Robinski

Hey there, come on in and post your word count, give and receive encouragement, problem-solve, brainstorm and generally chew the fat about your NaNoWriMo project. But don't stay too long, you've got a book to write

Yes, let's do that, @kais - and always happy to friend up on NaNo, where I am R0BINKSI (that's a zero, apparently, there can be only two...)

Hey Marci, great to hear from you. I still want to read the rest of that story, you know, and I'm not sure I'm willing to wait another 3 years!! If an alpha/beta/delta... whatever-read would be any help to you, drop me a line.

You bet!

Sorry, I was at least 75% jesting (but will always gladly read more of your writing.)

Yeah, I'll be there. I'm actually using it as my motivation to finish current edit of TMM: 33 chapters in 31 days; on target so far. Nice to have a bit of pressure before NaNo even starts, Then I'll use NaNo to complete a draft of the sequel, TCC, which I'm 24,000 words into. Done by Christmas!! What about you?

Sorry to see you go, @aeromancer, but heartened to know that you'll still be on the end of an email address, and that you feel it's been a benefit to be here. Safe travels, and you know where to find us Peace, out.

Comments. I remember the first line being smoother before. Do we need his whole name? Or, do we need to get the explanation of his nickname in the first line? Feels a bit unwieldy. I think you could say the whole name, or just R but both there is troubling me. Aren’t the first two things he mentions chores too? Sounds like they are not, from the wording. “shortly?” he asked” – seems redundant. “This, it is not as limiting as hearing the music defining the realm of communication or strength” – I find this somewhat confusing, but there’s no explanation of why the HoP (lol) is better. “how great their Symphony was” – Err, but isn’t there only one symphony? Or is that the great symphony, and there are individual symphonies for each of the houses? Maybe I’ve been away from it too long, and ORS (Occasional Reader Syndrome) has kicked in, or maybe I haven’t been paying attention all those other times! “transfer it elseways” – lovely phrase, just joyful. “You do not think of complexities” – Lol, I had an engineer working for me who had the same problem. I sympathise! “He could do his sums, but nothing like MK” – this seems blatantly obvious, he’s a pupil. This line feels like a place holder. In a short, WE would say (I'm sure) that every line has to do something, preferably two things. I don’t feel like this contributes enough. “We canna hear the music of the other houses, but yer say we can still move along their melodies” – Hmm, really not sure how this works. I’m trying to envisage designing a road but not knowing anything about the traffic that uses it. Does answer my question about the symphonies though, I guess. It gets very technical about halfway down the second page. I’m trying to picture myself as a newbie to the D’verse and how well I would cope with some of this stuff and remain engaged in the story. Honestly, I don’t know the answer. “The low, sprawling house was connected” – this is not the first instance. I’ve managed to pick up somewhere along the way, that if listing out different facets of a thing, they should be separated by commas, even if there are only two. I think there are two different sounds to this sentence, and perhaps two different meanings. To my ear, with the comma, ‘low’ applies to the house as does ‘sprawling’. Without the comma, I think ‘low’ applies to ‘sprawling’, describing how the house is sprawling, rather than the house being low. “used to power geared and kinetic devices” – area geared devices not kinetic too? Seems redundant. “His all black garb” – Hmm, I think ‘all’ is redundant. If not, is it not hyphenated? Sounds off to me this way. “but at least it at least reflected off his scaled head” – suggest un-splitting the infinitive to ease / flow. Oh, good grief. Sorry, I'm in a really pedantic frame of mind these evening, and you are the lucky recipient of all the ‘benefits’ :O/ “The musical phrases play in contrast with the harmonic filter” – I would have said that one things is in contrast ‘to’ another, or in harmony ‘with’ it. Maybe it’s just me. “break the music phrases into” – ‘musical’, or delete, since you explain the phrases are broken into scales. Sounded clunky to me. “her new arts funding” – This sounds a bit like she’s getting the funding for her arts. Is it an arts funding ‘initiative’? MK says that his work (‘they’) would be good practice for R; but isn’t he assigning R to the plumbing? This seems contradictory. “He gestured down and Rey, with a sigh, entered the dim staircase” – I think the phrasing makes this sound less active than it should. “It was taller than him, and covered in a mass” – typo. “the result was an incomprehensible block of notes” – does the symphony sound different in different circumstances? I don’t mean the volume, but the actual music. I never really thought about it in this level of detail. Is it on a loop, constantly repeating and always at the same point everywhere in the D’verse, or is it playing in different places at different locations? So, he can sense the presence of the other scales for the other houses, just not actually hear them? “Well, that was flippin’ easy.” – I don’t buy him thinking that’s the issue dealt with. Why does he think there is only one, and why would he think that, because it scuttles under something, it’s not going