Mirror In The Sky (Being A Tale of Fantastic Araby)

James Elroy Flecker:

War Song of the Saracens

We are they who come faster than fate: we are they who ride early or late:
We storm at your ivory gate: Pale Kings of the Sunset, beware!
Not on silk nor in samet we lie, not in curtained solemnity die
Among women who chatter and cry, and children who mumble a prayer.
But we sleep by the ropes of the camp, and we rise with a shout, and we tramp
With the sun or the moon for a lamp, and the spray of the wind in our hair.

From the lands, where the elephants are, to the forts of Merou and Balghar,
Our steel we have brought and our star to shine on the ruins of Rum.
We have marched from the Indus to Spain, and by God we will go there again;
We have stood on the shore of the plain where the Waters of Destiny boom.
A mart of destruction we made at Jalula where men were afraid,
For death was a difficult trade, and the sword was a broker of doom;

And the Spear was a Desert Physician who cured not a few of ambition,
And drave not a few to perdition with medicine bitter and strong:
And the shield was a grief to the fool and as bright as a desolate pool,
And as straight as the rock of Stamboul when their cavalry thundered along:
For the coward was drowned with the brave when our battle sheered up like a
wave,
And the dead to the desert we gave, and the glory to God in our song.

Have you (self) published this shit yet, what's the isbn number?

I'll pass.

Very good.
Ebro continued polishing - I misread this 1st time - maybe so early on clarity is King - so - 'Ebro said, polishing his saddle'?
not ddesigned as a throwing knife and Ebro... For me one longer sentence flows better at this point.
just a trail of black ants - cut 'just' it weakens the line.

I like try to offer simething constructive but really I'm nit- picking - this is vivid engaging stuff,
thanks
simon - The Soul of Charlie Marconi

James Elroy Flecker:

War Song of the Saracens

We are they who come faster than fate: we are they who ride early or late:
We storm at your ivory gate: Pale Kings of the Sunset, beware!
Not on silk nor in samet we lie, not in curtained solemnity die
Among women who chatter and cry, and children who mumble a prayer.
But we sleep by the ropes of the camp, and we rise with a shout, and we tramp
With the sun or the moon for a lamp, and the spray of the wind in our hair.

From the lands, where the elephants are, to the forts of Merou and Balghar,
Our steel we have brought and our star to shine on the ruins of Rum.
We have marched from the Indus to Spain, and by God we will go there again;
We have stood on the shore of the plain where the Waters of Destiny boom.
A mart of destruction we made at Jalula where men were afraid,
For death was a difficult trade, and the sword was a broker of doom;

And the Spear was a Desert Physician who cured not a few of ambition,
And drave not a few to perdition with medicine bitter and strong:
And the shield was a grief to the fool and as bright as a desolate pool,
And as straight as the rock of Stamboul when their cavalry thundered along:
For the coward was drowned with the brave when our battle sheered up like a
wave,
And the dead to the desert we gave, and the glory to God in our song.

Chapters are short, and the jumping back and forth style is really working well. It reads closer to a screen play than a book to me. Still I like it Backed.

Have you (self) published this shit yet, what's the isbn number?

What no crit? Even though I backed it - and promoted it on the forum (under another ID)

Hi Nick,
what an inreresting story based in the Middle East. A delightful read..looking forward to the rest of the book...I back the book..Harold Alvin (ICON) Wesley

Dear Nick, I love your mix of romance, fantasy, & fiction. Your blurb is good because it prepared me to read your book. Your story is good because you create interest by having short paragraphs & lots of dialogue, which makes me want to keep reading to find out what's going to happen next. I'm backing/commenting on your book to help it advance. Could you please return the favor by taking a moment to back/comment on my TWO books, "He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not" & the unedited version? "Tell Me True Love Stories." Thanks, Susie :)

It seems to me that there is a little talent here but there are odd slips that make me halt and wonder. Schnapps seems a peculiar drink for the Middle East for instance. I find the paragraphs uncomfortably short . It makes the book read like a primary school reader.

