The Earthwound is addressed in book 4. Book 1,2 and 3 are character bios where each one of the major players is given pieces of the puzzle. Only the reader has the whole picture until Book 4.
The Centrillium field can be seen when Kha is heading to the mountain and Airen stops off at the Hearth WItch's Inn. All I have to do is separate them and have them fight to distract him from bringing it up Airen. I'm not too worried about moving that scene around.
tomato tomahto. I agree with you.
Yes, the last book involves Marion and Airen.
I"m mulling what you said. I agree that I have to have more antagonist involved in both Kha's and Jaylene's story. They ramble through the adventure and end up in the right place, but I'd like to make the villain bring about their own downfall, so a rewrite it is.
FYI, I ammended Chapter 46, when Geron closes the crypt. I had a scene in my head where he calls his students a pack of brats, of course including Kha in the epithet. And then he had to ask how Lucas/ Maalok got past the Guildhouse vow. Another character mucking up my life, but I found a way to get the answer across to him and kept it simple. And so, I had to give Alina one last hurrah. And the lieutenants blew their secret about the Battle Mage training (so Geron knows about this now).
In all, I'm satisfied because I trimmed a loose end. Moving on. Lets see if this can jump start my writing. I'm finding that I have to flip a switch. Either I can write, or I can read/ revise. Not both. It's like they use the same part of my brain or something.
Kha liked the other Wolves for various reasons. Tazar's silence was a
major draw, as well as the quick decisions to trust or not trust. Kha admired Melody for her voice (his mother used to sing as she wove- it was part of her mystery as well as her majic.) and her complete disinterest in her beauty. Kha liked Airen because of her hunger for all and any knowlege as well as her willingness to get dirty and pull her weight.
Conleth made everybody laugh, but he had a dark side and would disappear now and then. Once he reappeared, there was never any reason given. Kha found out Con's secret, but he respected privacy and let Con reveal it in his own time. Besides, Kha always loved a good secret and Con's was a doozy.
Jaylene was everything that Kha wished he could be. She never quit, never complained about hardship, and she was capable of faith in a power greater than herself.
But the defining virtue in all is that they weren't in his field. It's why Kha persists in thinking of Anver as an underling. So far, no one has surpassed Kha in his specialty. And the Wolves were all experts in things he didn't want to learn about or didn't have enough time to learn. He never got into a stable relationship until Sil for the same reason...time and trust. That's why he used courtesans to scratch his itches. They were obliging, undemanding, and available whenever he was.
Then Sil came along and he knows her temper, her motivations, and her fears. Emotionally, they have no secrets. She has no games to play. And she is WAY out of his weight class as far as power goes, so he doesn't surpass her on the magic front. He met a dragon and she was his perfect woman.
And so I gave him what he wanted and so I'm going to make him fight for it.
And steal his pants. Can't forget that part.
The Secrests of Story. Got it. Right now, I'm mulling a lot and not writing much. That edit took a lot more out of me than expected. I let myself read more. Now I need to restart the writing engine, and it is turning out to be harder than expected. I have a scene in my head with Geron, that shows his opinion about all of his Masters and the world he helped create. He needs to change his opinion about Kha, who was always passionate and mercurial, and realize that the pupil has become a man. (Not helped by the lack of aging, BTW). Since Geron deals with the baggage of Kha's daddy issues, this isn't a terribly easy proposition for me.
Eh, there is always reviewing to help with the recharge. Normy normy...I'm comin' to get you... And you'll be next, New Jersey.
A
I'm thinking how this can be adapted, making Dictates more convoluted. I see your point and I agree. And I'm still mulling Mandates, trying to see how I'm going to adjust the story so that it doesn't have anything to do with the Earthwound, and everything to do with who is trying to kill Kha. I'm going to keep the relationship with Sil. And I'm going to steal Kha's pants at least one extra time. I have to make sure that the reader realizes that he isn't old...just ill. And I have to make Airen less bitchy as well. (I softened her once, and it will likely do it again.)
Dictates will have more about the attempts on Jaylene's life. And I like the idea of her story involving more mystery and less exploration.
Points taken.
I consider myself warned. Or maybe I'll have an adventure where we explore all of the 8th streets.
C has been better about loud noises. He flinches and covers his ears, but he doesn't run or bolt like he used to.
I like the idea of riding the Staten Island ferry. What is the boat tour that goes under the bridges?
Gotcha. Point taken.
110 Db is what you get standing next to a jet engine at 10 feet(according to the husband). Is it really that loud? Good to know. We're still planning on doing this, but if it's that bad, I'll clear the route with you.
Make it Janet's name. Usually minerals have longer names. Sparkanium?
Adventure without risk loses the reader. They can be tense, or stressed, but those are reactions to fear. Be careful not to make your characters too powerful. This is the biggest robbery they've done so far? The stakes are high. Recognize the fact.
He is. Regular train stations aren't too bad, but I'll bring the headphones just in case
Strawberry Jam? Space Jam? Toe jam?
I like the idea that the mineral isn't stable so it isn't on Earth.make it extreme mining. Like harvesting plasma from solar flares. Or compressed isotopes from a black hole.
