Acts/ Dictates/ Mandates/ Mantle - Amy's Thread (Page 61 of 77)

No!!!!!

Oh, just sometimes?! Phew! Breathes again!

Mandates and Kha--

Kha leaves the letter and leaves the Guild.  He stops for provisions--is that when he encounters Karl and Karl's account of the Fateful Events?  Could you use that as your starting point for Mandates, with Kha's letter and a sentence or two of dialogue as a prologue?  It would fill in detail not in the other stories, and Kha could spend some time giving Airen a more recent history

And what of Marion and her Seeing?  Hmmityy hmmityy hmmityy.

Karl, whom I do not know/remember, starting and ending a story mostly about Kha?

OK, it was up on the website already. Under Mandates of Magic chapter 99 (part one) and 98 (part two)

Found it! Thanks. I already reviewed them, but Karl's name didn't stick in my head (shocking, I know). A very likeable fellow. I'd love to see more of him in the books.

Y'know how Tazar remembers the past in prison?  I wonder if you might be able to use parts of Karls story like that, maybe as Kha tries to make sense of what happened in Earthwound.

You can use them the same way Tazar does.   You can even overlap.  The lesson about not seeing illusions could be very painful.

Oh, and please do not pare the scene leading to Sil's transformation any further.  I think you've gone a little too far now, making the dialogue screen dialogue instead of reading dialogue.  That moment needs some meat on the bone.  You can't afford it voluptuous, but you don't want it anorexic either.

Due to storyline complexity, I suggest converting that underground abandoned city into an ant mound. You could tie it into your existing ants, and then you could say "cavern wall" and "ducked under a stalactite" etc instead of introducing flat walls at this point.

That city you depicted... you could probably spend about 4 pages describing it and still parts would be unclear. I suspect it's not that important to the overall story, so instead of leaving some readers confused about the stage, why not normalize it to the previous chapters?

I suggest cutting it (rather than try to render it better) because I'm never 100% sure if it's "day" or "night" or if the characters can see the sun. I'm never sure of the flora and fauna (especially with respect to broad-leaf plants). Sometimes a "drop-off" is mentioned and I can't picture how big or wide or deep. This stuff could use more fluffing out next pass. The city? Not so much if it can be normalized.

After letting it roll around in the back of my head for a few weeks, I wish to nominate "glop" as the count noun for gillis.

This word is sorta comprehensible and is something the characters could believably coin on the spot.

I'm out of touch due to a moment of insanity. See, I'm on Twitter and I'm following lit agents and publishers. Then I find out that Jollyfish Press has gone under and a publisher that I'm following is talking about freelancing. So I know he's legit. And he reps what I want to write.

All I have to lose is money. And this is a chance to up my game.

So I'm assembling a master copy in Word (ick) and thinning a lot of fat. I'm going through backlogged reviews. Then I eliminated a character (Jean-Marie). Figure I'll give it another day or two and then send it into the ether. Then I'll be back with a vengeance. Well, back to work at least.

Will be interesting to see what he has to say.

Amy, can you tell me roughly how long a reaction to the flu vaccine lasts? These are considered a mild reaction to the vaccine? Sheesh. (Kdot, don't be a wuss. Get the vaccine.)

I'm not sure. I know of one person who missed work for three days, which had never happened to him before. He hasn't had a flu shot since.