The plot is quite entertaining but not entertaining enough to make be read beyond chapter 21.

The problem with critiques is that they illuminate and address perceived flaws. But that doesn’t mean that I think a piece lacks merit or I’ve deemed the piece is shoddily written. It means I have a alternate perspective. Hold bound / let loose. It’s up to the writer to decide proportion.

There’s a general feeling on the forum that this novel didn’t merit its gold star. That’s complete bullshit.

Now, thoughts while reading:

You vacillate in your tenses. You don’t want to do that. A reader shouldn’t struggle to discern which is occurring and which is impending. “Ebro continued (past tense) polishing (present tense) … He watched (past tense) Jawad take out his jambaya and use the tip of its curved blade to pick (present tense) black sand and camel dung from under the gnarled toenails of his right foot. Jawad spat (past tense) again, achieving (present tense) a good few yards this time, and hurled (past tense) the dagger to split (present tense) the phlegm with a whump. He was good with the jambaya. It was not designed as a throwing (present tense) knife. Ebro did not know (present tense) anybody but Jawad who could throw (present tense) one and make it stick, (present tense) let alone hit (present tense) what he was aiming (present tense) at.”

With a bit of sweat (and I‘m going to construct perfunctory sentences here. I don‘t want to rewrite you. I just want to make the point.) this could be this:

“Ebro said as he polished his saddle. … Jawad unsheathed his jambaya. He picked and dug the black sand and camel dung from under the gnarled toenails of the right hoof with the tip of the curved blade. Jawad spat again and achieved a good few yards this time. He echoed the arc with his hurled knife and split the phlegm with a whump. Ebro knew Jawad was good with the jambaya. Although the knife was not designed to be thrown, many times Ebro watched as Jawad hurled and stuck the blade where he aimed. Ebro thought no one else was as talented with a knife.”

Lack of parallelism in tenses, pronoun verb agreements etc … demonstrate a lack of discipline and polish. Now - it’s one hell of an undertaking to get all of your words to be parallel - but the prize is praiseworthy prose.

Okay, enough with the grammar.

This is good crisp writing. The plot works. The characters are engaging.

However it has one fundamental flaw: there’s no fluidity here.

This is perfunctory. It’s paced but it’s too pedestrian. Now stop. Let’s redefine the word pedestrian. I do not mean ordinary. I mean ambulatory. It moves at a walking pace. It’s pedestrian. Your sentences are all nearly the same length. And you have no transitions. It doesn’t flow at all. It’s not plodding. It’s not a dirge. But there’s no variance of speed. It doesn’t catch my breath or make my mind move. But that’s because you’ve lulled the reader into a rhythm.

Reading is an athletic event. A reader’s eyes exercise. Think about it. The eyes journey from side to side. It’s an actual physical event. And the oddest thing? Our bodies prepare for the journey. We take breaths at the beginning of paragraphs - and then we move our eyes. Expert writing - and I mean writing that’s on an award winning level - plans the journey. An expert writer considers attention span. In an adventure novel the writer must make the reader’s eyes dash. A writer must push the pupils to the period. The writer must propel the reader through the plot. A reader must feel the tension through the writer’s tenses. And how do you do all that?

Pace.

Sentences must be varied for the eye and the mind. A writer must slice and splice them up. Lengthy sentences are exhausting. It doesn’t matter how great the sentence is if the writer loses his reader before the suffix. Yet consistently short sentences are jarring. A writer needn't limit himself to monosyllabic words and subject/predicate clauseless sentences. So a writer must vary the sentences. A writer must treat a paragraph like a figure skating routine. A writer can spin the reader's eyes. A writer can make the reader's mind jump - but a writer must let the reader soar on a blade too and catch his breath. To follow through on this analogy, your novel is like watching a talented skater take paced laps. I kept waiting for a jump. You spun a plot but your sentences remained staid.