to come back? I'm sure we’ve all seen a spider run under the sofa. Would you chase it out then leave it in your house? Maybe it’s just me, but that hairy-legged fella’s going in a glass and out to the garden! I feel like R would know implicitly that the task is to remove the creature from the vicinity, not just chase it under a crate. “slide downhill to him” – great phrase. “and keep that critter from coming back” – Yeah, kind of stating the blindingly obvious. I a short, I think you can cut the thought process between here and him seeing the creature, and jump instantly to the knowledge that he needs a longer-term solution. “Now or never” – why is that? “it supplies half of HI’s Systems” – I'm suspending my disbelief that a machine this size can do that; water, power, ‘momentum’… But it’s ‘magic’, not physics, after all. I’ve mentioned that, lately, I’m on a mission to go boldly forth and ‘expose’ the splitting of infinitives. So… “He could technically use that chaos” for me sounds cleaner and smoother as ‘Technically, he could use that chaos’. “tried to block the hole” – I like very much how you’ve taken the crate and used it to show how (maybe?) the previous apprentice failed, making the crate already part of the story before R uses it. I think it was just lying around before? “Then he threw it across the room” – I did like the bit last time where he converted his biological energy into potential energy in the crate by carrying it up the stairs then dropping it to release and harvest the energy. This version seems less elegant, somehow. BUT, I then see that his harvesting of the crates kinetic energy affects and truncates its flight (I presume), I do like that. “and ran down the stairs” – wait, when did he go back up the stairs? Did I miss that? “unpleasant pulling and tearing” – excellent to get a sense of how this feels. “Nothing for it but to try again.” – I wonder if there needs to be an acknowledgment that this problem could be solved physically with a board and some nails, once the creature has returned to its hole, but that the point is for R to learn how to use his skills to do it. “was tighter, evener” – is that a word, compared to ‘more even’? “Oof” – what happened to dissipate the system that time? I couldn’t see the failure mechanism. “Mayhaps he could spend” – this is a brilliant word, but I feel it should be in R’s dialogue. The narrative voice has been consistently unaccented until now, I feel. “It formed a ward of pure energy around the machine” – I feel like there is a smidge of contradiction here. It sounds like he’s going to block the whole, but then it sounds like he’s placing a barrier around the whole machine. “not inviting it to take up residence” – lol, I like the addition of this section with the Et complaining. “to shrink in to the floor” – ‘into’, surely. “favored by the Symphony” – this feels like a clue, as R has not yet twigged, I think, the ‘affinity’ of the creature with the Symphony. “eatin’ the music” – it’s a nice reveal, and adds to the world very effectively, I think. “machine’s clanking faltered, gears grinding” – I like how this raise the stakes. “It was going to eat him” – I feel I need a more dramatic idea of its growth, and what size it is now. If it’s going to eat him it must, suddenly, be much, much bigger, surely. “It backed away from the machine, and gave him a scathing look. It tried again to fasten its mouth to the side” – These seem contradictory. “It was the size of a packbeast” – Like a cow? In this small space, how does that work? I’d like to feel a bit more physical threat to R’s person, and also the practicalities / blocking of the room + machine + creature + R. “There was certainly some other objects” – Grammar (plural disagreement) “suction cups it what was obviously” – ‘in’, I presume. “opened the hole in the brick wall” – I'm not really feeling this. I think perhaps there’s a lack of description in places. Here, I imagine bricks grinding, thumping as they fall, dust in the air, the smell of line mortar (maybe). “much the same stalemate” – excellent to link this back to a past event. I like how this resonates, and has symmetry of a sort. “until it bears forth” – this don’t sound right to my ear – not just ‘births’? I’m not sure about the last line. I’d consider dropping it. We’ve heard nothing of the twins for the whole story, so this is new information in the last line. I’m not keen on that at all. Those who have read the previous stories will know about the twins, therefore not need the line. Those who haven’t will be put out by this, I think. For me, you could generalise it by taking out the reference to the twins. I think this most certainly is better than the last version, but there are still some things that irk me, some of them new. However, there are many really nice touches and details that I enjoyed very much. To summarise, some confusion / contradiction in places, I thought. Maybe a bit of clarity required on certain points, for me. And description would really punch-up some of the key moments, I believe. Nice job. Great step forward. I think it could take another step. <R>

Entirely up to you. No shortage of space (And sorry, I'm still reading the second version! Comments shortly...)

So, only @kais for Monday so far. Roll up, roll up, places available, get your submission places here...

Lol - "I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him."

It gives me great pleasure to be able to say the immortal words "I agree with Mandamon."

