#great novel openings

[rozmorris]

Your first pages - 5 manuscripts critiqued at @Litopia by literary agent @AgentPete @AJ_Dickenson and me!

I’ve just guested again at Litopia, the online writers’ colony and community. Each week they have a YouTube show, Pop-Up Submissions, where five manuscripts are read and critiqued live on air by literary agent Peter Cox @agentpete and a guest, or sometimes two. This time the other guest was Andy Dickenson @AJ_Dickenson, ITV reporter and YA author. The format is simple. Five manuscripts, each…

[heywriters]

reading about jonathan franzen for the first time and it just hit me that many (american) male authors even treat novel-writing like a competition. it's always got to be better than the ones that came before it, say something the others didn't, win awards, and be "great"

dude. stop being pretentious, art isn't a race it's about being an emotional little freak and recording the evidence

[compacflt]

question: how do you find your research/sources? yours and dancing disasters' icemav fics are so inside baseball i love it, but how do you go about doing research?

I just read a lot & google stuff I don't know & am curious about. not that hard to start learning. and in terms of reading I've been interested in military history & milfiction my whole life. mostly related to the US army, actually--im extremely new to naval history and naval literature; all of that interest was driven by top gun. I've also been fortunate enough to visit a lot of the places I write about--ive been to Pearl Harbor a couple times & San Diego MANY times, for instance, and I've toured a few aircraft carriers and military bases. I've also finally bitten the bullet and kinda shifted my career path towards aerospace, so I've been learning a lot just by working in the aerospace & defense sector/spending a lot of time with people who do.

that's obviously not to say that I am somehow Educated in all this stuff. im pretty open on this blog about me being young & naive & wrong much of the time about how the real world works. so, you know, a lot of shit I just Make Up according to my preconceived notions of the military & the world.

here is my recommended military/navy reading list, some fiction and some nonfiction.

someone also asked recently if I had read anything good in the last 6 months--yes!! three new additions to my reading list: a) Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain. So goddamn good. If you have to read only one novel about the Iraq War, make it this one. It's more about America than it is about Iraq. b) Redeployment by Phil Klay. This one is a collection of short stories about Marines in Iraq, written by a USMC vet, talk about inside baseball. Crazy amounts of jargon in here, basically a "to-google" list. won the national book award which idk if it deserved, but it's good. c) No true glory: A Frontline Account of the Battle of Fallujah by Bing West. currently reading this one, really well done so far, talks a lot about how fucked the US strategy was in Iraq with Fallujah serving as a metonymy/case study for the war itself.

again... this is all mostly close-quarters-combat (infantry) literature, I really am not that interested in the navy/Air Force that much outside of top gun lol

though I did recently remember that in early 2022, before I was into top gun, I read "Wingmen" by Ensan Case, which is actually a gay US naval aviator romance set in WWII published in 1979! it's really authentic and kind of sad, obviously, since it was a 1940s navy gay love story published in 1979. I don't actually think Wingmen influenced how I wrote wwgattai or how I think of TG/TGM but I just remembered that I read that book in February 2022 and going "oh my god they were wingmen" so maybe you might find that book interesting.

[tyrantwombat]

No, but seriously, can you imagine how utterly surreal it is to be Song Taewon and have two of the most unhinged people on the planet both decide to become intensely invested in your life and health after knowing you for like five seconds? One of them uses aggressive mob tactics to try and get you to let them chauffeur you around, the other is a little guy you could crush with your pinky on accident who hunts you down in the middle of a pit of monsters with a packed lunch convinced you will starve if he doesn’t personally feed you. You have to play an intense game of de-escalation at literally all times to keep this same random guy from calling and yelling at your boss about your sleep schedule, and this is still an improvement on that time you barely convinced him it wasn’t necessary to utterly annihilate your place of work to get you more vacation time. The other one has probably historically attempted to set your closet and/or you yourself on fire so he can buy you clothes.

You just want to live your corporate slave life and resist the dark yearnings of your soul in PEACE but instead you’re having to dodge two very powerful men who both desperately want to take care of you.

