The Mark of Kale

What's not to like.....

Just came to this, in response to your message, and read a few pages. Enough here for me to come back for more, and as I'm making new space on my shelf but....

The word 'there' is too much for me already. Never start a novel with that word. Ok, shoot me but just try it first. See if you can say the same thing without that word. Now look at your seconed sentence. 'There,' again! For me, it's the sign of a bad craftsman; there was, there is, there. It gives the writing a lazy feel at the begining of a sentence, but you do it at the begining of the story!

Inject some feeling, get rid of lazy words. eg: " the hall.... was well lit and cheerful.." Get rid of that word 'well.' Just say it was lit and cheerfull. Say it short, sharp and snappy, to the point and lets get going with this story.

But, there was enough of a story here for me to enjoy so I'll come back and read more. Sorry, sorry, sorry, I mean to say : Enough here to lure me back. .

Good luck,

John O'Dowd
Men Who Ran Away.

Hi Ayrich,

Interesting and intriguing read. It's imaginative and hooks you in well. The only crit I have is to agree with a previous review in that you need to expand your pitch. Backed for the great complex plot.

Sara

Hi Ayrich,
Just looking at Ch 1 atm, and you know this is all ‘imho’ as usual, so …
I would start: ‘Leslie’s chest was tight with anxiety and she felt a deep sense of dread, but she had no idea why.’ (Just my opinion, okay.)
‘She opened the door and looked into pitch darkness.’
‘As she turned to leave, the door shut behind her.’
Um, as lots of other people say, be careful of these sentences that start with an ‘ – ing ‘ word. They can be awkward and end up not saying what you want them to mean.
‘Adrenaline rushed through her body and her heart started to race.’ Be careful of that comma use!; There are more examples of it in your writing. Sometimes you’d be better off to put a full stop and start a new sentence, or to use a conjunction like ‘and’ or ‘but’. This is a VERY common error, and not only in your writing.
‘duties’, not duty’s …. Grrrr! It’s a plural, okay, and you don’t use an apostrophe to show that. But it is ‘Porter’s life’, because that’s a possessive. (Misuse of apostrophes is also very common and not just in your writing.)
‘In the process of filling this assignment … ‘ starts a long sentence which is also one paragraph. I’d look at changing that if I were you.
‘They escaped only because Ramone became suspicious of Porter and cornered him … ‘ sounds better to me.
‘His job had been to keep valuable things that way by creating … ‘
‘Jacob’s life ‘
‘Jacob was a prime example.’
I’m not one to speak, but many other people have an aversion to ‘had’ so maybe you’d want to look at how often you use it, and whether it’s necessary.
I hope I don’t leave any scars this time! * grin *
All the best with it. I’ll back it as I want to read more.

wahey!

The Mark of Kale...

Great atmosphere c.1. Do expand your pitch, however.

Leslie with the 'ie' is certainly a girl's name in Canada--maybe the 'ley' comments are specifically British. I seem to recall that we used to distinguish between the male and female spelling, but we don't any longer.

One important nit: watch out for sentences starting with participles. I call them Ing Sentences. You have one (Turning to leave, the door closed...) which is grammatically incorrect because the participle should agree with subject of the sentence. If the Ing Sentence starts with a gerund (e.g., writing fiction is magical), then there's no problem, but when the Ing word is a participle, you can fall into the trap that caught you. Plus, there's another trap: for example, walking across the room, he screwed in the light bulb. How can he walk across the room and screw in the light bulb at the same time...yet you see this mistake many times here on authonomy. Don't know if you've made it elsewhere, but do watch for it because participles indicate concurrent actions, not sequential ones. Then there's the issue of whether you should use Ing Sentences at all. I took a gander through my personal library and selected award-winning novels at random. Not an Ing Sentence to be found! I guess the great writers know something I didn't--that Ing Sentences might not be that elegant. Food for thought. It certainly gave me pause (and yet another revision of my manuscript.)

Overall, I like this one better than Miranda, although I liked it, too.

Shelved, of course.

Cheers,
Sheryl
IN ALL THE WRONG PLACES (not that you owe me a return read, but, yes, you owe me a return read because now I've read and backed both your novels! Seriously, however, I would love your honest reactions because I'm getting soooo close to the Editor's Desk and I do want to make the novel the best it could be. Your backing would be very nice--can't lie--but for that, the novel must be sufficiently worthy. I hope you think it is.)

I prefer this to the first one. Its very atmospheric. I can't see anything to critique. Shelved.

Hi there - chilling start. One of my relatives has water/drowning dreams all the time, and she says they're supposed to signify a fear of change, or of something due to happen... the fear of drowning is a horrible one and I even found myself holding my breath when I read that part. (Water dreams don't bother me incidentally... I quite happily swim around in those ones). The second part was set-up from the end of Miranda, which I guess is necessary in a sequel - always the chance that you'll catch "new" readers with a book out of sequence. Fine, taut writing, and just enough intrigue to keep people going. Even those who don't know about Miranda will want to read on and find out more.

Great stuff. One niggle - and this may not be true of where you live - but the female version of "leslie" is "Lesley", I'm sure... "Leslie" is the masculine form. Again, may be wrong, you may know a female Leslie. Anyways, great stuff as usual, all the best

P

This has the same brilliant writing as Miranda.
Still shelved here.
maybe you´ll need to work on making it stand alone,
if not Miranda fans will go for it..but no one else
BEST OF LUCK.........Mikey (The Free)

Yes, this fulfills it early promise. I think you should have a much longer pitch though.

On my shelf.

Peter.

It's always a pleasure to read chapters in which the writer has taken some time with the formatting. I'd like to see your synopses expanded. Other than that, the writing is worthy of being shelved.

Rodney

Read the first coulple of paragraphs. Like it so far. Will put it on my WL to read more.

Just one thing, Lesley is a female name Leslie is a male. You might have a special reason for making her spell it Leslie, but I haven't got to it yet.

Peter.

Hey Ayrich, thought I'd drop by and see your book. Just a couple of notes. Hallway is one word.
You've got: 'Only, she didn't know what," no comma after the 'only'. This is great. I'll give it a turn on my shelf. Well done.
Cealarenne
THE GUARDIAN OF LESSER THINGS

Hello Ayrich

Looks like another gud un!

Shelved for a further read.

Cheers
Bill

Porter's back. As anticipated volume two of Miranda has all the making of another cracker jack thriller. Poter and his band of misfits are arrayed against the formidable might of Miranda. How will they go? I don't know, but I'm looking forward to finding out! I've feeling I'm going to be hanging on to the edge of my seat for the ride.

Backed with the pleasure--all the signs are that this will as good as Miranda.

Reading on. The way you deliver the backstory is very good. You stay in Leslie's POV which I find very hard to achieve yet you bring us up to speed. Love the closing of ch 1.

Her "duty's" typo shld be "duties". "africa" needs to be capitalized. I'm not good at picking up typos, but noticed these.

Read till the end of the dream. Love it. Tried to find nitpicks but couldn't because you got me sucked into the story the moment she saw the little girl. Loved the fact she couldn't speak, everyone can related to that where nightmares go. Only thing: typo in "theres" in the pitch.