Comments. “around my pad” – I guess this this is a sleeping pad, but out sounded a bit like groovy pad (apartment), just from the phrasing. “Like a chemist” – I’m kind of surprised to read this. I thought this was going to be the ‘big’ discovery near the end, that there was this other thing called chemistry and S was (one of) the first. “rising desiring to kiss her” – typo. “They’re the two unbound guilds. Their paths and histories are intertwined” – this feels like a big thing to have escaped S’s notice over the years. Maybe? “I tossed the morels from my basket, dumped the cups and the branch in” – I don’t buy this. You’ve spent all the time collecting morels which are going to be your dinner, and which your mother is expecting you to return with, and you just through them out? No. Surely, the branch, which was small enough to close their hand around, a twig, I thought, can you go on top. Foraging basket is fairly large, and flat? I think S needs to come back with dinner and the branch, personally. I feel like I don’t say enough good things about your writing, and that I'm always concentrating on the blips (as I see them). I think it’s because I'm just accustomed to the natural, easy flow of narrative and dialogue, the very engaged and engaging characters and a world that always is full of interest and intrigue. And the sauce, don’t forget the sauce. Nice work. <R> Supplementary: (a) While I agree with @Mandamon that the interlude does add a lot (S's discovery of pigments, I thought?) - I still enjoyed it, and would not object at all in coming across it in the story. Not too long at all/ (b) Sold on S turning away from alchemy? Not in that one moment, as @rdpulfer notes, but I thought the emotional crescendo was effective. (c) I did feel S's pain. Rofl - there's a short story right there

Yeah... I think maybe there's a split second of "ooh, la-la" followed by a pinch of acute embarrassment, 5 seconds of self-loathing then simmer in confused discomfort while standing with both feet in a frigid glacial lake.

Always excited to read a new author on RE. Let’s get right to it. Straight away, I'm engaged by your style. It flows nicely and starts to shape character. There’s a good amount of dialogue, which gets me into the story really quickly. Repetition of ‘clearly’ in P1, Para.1. Word repetition always sticks out as awkward to me. “You said you never remember about what you dream of (about?)” – Struck me as awkward. I know it’s dialogue, so it’s okay for folks to speak weird if it’s in their character, but it seems a pity to break up the easy flow of the piece with this. “I smile at the sight” – it was too dark for him to see earlier. I appreciate her face was shadowed by her hair. Just raising the question. “my smile frowns” – meh, his features or his face frowns, surely. “preferring my lap instead” – Hmm. Now then. They're sitting together watching TV of an evening, binging on Game of Thrones or some such, and she’s going to spend two hours (whatever) sitting in his lap? I don’t buy it. This seems extremely clingy and rather weird. Maybe that’s what you intend, but I would suggest (I’ve been married for 25 years, and have many married friends) that this is abnormal behaviour when taken to this extreme. While I stick by my comments about the easy flow of the story, I will not that there is nothing especially interesting happening. You’ve got some decent tension / portent going, so I'm still engaged, but I'm conscious that, in 5 pages, he has had a rehashed conversation with his wife, got up and sat down again in front of a TV. Whoa, what? 23? They made a movie about this (with Jim Carey, dir. Joel Schumacher). I now really dragged out of the story with a bump. Suddenly I'm thinking what am I reading? Fan fic? Sequel? Rehash? Why are there clothes in the living room? I’m a bit disoriented about the house layout. “meant for children that were are under four feet tall” – I think. Phrasing sounds like he asked the Devil to teach him the prayer. “I hadn't killed 23 people” “I run out of things” I would not call a head-sized blood stain a small spot. That thing must be 6 inches wide? The story (chapter?) ends really suddenly on a totally ‘pregnant’ moment. Is that the end? I'm confused. Is the fantasy element in this story too weak to justify having a plot based around it? The plot of this story revolves around the whole death avoidance number thing, but I didn't want to give that mechanic any focus, so I blamed it on the Devil. Is it enough? I’m okay with it. It’s simple enough and you don’t try and explain it, which would be fatal to the story. I’m okay with the premise. Suzie is dead at the end of the story. Did you figure that out before I mentioned it? Did you notice the clues? (Suzie doesn't wake up from his shouting, despite John being certain that she'll wake up if he closes the door too quickly.) (“Hell, you could've probably woken the dead with your damnation shrieking.” “You're exaggerating, right?”) (I need to check myself out in the mirror to see how much damage I did.) Yeah, bottom of Page 11. But, you never say she’s dead, or rather you never show it. Did I miss something? The story ends in the middle of a paragraph or sentence, it felt to me. Okay, you don’t need to show her body, or even the number having changed, but I just feel like the phrasing of that last line promises something more, another sentence, something. After outright telling you that Suzie is dead and that his number increased by +1 *insert finger guns here* would you have made that conclusion yourself? someone died, and making it obvious that he was saved, all in one go? But I don't see anywhere that you confirm she's dead. There's just this lingering, semi-certainty, but sort of left unfulfilled, I think. I enjoyed the style of the story, and how easily it flowed. Like everything, there is scope to tidy up, refine and improve. I did feel left hanging at the end. Also, there is the potential for interpretation as fridging of the only female character. I feel certain that there will be some discussion from others over this, which I await with interest. There’s too much background on this forum with this topic to go into it, but it revolves around the unconscious (or otherwise) tendency for female characters to be ‘poorly served’ in some stories. I think that is probably a problem here. My overall impression is to be left somewhat unsatisfied for the reasons noted. Also, the Number 23 I have highlighted. Why that number? It could be any number, it seems to me, but the call-back to the Schumacher/Carey film is hard to ignore. I think any professional (editor, agent, etc.) would call you on this. I hope that these comments are useful. In conclusion, I say again that I like your style and look forward to reading more of your stuff. I feel sure that you have stories (written or not) that I will find more interesting, but I really was pulled through this one by style alone. Decent job! <R>

