long time, but then I realized that it's almost August already. Einstein was right about time dilation, but you don't have to travel near the speed of light. You just have to have kids.

Hello again, It looks like a lot of people are reading, but not so many responding. That and I seem to be the only one posting right now. I was looking forward to seeing more stiff from other people... Anyway, I sent out my latest batch. Things start to really hit the fan here, and I guess at this point a major question has to be how much of the ACT 1 material so far might be unnecessary. Does it take too long to get to this point, or should I be trading realism for brevity here? Happy reading! (and happy writing, too)

Okay, I'll just stick to TR. The short story is a spin off that takes place after the third book, so it might be best to save that one. Is your story about ready to submit?

In fact, if no one else is posting, could I put up a short story, too? Maybe somebody will like a short story rather than trying to read a novel over several months.

Slot for 7/21, please? It doesn't look like there's a long line.