The plan is to keep it simple. One destination per day, but it has to involve the train. We will establish a known place (probably Queens/Flushing Meadows) and then branch out. The only must-do is the SoL. Mitch wants to see the World Fair site because Collin likes movies and Men In Black. The third day might be a restaurant downtown on 32nd St called Five Cents. Not positive on that one. By only scheduling two days, we stay open to random plans.
There will be four more NYC before C earns a trip to Tokyo(likely when he graduates), so we'll have the ability to explore.
NJC, we are starting to make plans to come to NY sometime in the next year. Collin has earned 3/5 of his Chicago trip s and will soon earn a trip on the NY subway. You owe me a cup of coffee. Just saying:-)
There are better ways to say, "Go back and revise again. Blah blah is something that needs improvement before showing this work to the public."
No. No confusion. Take credit where it is deserved. You have improved my game without sending me into a spin of doubt (Despite initiating a flurry of rewrites). I'm mad at Bomb Pop. She messed with my peeps.
Damn right, Mr. Best.
They need to come up with a plan.
Some part of the plan needs to change. A door is locked that shouldn't be. A guard is present who should be. The characters must adapt.
The girls enter into the danger zone, where they are committed.
The secure the item.
One more thing goes wrong. They must adapt again or be caught. Something must be sacrificed. A glove left behind...a shoe...a fingerprint...an irresistable need to leave a calling card? The clue left behind will later come back to haunt them since this is the first time they've used their abilities and therefore can't think of everything.
They succeed.
It's kinda formulaic, but you get the idea. It gives you a launching pad and then the story can happen around the structure.
Fair enough
I learned to eliminate the two-space-hit after a period by clicking on 'show invisibles' on my Mac. There has to be an option for this on a Windows machine. Once you see the markings, it vastly improves your typing so that the mistakes don't happen in the beginning and you can see them to correct them if they already exist. If you do a 'find' and look for (. ) and change it to (. ), then you only have to go back to the end of each sentence to correct the double spacing. (Except for a pass where you look for exclamation points or question marks. Those need to be corrected separately)
A lot of the criticism about your chapters is also about it being the second book. If she finds the characters to be 'cardboard' then it is worth it to spend a little bit of time on making the first couple chapters worth of characterizations stronger...the advantage of self-publishing. You can learn and improve the work after the initial release.
I'm neutral about the review. It was brutal...that is for sure. I think that the reviewer needs to learn how to function in polite society and recognize that this is a learning environment. Telling someone to take a creative writing class isn't a solution. Who knows what the person teaching the class wants to teach (realize that I took an EIGHT credit Creative-Writing class in college that was only about Black and African History. We wrote three things during the entire class) Identifying weaknesses alongside strengths is a better way of getting a point across. In education, you don't expose kids to 100% new material. You introduce it and build on old skills. There is some study out there that I remember...kids can get about 20% of material wrong without getting discouraged. In the review Miss Bomb-Pop gave you, I see about 10% compliment to approximately 90% negative. No wonder you were discouraged.
In the Beta read I just finished, I told the author about my three-strike rule. Once I saw three glaring novice mistakes, I showed her where I thought an editor would put down her book, knowing that the mistakes had to be everywhere throughout the manuscript. The bad news was that she lasted two pages. The good news is that the things I noticed were easily fixed and had nothing to do with the content.
Bomb-Pop seems to be a punctuation nazi. And she couldn't get past the technical to enjoy the story. That is the key take-home from her review, I think. There will be others who take her stance. Since most of her critique is about technical issues (tags, spacing, and length of the story), these are all easily fixed/ thinned. The only exception is the characterizations in the beginning of the second book, and that is also something you can address in a comfortable period of time (I think).
Take heart. Take what seems correct from her review and make it your own. Discard what you don't agree with. Let your skin be a bit tougher. You want to be a pro writer and support your family from this series, so your skill level at this point in time isn't an end point. Your learning curve is just beginning.
I'm an optimist. I think this is within your reach.
FYI, Who was she? I want her to read my stuff and rip me a new bung-hole as well. Or is she floating around the site and dropping big flaming piles of poo all over everybody's business? Because I like a nice, cozy campfire. Did she dare to post something? If that is the case, I'm going to review her back. When I get old, I wanna be more truthful. Maybe I'll just have to start...right...now:-)
It is also a great statement on the current fiasco in my country's hot seat.
If the masses have watched Apollo grow up, they have seen his tantrums as well as his triumphs. Since he is destined to be their leader, the regular people have a lot of opinions about him. If the Emperor hates Apollo, the father would have manipulated the feed to show an unflattering/ petulant version of Apollo. To prevent an overthrow or limit Apollo's support.
And the Emperor would use the press to present himself as a benevolent but fierce ruler, so few realize that he is cray-cray.
This is a logical extension of the press and a novel way of using real-time TV. It would make sense that a crew or a bot is following Apollo everywhere. Dunno, but this is a lot more futuristic to me than the smart-eyes. Our reality TV doesn't follow Trump during his life at the White House, though I'll bet he's thought of this wrinkle. It would get great ratings and might tone down the resistance from intellectuals who think they are keeping tabs on him.