I'm imagining them spinning like tops, at relatively high speed - that can't be right, surely. They'd tear themselves off their 'roots' (or whatever they have). It's the word spin My bad. I think I started out assuming it was going to be her mother. Yeah, I'll take that. So, if she's being addressed it's caps, but referring to her not, because there could (and are?) other royal daughters. Perfect. My comment was incorrect - order is restored to the universe... But when they left from S, M had a retinue, and they were attacked and lots of them killed? Fair enough. No, not at all, but still tiny. I felt that the implication of the statement was that there was enough alcohol to give some sort of relief, which implies to me something more like a small hip flask. The amount of alcohol in a liqueur chocolate, I suspect, would just leave someone with the taste on their tongue - certainly if they were going to share it three ways!

Well, I got there in the end. I hope these comments are still of some help. It’s a great first line. I like that. “He couldn't recount the times he had dug” – I think you mean he’s lost count of the times, but this sounds like he actually can’t remember (recall) them. I think maybe it’s ‘He couldn’t count the times he had dug…’ “through greasy, brown hair” – for me, there’s a comma here, as with any list of things. “His scalp itched constantly” – I'm going to applaud you for an infinitive, not split. Hurrah! “He missed his forge” – ooh, now, this is interesting. I took him for a kind of pathetic, scrawny individual, rather powerless, but he was (is) a smith? Interesting… “it was a distant annoyance compared to his grumbling stomach” – I know what you mean, but I think it’s clearer with another word. “and breathing fire into them.” – Dunno why, but this sounded a bit odd to me, I think because breathing fire is a thing, but it’s very different from breathing life into something. “seemed to know something you missed” – this is a kind of odd phrase, to me. I could understand eyes seeing something you missed, or knowing something you didn’t, but this seems like two halves of different phrases. There are a lot of smiles in one paragraph after another. I think there is some awkwardness in these lines that could be tidied up. However, remembering how this read before, I think it’s much better in terms of selling his feeling for the woman. “He smiled at the thought of Val spiking his friend, Jared's, juice” – Err, umm. This sounds like youthful exuberance, but I couldn’t help thinking about Rohypnol (the date rape drug) – changed times. I fondly remember the days you could spike someone’s drink and laugh about it… (That there is some black humour. No refunds, sorry.) “throwing rotten produce” – this sounds like the veg aisle at the grocery store. Given the tech period of your piece, I think you could just say ‘fruit’ or ‘vegetables’, but this sounds like the story is set in 2015. Also “hidden under her bed”, kind of cr@p place to hide anything. Was it planted for them to find? “He helped her family with the burial pyre the next day” – Wow!! This kind of sounds like she died from having rotten fruit thrown at her. I think you need to tell the reader how this played out and she ended up dead. Sounds more like they stoned her. “no one escapes the thumb of the Arbiter” – Sorry, but just the phrasing of this, it sounds almost exactly like the famous Monty Python sketch. ‘No one expects the Spanish inquisition!!’ “Warren had walked Rowan through the plan” – Was he called Warren before? It’s just that Rowan and Warren sound quite similar. In fact, they’re only one letter apart, in a different order. “A man would show up to retrieve the package once the purple cloak left the establishment” – phrase order, I think. I am MUCH happier with the way you are describing the relaying of instructions. The way you stress the importance and the effort that goes into testing the detail, and how R does not come over as incompetent (yet). Because of this, actually, I'd be perfectly happy if he forgot some small detail. Or rather, didn’t forget, but doubted himself and his recollection exactly because of how many times they had gone over the details, because it had become automatic and he had almost stopped actively remembering the specifics. “Maybe I'll make those swords I've been dreaming about” – makes