If I were to retool this work - I would hire (or maybe a spouse or friend) to sit and read my novel to me. One chapter at a time. Listen to the pace.

Don’t take notes.

Listen for the breaths of the reader. Listen for the pauses. Listen when the reader’s voice flattens.

Then, walk to your computer. Look at each sentence again. I’m not saying you need to excise - I’m saying you need to exercise the sentences. Pull them. Push them together. Blend them. Combine. Contract. Be concise when you want to clip the content and elongate when you want to soar the scene.

Hey, but it’s not as daunting of a task as it seems. Take chapter by chapter. You’ve got all the necessary ingredients except fluidity.

You’re so close.

Damn close.

Mark R. Trost
"Post Marked."

Enchanting. And just a little wicked. Each twist and turn leaves me wanting more.

I think i may have backed this already, i'll back it again anyway...
su dan [seasons]

I really liked the opening chapters I was captivated by princess sims and the ' devil' I read to 27 looking for more or that rising tension between the two of those characters. Princess sims seems like a vibrant and witty character. so naturally I wanted more of hers. I dont mind Lars but I think he doesnt carry the same impact as the tension between' shaitan the devil' and princess sims. The story became complex and political when i needed more exploration of the characters and their conflict. However the imagery is exotic and some sweeping imagery. I think this is a very potential success and would find it a great pleasure to read as a whole

More of John Jack's thoughts:

One Thousand and One Nights_, better known in the West as the _Arabian Nights_ has a central frame story wrapping its short story installments into a more or less cohesive whole. Narrator Scheherazade's dilemma gentles readers into her meaning space, engages through an identifiable anchor point by experiencing the stories from her singular narrative viewpoint. She transitions seemlessly into and out of the background between installments. As a reader, I sympathazie with her dilemma and join into her meaning space. Suspense then rises from being concerned about her outcome. Her delaying her outcome by telling stories artfully delays my potenital loss of interest when viewpoints transition to the installments' viewpoint characters. I'm not starting engagement from scratch again and again, at least because the installments are reflections of her dilemma.

Frame stories are deprecated in many writing consensuses, probably because they're too often poorly executed. I'm not suggesting a frame story for _Mirror in the Sky_, only suggesting consider taking a look at how a frame story's wrapping narrative point of view works to orient readers alignment with a narrative's meaning space through a narrator's meaning space.

_Nights'_ ancient extant origins, comparable to Homer's _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_ in contributions to narrative point of view methods, for its times, introduces a unique approach to engaging readers through the frame story method. Each of the three methods uses distinguishably different covert ominiscient narrative point of view methods. They represent the introductions of three of the four covert omniscient narrative methods in wide use today.

For the predominant today covert omniscient narrative point of view, It's not until the middle of the nineteenth century before the free indirect discourse method is introduced by Gustav Flaubert in _Madame Bovary_. That method is the one I believe _Mirror in the Sky_ is looking to settle down to.

I got that Ebron's intended as the viewpoint character in the first scene. However, Jawad is introduced first and takes precedence by default. He nonconsciously takes first position by entering the stage first. The narrator's alienating involvements further confuse the issue of who's the narrative's anchor viewpoint. I was working too hard to align with the story's meaning space, adrift seeking an anchor through the narrator, Jawad, Ebron, or whomever.

enticing and very well written am eager to find out what happens next.

Diane

Love, love, love the first chapter. The whole story is like a picture, and I could easily see it being made into a movie.

Here you have presented a story with all the earmarks of the epic. The scenes are indelible. The characters are vivid and human and we see them each through the same telescoping blue glass that hangs from Al Shaitan's belt. Each has grown to an uncomfortable degree of complacency with their adopted situations. Lars relaxes within the easy charms of Zillah's cave. Zoltan the former great, with those seemingly interminable intestinal winds rattling his innards, cannot define the change that has ravaged him and Al Shaitan struggles with feelings familiar and yet unfamiliar too. And then there is Sima and the cooperation she promised. Is she freely the devil's bride or does she still secretly lust for revenge?

