kittydesade's profile
AGE:
28
LOC: Asheville, NC
GEN: Female
LAST LOGIN: May 21
LOC: Asheville, NC
GEN: Female
LAST LOGIN: May 21
Young woman of modest means trying to make her way in the ‘verse. I’ve written mystery, science fiction, fantasy, mainstream, horror, pornography… short fiction and long although I don’t put together as many novels as I used to.
Mostly I’ll be posting short fiction here, things that have already been published, or pieces I’m using to springboard larger works. I may post the occasional bad sonnet. But I write bad poetry, so mostly I don’t bother.
I have been published; a couple of magazines, an anthology. I’m looking to publish a novel, and so far I’ve gotten some good encouragement and some good bites. I’m not terribly into literary fiction. I’m a mainstream girl who likes to tell stories, and that’s about it. I want to be the n…
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He saw her first at the theatre, through all the glitter and laughter and sparkle of people having a little bit too much of a good time. It was a party, some sort of fund-raiser for the arts or another, the sort of thing that happened at the grand arena. He watched her move through the crowd from across the room and asked her name of the person standing next to him. That man didn't know who she was either. He slipped his way through the crowd and caught her arm before she could leave. She tur...
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It was the first night out since he'd moved in. If you can call it moving when all you have is two cardboard boxes of stuff and a change of shorts. I still didn't know why I was doing it. I hadn't been to the opera since I was twelve. Or any kind of theatre that didn't involve flickering lights, popcorn, and gum on the bottom of my shoes. I liked it, but it wasn't the first thing I thought of when I wanted to go out for the night. Not that I'd been out in two years, going on three. Not that t...
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The King of Winter shrieks the houses down And claps his hand to earth, which fells the stars And leaves them sparkling on the icy ground. Below, the frost writes in men’s bodies, scars From battles of an age ago, from days Spent carving life from barren ground, from time That ran against their desperate faces. Gaze Upon your death in white and know your crime! For man was not meant to survive in pride And in despite of every season’s turn. A plague that knows not how to humbly bide Nor anyth...
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They were all there at the end, even if it did make the room very crowded. On the bed the dying woman wheezed slightly, her closed eyes flickering open just for a second. They were standing four and five people deep, and not everyone saw. But they all felt the sigh of nervousness that rippled outwards from the bed at the movement, what might have been a sign of consciousness. After all that, she only closed her eyes again and wheezed her slow breaths out. “What happens?” someone asked in a hu...
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The overall story could benefit from a beta-reader or copy-editor, to catch the little things. You have some very abrupt transitions, whether from scene to scene or mood to mood I'm not sure. Certainly from paragraph to paragraph. At first the story has one kind of languid, pleasurable mood and then it shifts to near-violence and it's jarring to keep up with. You do have some good layering of exposition in with story description; it can be hard to put in enough context that the reader underst...
I think, until you learn the conventions of prose-writing grammar (which are different from standard English grammar, usually!) you might want to find someone to copy-edit or beta-read your words. I'm noticing a lot of basic spelling, homonym, and grammar errors. I think it's a decent concept, but I think you also need to expand it a lot more. What are you trying to focus on here? The emotions of the protagonist, the possibilities of the effects of cloning on the way people interact with each...
As far as first person perspective goes, it's not a bad first attempt. It could use some polish, some smoothing. On longer paragraphs you tend to repeat the "I"s; I did this, i did that, I felt this way. Any time you repeat pronouns like that... and repetition in general, whether of phrases or pronouns... it creates a monotone that usually distracts readers rather than involves them. Your descriptions are good. I would recommend exploring a broader phrase vocabulary, stretching for some unusu...
The biggest piece of advice I can give you, I think, is to show and not tell. There's a lot of telling going on here, saying that someone did this, that someone did that. I know it's hard to balance the idea of keeping out of the passive voice versus showing and not telling, but I have faith in you. The story shows that you have a good grasp on the basics. Now it's time to stretch yourself out a little!
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