me wonder about his dreams, a bit, but the line itself is a bit vague, I think. I wonder if he would not be more specific about the type of swords, just one adjective. How will he get his forge back if it’s been confiscated? Presumably, the authorities will not allow him to buy it back, so no amount of money will be sufficient. So, this job must give him some other kind of influence with the authorities, to convince them to give the forge back? The wagons seem to roll ‘through’ the street – not along it? I like the image of the run-down bar; nicely ‘painted’ with words. Purple cloak. Sorry if I'm over-analysing, but I wonder if this seems a tad too blatant, maybe not, but I'm just wondering about (a) the possibility that someone else could have a purple cloak, and (b) whether it wouldn’t make cloak-man to easy to track. I suppose he could ditch the cloak. I just wondered whether an equally obvious but subtler identifier might give greater plausible deniability for the person making the drop, like a purple scarf; feather in their cap, for example. Dunno; just thinking out loud. “He's the most incompetent smuggler in C, and but unfortunately the only smuggler in S” – I suggest these phrases run contrary to each other, but I don’t know enough about the geography. Still, if they don’t then I'm not sure I understand the context. I like the conversation with the woman better now. I did wonder if they weren’t attracting attention more than they might reasonably want, but what really stuck with me was wanting R to be a bit more stressed, so that the line about him needing this, but going against his better judgement to do it landed better. “patrons fiddling with knives, or other tools” – for me, this is a bit comically menacing. I mean, surely people would not actually do that when just sitting having a drink, and they’re lugging tools around and scraping tables? Personally, I think you could drop ‘bar fights’; I think ‘rough use’ implies that and stands well on its own. I think it’s good to let the reader infer some things like that rather than coming right out and telling. “Ya know, they said a Db is supposed to be coming this century” – for me, this is very tell-y. Not saying you shouldn’t convey the information in overheard conversation but, for me, it would be more convincing if it wasn’t the first thing her overhead, just straight out telling the reader. You might consider the man talking against it, denying it, rather than advancing the idea as if talking directly to the reader. Err, this Db thing is very close to Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time, and the Dragon, the False Dragon, etc. Just saying. Why will hoping get the man killed? I don’t quite follow that. ‘waited and sat’ – one of those is redundant. And really, yes, the amulet on the table. Others have said it, but really, it seems to say come and arrest me. It’s not like he needs an identifier if he has sat at the correct table. Much, much better on the reason for drinking, imo. “worked his way inside the figure” – typo, I presume. “new development” – sounds like a modern phrase. Did they build developments in Minas Tirith or King’s Landing? I feel the fairly long description of the priest robs the scene of some immediacy. Also, the jump to the priest being the person R’s meeting seemed a bit much to me. Is it not much more likely he’s come to arrest someone? I like the detail of the shaking hand and the very precise thing that he is unable to draw. I think the language around this point could be tidied up to make the scene more direct, but I'm feeling the tension, the fear without R coming over as useless – that has pretty much gone now for me – which is good! (Apart from the amulet on the table, of course! Which I note he hasn’t’ thought about as the priest and the police approach.) “around like a club” – typo. ‘back of the neck’ is a very precise location for a whole chair to land. “he heard the conscious C yell” – this feels redundant to me; a bit clumsy. If he’s yelling, he must be the conscious one. You could just as easily say the ‘heard the other C yell’ ‘stepping’ out of the bar doesn’t sound very urgent to me; I thought R would be in full flight. Similar with ‘He turned to go left…’, I'm sort of expecting him to be dashing or surging or something. The description of him being lifted up and what he’s