What a wonderful tale! RT

Here you have presented a story with all the earmarks of the epic. The scenes are indelible. The characters are vivid and human and we see them each through the same telescoping blue glass that hangs from Al Shaitan's belt. Each has grown to an uncomfortable degree of complacency with their adopted situations. Lars relaxes within the easy charms of Zillah's cave. Zoltan the former great, with those seemingly interminable intestinal winds rattling his innards, cannot define the change that has ravaged him and Al Shaitan struggles with feelings familiar and yet unfamiliar too. And then there is Sima and the cooperation she promised. Is she freely the devil's bride or does she still secretly lust for revenge?

What a wonderful tale! RT

a good and visual start with a handful of interesting characters. Things are poised to happen right from the start, I'll be back.

I've looked at _Mirror in the Sky_ several times over the past few weeks. Something about the narrative voice disengaged me each time. So I examined the first sentence closely and found an answer for what didn't sit well with me.

An alienation effect is coming from an unsettled narrative voice. Adverb and adjective choices and other asides are coming from the narrator's viewpoint, expressing comments; however, the narrator is an uninvolved, covert narrator.

By way of illumination, Jawad spits out a" _foul_ concoction of qat and tobacco." The narrator expresses the gob is foul. That's a colorful image. However, the narrator is interacting with the gob without interacting with Jawad's interaction with the gob. The gob came out of Jawad's mouth. How foul can it be to Jawad? I imagine he finds pleasure from chewing qat and tobacco. Otherwise, he wouldn't put them in his mouth to begin with. Spitting out the juices is a part of his oral fixations.

I read through the first chapter noting similar alienating narrator involvements throughout. I noted another one or two above at the end of the first chapter while I composed this comment. "No point flogging the horses until they _wilted_." Again, a colorful image. How does flogging make horses wilt? I understand from the context that flogging means pushing them onward. Exertion in the heat would sap their strength. I don't see how they'd wilt like plants from flogging. Wither from exertion in the heat perhaps.

Next sentence, verb tense issue. "He lowered his hand _to adjusted_" Possibly a revision artifact from recasting the sentence.

"_Unthinkable_ heat" denotative meaning, incapable of being grasped by the mind. Is the excruciating heat ungrasped by Lars' mind? If it wasn't, he'd be incapable of taking action on account of it being unbearably hot.

Colorful story--almost but not quite all the way there--that asks for a discerning examination of the ominscient narator's role and degree of involvement in expressing comments.

I usually don't read this kind of fantasy, but it's written well. Good luck with publication. And if you like to read a few pages of the book Turning a new leaf, . . .. Lindsay.

I usually don't read this kind of fantasy, but it's written well. Good luck with publication. And if you like to read a few pages of the book Turning a new leaf, . . .. Lindsay.

I have read through chapter 3. So far I am enjoying the book. Sorry it took me so long to get back to you. I havent been online in days. Your writing is a real credit to you.

If you can still look at my book "God's Tears" I would be grateful. I need all the feedback I can get.

I’m totally buying this! My appetite for Arabia is sharpened as I have just finished reading Sir Richard Burton’s biography and here comes an eventful story directly from the desert sands. The writing is superb. Congratulations.

Iva P.
Fame and Infamy

I hate to admit it, but I am at a loss for words to adequately describe how marvelous this book is. Your writing is both amazing and you have a gift for pulling the reading into the story. Absolutely marvelous. Definitely backed.