[welcome-to-the-end-of-eras]

I have so many thoughts on the way The Mars House will portray queerness because it's so radically different from the way Ms. Pulley has done it in the past, almost the exact opposite. For starters, it's in a future where queer people are accepted and respected members of society; Gale being openly nonbinary and important enough to be negatively impacted by their views on "offworlders" to the point where they have to fake a marriage, is blatant proof of queerness being valid and accepted. In the description of the book ALONE. The closest we have gotten to proof of queerness at all in the description of a book is when the back cover of tlfop references Six as both Thaniel and Mori's daughter, and even that is incredibly subtle to the point where you'd only notice if you knew the books. Up until now, queerness in Natasha Pulley's books has been subtle and underlying, understood but not said, but now the characters have a chance to be openly queer and express themselves more and I think that's a really nice change of pace. And we finally have an explicitly trans character!!! That's so cool!!! She had kind of implied Valery not aligning with the gender binary at the end of thlovk, but now we have a character who is openly opposed to it and I think it's going to be really interesting. Idk y'all I'm just really excited.

[terrainofheartfelt]

is it because i'm getting older and gayer or is there really a surge of self-help books happening around me? and am i a curmudgeon to say that they're bullshit?

[widowshill]

VAMP ROGER AU QUESTION! how would he and barnabas interact together (if they ever interact)? :3 💜

tagging @tortoisesshells because she's my co-conspirator <3

excellent question! this family and their sharp-toothed men will be the death of ... well, several community members of Collinsport, i suppose.

to start — Barnabas gets out of the box slightly differently than in canon, which colors his relationship to Roger and the rest of the household. Roger kills Willie after his attempted assault on Carolyn and Vicki (who is, by that point, his wife); Willie's mysterious disappearance and Roger's suspected involvement makes Jason that much more panicked, desperate, and correspondingly aggressive. Liz goes searching for the lost family jewels in a last-ditch attempt to buy Jason off, and, inadvertently, lets their ancient family sin out of the tomb.

ergo she's made Barnabas' thrall instead of Willie, but this goes unnoticed for a while — even though her brother would, in theory, recognize the signs, and his suspicions are raised, but she's already acting so much unlike herself with Jason around that he doesn't suspect anyone else of doing her harm. yet.

at the start, he and Barnabas get along very well, even before they discover their shared affliction: they're both relatively sophisticated, well-traveled, intelligent people, and for all that Roger decries Liz's emphasis on the Collins name, he leans towards familial connections instinctively (Roger hasn't got much in the way of friends outside of the house even in canon, and he's even more isolated as a vampire).

after he finds out Barnabas is also a vampire, things get a little more complicated, but overall, they're still friendly. Roger doesn't have much sympathy for Barnabas' relentless self-pity and decrying his doomed fate to live as a monster, because Roger on the whole enjoys his vampirism and has made a decent un-life for himself out of it (thanks in no small part to Vicki). but having someone like him around is a comfort in ways he wouldn't have expected, he's no longer solitary or uniquely monstrous out of the Collins family, he has someone else around through the night, and someone who understands the sufferings of bloodthirst and being shut out of the sun.

furthermore, Roger's very much interested in his family history and stories of the past, the building of Collinwood, Jeremiah's ships – and Barnabas was there. there's potential for some very interesting conversations about the past, and the arc of the Collins family history to the present, not to mention literature, travel, fashion, politics and the rest. Roger's his cousin's mirror in modernity in many ways, and that's something potentially interesting to explore: the world changes around them, but Collinses do not.

as an aside, they both have a funny sort of relationship to Burke. Barnabas hates him for his resemblance to Jeremiah and envies his friendship with Vicki and thinks he's crude, and Roger ... well. it's complicated. it's closer to antagonism than not, and Burke has tried to kill him once in this au, and Roger resents his flirting with Vicki, but then there's everything else with their past. so I don't think Barnabas' treatment of him would sit particularly well with Roger, he'd take the attitude of hey, only I can be a dick to Burke >:(

the definite fracture point is Barnabas imprinting on Vicki. Roger's already jealous and possessive by nature, and it's amplified by the supernatural nature of his relationship to Vicki (being closer, bodily and mentally; being necessary to each other; being, quite literally, sustenance) so he's already a little on edge when Barnabas starts paying attention to her, giving her presents, and appreciating the scenery — Barnabas doesn't, exactly, tend to have much in the way of moral inclination to leaving women alone when they have prior engagements, but it's fair to point out the irony of everything Roger was doing with his bloodbag governess when he was still very much a married man.

anyway: Roger finds foreign bite marks on his wife's neck, and he's understandably immensely upset by this. partially out of territorial sentiment, but he also knows Vicki, and he knows that she wouldn't have invited another vampire willingly — which means that she was forced, or hypnotized, or attacked in secret, and there's only the one potential suspect. this is already enough to lose his good will, but he might have been willing to let Barnabas go with a "hands off," had this discovery not lead to finding out what he'd also been doing to Liz. the combination of the two is unforgivable, and it's Barnabas' error to have made an enemy who is very personally aware of all his vampiric weaknesses, and Burke's already carved a stake.