feeling, I think, is good, effective. How is R’s sacrifice noble? I don’t get it. “paraphernalia” – this is not an angry word, somehow. ‘The priest’s eyes…’ – I don’t think eyes narrow at someone. We can deduce that the priest is looking at him, so there’s nothing wrong with saying ‘the priest’s eyes narrowed’ and leaving it at that. I’m a bit confused about W’s dealings. Surely, if everyone that W deals with gets captured / arrested by the branch, people would stop dealing with and trusting him. It sounds like, if you talk or enter into any arrangement with W you get arrested. Also, surely W would notice that all his contacts were being arrested, so he would not be unknowing. Whoa!! The bit with the ear is a level of gore that we’ve not seen. Certainly, it has instant impact, but seems a little off tone with the rest of the chapter. I’m a bit confused about what R’s purpose is/was. Is it simply to die as a demonstration of the Branch’s power? That seems to be about all he’s accomplished. “R plead pled” - ? “Through the flame he saw seen the man…” The emotion that R feels on seeing W worked for me, but I'm just not sure what W has accomplished. What was his goal, to get rid of R? Why? W has lost the amulet, so, does the Branch just use him to provide them with a steady stream of sacrifices? Rather unclear, I think. “a smirk of betrayal.” – everything in this sentence belongs to W, his this, his that, except the smirk – can that not belong to him too? Seems to me the last phrase is the most important one, and the one that leaves the impression of W on the reader. “tasty scent of cooked meat” – ‘scent’ makes me think of perfume, compared, say to ‘aroma’. Also, it being tasty. Is that really the thought that would enter R’s mind as his own flesh burned? “It deprived them of their desire to see suffering” – but surely it doesn’t deprive them of the desire, they still have the desire, they are deprived of the suffering itself, or at least the outward sign of the suffering, but the desire to see it is still within them, I would imagine, if that’s why they came. Ahhhh, we’re back in the territory of all the drinkers hating themselves. Does everyone who goes to watch a public execution have a depraved life? I don’t think so. I think if you went to the hanging of an outlaw in an ‘old west’ frontier town, the audience would be made up of good, hardworking folk (mostly), perhaps those having suffered at the hands of the convicted person, come to see justice done. I think it’s too easy and convenient to dismiss everyone in this crowd as being depraved. It’s more complex and interesting (and realistic, I should think) if they are real people with a mixture of emotions and reasons for being there, rather than being thrown together under the same pejorative label which allows the reader, and/or the accused to hate them all with a clear conscience. “He saw seen one man wave off the spectacle, turning to walk away” – past tense, like the rest of it. I’m glad to see at least one man is abhorred by the process, but I still feel there is a big place for morbid fascination as a rationale for being there, against a person’s better judgement. “What was had been arrogance and indifference, turned into alarm and fear” – Because you're writing in past tense, I think this has to be pluperfect, defined as ‘used to refer to an action at a time earlier than a time in the past already referred to.’ “smiled at the mastery of this man in leather” – given that R’s face is burning, the last bit seems so irrelevant. Decent wrap up as the whole thing just goes into ‘meltdown’. I thought this was much better than the first version, as you can tell from the fact that I’ve written 2,200 words talking about it!! (Sorry.) I hope this helps. Keep improving it, but also keep going forward and writing more. There’s nothing worse than going over the same thing again and again, trying to get it perfect. It’s fruitless, because as soon as you write the next bit, it will influence what came before it – guaranteed. I think you’ve got some good ideas and turns of phrase. I think your style is direct, which is good. There’s enough description to paint enough of a picture that I can see what’s happening, without dwelling on it, so pacing is good. I think there’s a lot to recommend this. Keep going!! Maybe we could see the next chapter? <R>