Very colourful and great descriptives. One usually encounters those paragraph long set-ups and then the characters just lie there and interact in the scene (something I've been guilty of before). But in your opening and throughout this piece, you let the story loose and I picked up the character, the magic and the textures as they moved along and grew throughout.
The opening pages where we watch the princess interacting with the horse, the kitten the guard, gives a lot for the reader to draw on in only a few sentences.
I have only read a few random (1, 13, 27) chapters but I will be reading more over the weekend.
Very nice, not usually my genre but well done.
Backed.
Be Brilliant!
Skip-

I'm glad to see you weren't kicked out! premise looks great. Good luck with publication!

Great storytelling. And cover image. You owe yourself a better tag line and pitch! Jane Bain ('Life Script')

It's a great story, well written. Congratulations it is obviously a winner.
Sorry I took a while to get back to you. I am backing it.
David (Flawless Murder)

Congratulations on the gold star! Good luck!
Kathy
The Real Poop

Nick - congrats and well done! Cynthia Drew, Tabernacle

Good luck with the editor's desk. :) Definitely a novel I hope to see at my local bookstore. I don't like to read much online and I have long bus-rides to university, so this would be a novel of choice to take along.

- Lily C.

Thanks for your comments on An Invisible Dawn. I appreciate them.

I know you don't need more comments, but this is quite good. I like the character build. It's mainly thoughts, but flows well and is obviously leading into the action.

Good Luck on finding a publisher!
Weston Kincade

Nick,
I heard the urgency in your last message to me, so I took time out to read the first 3 chapters of your manuscript. Although it is not my usual genres, I see that it is written very well. The only complaint(s) that I have is maybe you used italics option on your font settings a little too much, and I saw a few dangling participles—nothing major.

I’ll be happy to give you a leg up, and put this on my shelf for awhile. Good Luck!
Regards,
R.L.

Wow, what a marvelous tale almost something like Arabian nights...Very interesting...I still have a few chapters to read but I'm preparing to leave in a few days for the far east to work on a novel..Hope to finish your book later but Ihave placed it on my shelf,,,,Harold Alvin ICON..Wes

Very well written. It's detailed, enjoyable, and easy to get into. I'll wish you luck that you stay on the shelf for the next few hours, although I don't think you need it.

Hi Nick. Mirror In The Sky. (I am commenting having read 8 ex 34 chapters). Elements of traditional Fantasy (LOR) are transposed to an Arabian desert setting. This is action-packed entertainment delivered at a cracking pace. Akin to The Mummy + Sinbad + Aladdin put in a blender and emerging in literary form! An accomplished and original novel. ATB Simon (Little Bastard)

Nick,
I could definitely see Sir Richard Burton in this! The caravan, the trap, the bravery, and the calculating of Princess Sima even under stress, all open this story well. I feel like I'm in the desery with them, and the brutal culture that goes with it (with a faint hint of chivalry?). Backed, and good luck for this month's ratings.
Mark (Stand up and live!)

I love a book that can completely transport me to somewhere else. The amazing thing is that your writing style does this so effortlessly. Dialogue is something I find difficult at times, you certainly don't seem to have this problem.
Backed with pleasure. I want to read the whole thing but have already committed to reading so many other great books on this site. Given half a year I will leave another comment after reading the whole story.

Dan J Verrall
The Fae'ren Guild

Nick
Not only is this book the masterly telling of a fabulous story, but it generates comments of equal mastery and subtlety (as per Sharazhade)! It doesn't need me to say that the reader is immediately, from the first line, roasting in the burning sun, enjoying watching tribesmen dig dirt out from under their nails with a wicked dagger and all the rest of it. But surely Captain Lars, so unnecessary and irrelevant to Al-Shaitan, would lose his gallant head at the end of Ch2? But no, he doesn't. The pitch suggests Captain Lars will be in a position to rescue the princess. Oh damn, I'm going to have to read on ...

I have to say that this passes my 'browsing' test: if I were browsing at an airport or station I would have no hesitation ...

Chris

This was a breath of fresh air for me. I mainly go on Inkpop (teen version of this site) as my main book I want to promote is a YA. On there the teens make the same mistakes over and over. None of that here. I loved the reference to the kitten. I also like how it is a fantasy that is using plain English. I get put off my modern ones that try to copy fantasies written 100 years ago.