[evolxe-domain]

< | >

[recitedemise]

There are so many personalities, perhaps a number flirting closer to a million or several. In that end, to grasp them all, one has better start learning, devouring all manner of manual and tomes. However, never one to be bested, Miraak trudges on admirably, and to credit, discreet as ever, Gale had hardly noticed.

But then, in all fairness, they, sat together, had technically just met. He hadn't known Miraak before, the man he'd grown to be when battered with solitude. Gale hadn't flavored his distrust or the quality of those men that had come here before him, and so, Miraak plunging longly in that study of biology? To Gale, it all seemed part and parcel with his hunger to learn. Surely, he little meant to suss him, learning how to treat this wizard in his tailored-fine velvets. Even Gale, half a peacock, wouldn't dare to assume a thought so flattering, but gods preserve him, Gale, unlike Miraak, isn't anywhere near as subtle. Even more so, Gale, unlike Miraak, is gleefully talkative.

After all, some studies, he would happily wager, are better learned beyond the pages of leather-clad books. This is where they differ, a stark chasm in their beings that would rival a ravine. Even after his isolation, Gale would jump oh so willingly into bartering words. He's a...fondness in him still, a sort of honeyed-up soul his rot couldn't conquer. It makes him honestly kind, stubbornly affable regardless if the day would strike him harder, and -- well, he's a mortal thing, too, simple with his wants and his vulnerable heart. Scholars long for knowledge in their hours with their books, but to his core, it was connection that Gale felt starved of the most.

It's a secret. And so, perhaps they've a pretense that they both will nurse.

Stirring, Gale looks to the page that Miraak thumbs on open. He looks to it, seeing little beyond words and a half-scrabbled image of some drawing of Atmora. It's conjecture a best, so shrouded in uncertainty and mystery as it is. It's a bygone era, and sadder still, an echo of a time with whom but one soul can hear. Gale listens to Miraak, their gazes locking as his host, his friend, shares a little of himself. Gale's heart folds a little, that emeralding glow freckling soft in his eyes. Like earth and moss and leaves upon the peat... Loneliness. Not for the first time, he thinks there's not a man more lonely.

"I hale from Waterdeep," he offers, "not so ancestral admittedly, but no less the hotbed for culture and aspiring innovations." He conjures up an image. "I live at her docks, surrounded always with waters as she winks with the sunrise. In the morning, I would smell the stirring of the bakeries preparing for the early birds, and at night, I would watch the stars where they would glimmer the proudest and brightest." Full and alive. There and present. The mirage before them twinkles like an ocean with a breeze, and Gale, looking up, gauges his companion.

Miraak... "How long have you been here?" / @bendwill, continued from here.

[heartbeetz]

I NEED to get back into oc f/os. I just remembered my old casino themed anthro shark guy. He never got a solid enough ref sheet (or lore, really) for me to feel comfortable making him one of my f/os but maybe I should remedy that at some point. Big Jack.........

[virtuouslibertines69]

"Never open the door to a lesser evil, for other and greater ones invariably slink in after it." - Baltasar Gracin

[gentlethorns]

hmmm getting in my head a little bit about some issues i'm already seeing in my first draft that ik i'll need to confront in my second draft. but i genuinely just have to be like *sprays my overcritical mind w a spray bottle* no!!!!! let me finish the first draft first!!!!!!

[mejomonster]

Oh also when I start dropping the Red White and Royal Blue book quotes expect a FLOOD I'm highlighting the fuck out of this book

[unopenablebox]

an inexplicable craving for ham?

[cannonfullofcanons]

I've been trying to hit drafts on & off but I'm apparently just not jiving with being productive. Depression's had me by the ass since I got up this morning, and nothing seems to be really helping much today. I've been far more self-destructive than usual and I'm not catching it nearly as much as I should be, and it's probably not exactly wise for me to keep pushing myself & putting myself down over not getting things done here, so I'm bowing out early today. I apologize.

[prolibytherium]

Do you ever read something and go like holy shit did I write this in a fugue state? Are you me? Can we kiss? Do we have to kill each other?