I’m happy to read this again. I enjoy your short stories and like to see them evolving. The wold one is still my favourite, but let’s see if that still the case of reading this one again! “in the reflection of her rear view mirror” – I think ‘rear-view’ is hyphenated, personally. Also, I don’t think it’s the reflection ‘of’ the mirror, but ‘in’ the mirror, surely. “a Predator drone before” – typo. “upgrade to an F-35” – this sounds like a fighter jet (as in F-16), is it that, and not another type of drone? “Her husband said nothing, his hands bracing the steering wheel. M knew when her husband was pouting” – I would switch one of these; they’re pretty close together. “the crowded skyscrapers put the sky in a chokehold” – nice line. Puts me in mind of the first line of Neuromancer. If they’re in a moving van, and the drone is on a trailer behind it, how can she see the drone in the rear-view mirror? I think ‘farmhouse’ is one word. “The wooden portal swung open” – sounds like it did so without their intervention. “shaking both of their hands” – sounds like he’s shaking both their left then right hands. “This was the default line conversation starter for Marlene with her nearly six feet tall height” – grammar. “She looked (up?) to see a shimmering object” “from its mechanic dome” – I think this is a person, as opposed to, say, mechanistic, or mechanical. “the jets from its turbines” – given where we are now with drones, this feels rather dated. “a whirling click sound followed by a brief flash of light” – no way is this the level of tech involved in taking a picture from a drone. This suggests there is an SLR mounted on the darn thing. Why on earth would it need a flash? Is it not daytime? “golf waves and courtesy laughs” – awesome phrase! “a diesel garage” – not quite sure what this means. A garage that only services Diesel cars, or only sell Diesel fuel? “The paint was peeling on the trim.” – This is the only thing mentioned, despite the inference of loads of things needing done. “two buckets of paint out the door in either hand” – so, four buckets of paint? “before she even opened the paint cans” – you wouldn’t open all the cans at once, assuming they are all the same paint, or even if they were not, as you’re only going to use one at a time, surely. “She stopped in mid-motion, her hips still turning towards the directions of the sound” – confused. So, she doesn’t stop? And how can her hips turn to multiple directions, and why are there multiple directions? I see that I was supposed to be disoriented, but I kind of got confused first, and stopped. This may well be a reading-as-writer, instead of a reading-as-reader issue, though. “sounding like an angry hornet’s nest” – I’ll see you and raise you ‘nest of angry hornets.’ “burst into a sprint, dropping the paint cans” – I'm not at all convinced she would stop to pick up the paint cans – all four of them? All two of them? “final whirl-click silenced” – faded? “hear the drones anymore” – I think. “Her husband had uploaded their settings to the home computer system” – this sounds archaic. Surely, it’s all in the Cloud and you just sign in. “female voice crisply answered” – Can I have a show of hands? Does anyone care anymore about splitting the infinitive? I must be an old fuddy-duddy, because I’ve always thought it sounds weird, and yet pretty much everyone on here does it. I do it myself sometimes in dialogue, because I think you can have a character speak that way. Sometimes avoiding the split does sound weird: fair cop, split away, now and again, but more often than not, I think it sounds… disjointed, awkward, kinda clumsy. Compare with ‘crisp female voice answered’ or ‘female voice answered crisply’. I think not splitting the infinitive sounds way sharper and more direct, literally because you are keeping the verb with the ‘doer’ I would be horrified to think that agents, editors and proof readers don’t care about stuff like this anymore. I think maybe that some of them don’t however. “Conservative estimate states they are approximately one point seven million” – (1) Grammar, and (2) a typo. Surely, AIs(?) would be calibrated to speak properly? “its substance resembling the crowded page seven of a newspaper” – surface? “At first, she saw cell drones pictures” – (1) comma; (2) is it the picture of multiple cell drones, or of one drone? “navigate away from the image” – but there are multiple images, surely. “The pictures made her feel violated” – you’ve shown this, I think, so when you go a say it straight out it feels very ‘on the nose’. I can see why you would want to get the word ‘violated’ in there, but I think you could do it more subtly/effectively. “She did her best to ignore” – last name you mentioned was T. I think you need a ‘Ma-----‘ in this next sentence. “Marlene brought up her the pictures on the glass table before them” – grammar/typo. “until he saw the comments about his wife” – the lurid sensationalist in my wants to know what the comments are. “He was (a) tall man in a gray jacket”. I'm not convinced the argument about the government, privacy and the fencing business holds together. How is it that the new residents don’t know this is a thing in the city? Surely it would be all over the new if it was a new thing, and would be accepted if it was an old thing, but still well known nationally. Also, Green’s character seems inconsistent. If he’s so nervous, how does he muster the nerve to be so objectionable. Plus, a privacy salesman being a sleaze seems, I don’t know, off? Pat? Like, jamming it down the reader’s throat. I found myself wondering how it would read if he was just a man in a suit, and the couple are getting all irate, and he’s just ‘Well, these are the facts of life in the city.’ Or something, dunno. “How much is this going to cost?” – Why would they let him install the equipment before enquiring about the cost, and why would he make the installation before getting their signature on a contract? I’ve never been a salesman, but seems kind of bad practice? “It was worth it if it stopped Marlene from becoming a prisoner in her own home. It was worth it if it got Nat Green out of their house forever” – Eh? That’s really fuzzy logic, surely. Paying $4,200 a year to get a guy out of your house who has now right to be there? “Maybe that’s the price we pay.” – What?! No! Nobody thinks that. “He’s just working late” – I don’t see how this follows on from what they’re talking about now. “house across the seat” – street. “Neither one seemed to have the backbone to be a real person” – What does that mean? We already know these two are jerks, this seems unnecessary, to me, even counterproductive. I like the close of the story, the tone that your strike and closing on A doing a fly-over. There are several notes within the story that do bother me to various degrees, as noted above. Some of the events seemed a bit odd/unlikely to me, and I must admit that some of the tech and societal factors seemed a bit to me like low-hanging fruit. The premise of the story is good; I think it’s an area well worthy of examination. I just wonder if there isn’t a somewhat more plausible and technically rigorous version of this story to be teased out. <R>