Picked.

I love this book! I really only meant to read one chapter, but I got so caught up! I love the characterization, the scenery. You really have a great book here.

-Raman

Poetic writing Nick. Skipped to chapter 20 after the first. Epic scale. well crafted, crisp writing.....did I say poetic?..... good luck with the desk thing. I think this is original enough to get you noticed.

Ok, this is wierd. I read this already, or at least a few chapters, I'm sure of it. I wonder why i never left a comment or backed it? Odd. Anyway, I just skimmed the first chapter. I would have gone through more but time does not allow it.

First, I have to say I love your writing voice. It is both strong and poetic, with a tightness and gentle flow that both soothes and excites at the same time. Everything is so vivid. You can feel the heat of the deesert and you feel as if you are there, so much as to almost smell the sickly-sweet scent of the camels and picture the princess down to the finenest white hair on her lovely head. Al-Shaitan gives me the creeps and Captain Lars is wonderful. I have a feeling Lars is going to need that sword. He should have worn gloves.

I don't much care for the back/comment ploy, it's too much like a bribe, however, it works, and the story delivers fabulously. This should do well. Your writing will take you far, I think. Backed and good luck with the ED next time if you don't get them in time for this round. I am sure you can talk your wife into keeping you one more month. If nothing else, for the sake of the children! LOL.

-Raven
The Shadowsword Saga

This is hard to stop reading--if you don't wince every time that all the good people are described as fair-skinned and light haired and all the bad people are dark. That's what stopped me reading the first time, along with being queasy about the waiting-for-the-princess-to-get-raped plot line. But I kept seeing people I liked write nice things about it, so I figured maybe there was more to it than that. Having read all 34 chapters, I'm pretty sure at this point that there is, although I'm still not sure why it needs to be that way. I would like something at the beginning that makes me trust that the author is aware that it's all "problematic" and has some reason for it. Since there wasn't anything that made me trust, I only read past the first couple of chapters because I'd seen this so highly praised by people I respect.

Setting all that aside, it's a good story and well-written. The pacing is mostly good (although Lars spends an awfully long time wandering around in the desert). I like Beauty and Thaddeus is an interesting character who I kind of like even though he's a pretty awful person. I'm feeling sorry for Zillah; couldn't decide whether I was supposed to be or not. There were plenty of places I laughed. And I'm very curious to find out what's actually going on with Sima now that there are all these rumors that she's become a bandit. So I'm happy to back it.

A great story. Atmosphere, excitment, suspense, mystery, delivered at a balanced pace by a master storyteller. This thoroughly deserves to be on the Eds Desk.
Backed
Ian Gosling - Lying to God

Wow! Where did you get this stuff? In a dream? I've 'seen' every other book here somewhere, sometime, but I think yours, is truly an original. What's better, your dialogue doesn't sound contrived, and I feel like I'm actually a fly on the tent listening in. Quite well done, and I plan on reading completely.

backed with pleasure.

Shelved, and will take a look.

Benjamin Flinders
(Traveling Trunk Adventure #1: Pirate Treasure)

D'ya know, I managed to read this before but must have got distracted, as I can't find any comments from me on here; what a tool, 'cos this is excellently written, gripping stuff and duly backed!

Cheers

Stanny (The Bibble)

Masterful storytelling, Nick. I would've have read it sooner, if I had known. Why not rework your pitch and shout your talent to the world?
Backed with surprise, delight and admiration.
All the best,
Jacquelyn Jaye
Ballroom Madness

Great Job Nick. I'm not a fiction reader, but with lots of middle eastern experience, I figured I'd see what you laid down. I had gone from chapters 1 through 7 before I realized the time. Definitely draws one in to the story... I hope you get it published. I'll buy a copy and finish my read... On the shelf! - Josh