I’m a bit late, apologies! “the temperature warmer higher” – or the air warmer, perhaps. Actually, I find the weather theme in this first paragraph generally a bit vague and slightly confusing. “As the conifers around us shortened to head height, then waist, then finally to scrubby bushes, the fungi spun closer together” – sounds like the plants are moving. How do fungi spin? “The glacier’s preamble here” – huh? Is this a glaciological term? I don’t know what I'm looking at. “because I promised J I would” – I've forgotten who J is. “I want to still do business in M” –mostly, I ignore split infinitives now, when critiquing, but this one is particularly stinky. I know it’s dialogue, but if it knocks (some readers, most, any?) readers out of the flow then I think it deserves to be addressed “We walked in a single file line” – ugh. “the ice was too unpredictable to try walking side by side to share heat” – I’ve got to say, I think this chapter could do with some spit and polish. I'm finding a fair bit of the phrasing kind of rambling, and quite untidy (e.g. this bit). “I walked as quickly as I could over to her” – I'm I just really picky today? I mean here, I'm just thinking, “I walked over to her as quickly as I could.” – it seems like just basic phrasing, action then description. “I don’t know if he’s affiliated” – is this a change? I'd always assumed the witch’s voice was female. “while a princess kisses you” – I think ‘is kissing you’ would be more immediate. “And I’m the royal daughter, not a princess” – This is good coming from me, but is this not a formal title and therefore deserving of capitalisation? “those who trod across it” – I feel like you tread on something, or stride/walk across it. “looking from me, to Magda, then back to me again” – don’t think you need the commas here. “She likes curly hair” – personally, I’ve never really had an image of S with curly hair. Maybe you’ve played that up more in earlier chapters this time around. “No waves or slippage beveled its surface” – slippage? “all around its circumference” – is the lake a circle then? Acht, I'm having a discontinuity moment. In the last version, there was a bit of a massacre and it left the three of them together. For some reason, I can’t remember what happened to the rest of the soldiers this time. I guess M sent them back? No doubt you covered this, I just can’t remember. “I want to take a closer look” – Hmm, I'm not sure I believe this reaction. S has been pretty much abhorrent of magic for whole story, now a sudden switcheroo? Where did that come from? The pretext seems a bit flimsy. “could trust witches after what they’d done to her, so could I” – again, I just don’t see the trigger for this emotional switch. “would never have let the witches’ guild form” – phrasing nagging me. This is talking about the guild, but I feel it would be more effective if the phrasing talked about the witches, e.g. ‘allowed the witches to form a guild’? “quickly squashed that idea” – I think using ‘squashed’ instead of ‘quashed’ (which I think is more correct), sounds weird and kind of points to the more appropriate (imho) word. How big is this amulet? The amount of alcohol must be tiny. “The dotting greens and blues I saw in the distance was were light reflecting” “his canteen down and wiped his face” “when you could have just as easily fled just as easily once we left the village” – the split infinitive thing again. “We’d visited a lot of wood-related guildhalls” – imho, compound adjective. Good, powerful ending, but I still feel the chapter meanders a bit. I wonder actually if it’s more to do with the language, and if going through a cutting 5 to 10% of the words through more direct phrasing might not actually by the most effective solution for what I'm still tripping on, a bit. It’s good to see the reason for Sam’s animosity being brought into focus, and also to learn a fair bit of Sor’s background and earlier life. The passion came over well. I think the lowest point for me was the sudden and unexplained interest in magic, and going up to touch it. I was happier with the previous version, when it was all reluctant and antagonistic. That came across consistently, I thought. I suppose it’s possible that, because I'm not reading this version from the beginning, there are earlier changes that would carry me through this new dynamic between S and magic, but the original antipathy is pretty well ingrained in me. An improvement, but I think it needs more work. <R>

Okey-dokey, so it's @SalMonroe, @kais and @Mandamon to submit on Monday, 25th September - any more takers?

Cool - apologies for doubting!! Please do feel free to submit Monday coming. I'm looking forward to reading your stuff

Hi @SalMonroe, welcome to Reading Excuses. I don't have time this second to check, so I'll just go ahead and say, remember to send me a PM with your email address so I can add you to the mailing list so that you get the other stories submitted to enable you to critique them in return. Did you glance through the guidelines? Please do if you haven't, saves most of the questions that we get!

Lovely mailing list manager, second trombone and general sub-factotum, if you don't mind Yes, hi @ICanDream. Please do read the intro post, but then message any questions you have in the Submission List or Lounge II threads. Or, message me directly on here, or email me [email protected] We can get you started in now time. Best, and welcome! <R>

As of yet there are no new member requests, so you guys are looking good for Monday, so far, @rdpulfer, @TKWade and @kais. That's 3 out of 5. (Oh man, I have totally got the hang of this! )

Me too!