Aqua Omega

It is apart from usual concept of writing. You have introduced a new theme and a special style before readers. Scientific world becomes character in a novel is unheard matter so far. That is why this novel has a special novelty.

Joy J. Kaimaparamban
The Wildfire

Just the kind of book I'd take home with if I saw it in the book shop. Like this kind of story a lot. Will give this some time on my shelf starting on the coming Saturday.

Hi Anthony

Fascinating and very believable depiction of Britain in the throes of a major water shortage. Very high concept - I can see the movie already! Backed.

Nicole
Chosen

I'm a huge fan of science fiction and yours is well done. Your dialogue is smooth and believable. Your characters, especially Steve and his wife, feel like real people and the whole plot is just fascinating. Very well done. Good luck with this.

Also, while I was reading the first chapter, I noticed a missed word. It is the paragraph that starts "When they reached the front door." The next dialogue, Steve's wife says, "Have looked at yourself?" I think you meant, "Have you looked at yourself?" That's the only thing I noticed and it is easily remedied.

Backed! - Christian Rogue (Wings of the Heart)

interesting environmental thriller

Lynne Ellison

The Green Bronze Mirror

You've created a dark, waterless dystopia. It reminds me of JG Ballard. Steve's relationships with his wife & Susan are well portrayed. I like the details such as them washing with recycled waste water & the proposed soultion he reads in the car is a really gripping hook. I just read the first chapter. If I had time I would like to read more. Defintely backed. Tim (Vitality)

You've given us an evocative science fiction story with believable characters and vividly bleak settings. Smooth dialogue. Razor sharp writing. Backed.

Anthony: do apologize for this spam comment but I did BACK your book. Though my book is currently on the Ed's Desk, I can still use your comments on my book before the end of this month. Thanks - cheers!

JC
The Obergemau Key

Good afternoon Anthony. Aqua Omega is different for a change. You have some very well written work, but, that nasty word but, You have some missing punctuation. Comma's and periods. Also you need to tighten up your sentences. You have used the same words over in too close a proximity. By omitting the unnecessary wordage you will eliminate this. Point of order, (The house was in darkness when he returned and he dumped the water in the kitchen before before heading up to the bedroom.) This sentence is actually better as two I believe. I also feel a little rewording is in order. Think about something along these lines, but in your own words of course. (The house was dark when he returned. Dumping the water on the kitchen table he trudged upstairs to the bedroom.)

All and all a good tale. I believe you can make it much better with a lot of editing. Still feel it worth backing.

Nick
Invasion from Within

Aqua Omega - An intriguing plot here, but I'm also enticed to read on for the Julia vs Susan drama about to unfold as well. Gladly already backed.

All the best,
:-) Summer D'Vine, Women of the Trees

Well, I am sure you have been told before, but your premise is highly innovative. The science fiction genre is far too full of weird names and places and not enough of the near- this rectifies that.

BACKED

AQUA OMEGA
This is a timely story: scientists need to discover a way to remove contamination from the ocean (sounds like something I heard on the evening news not too long ago). The idea of the contamination preventing rain is original; makes this a unique story. Steve is a good main character for this; he’s likable from the beginning; the kind of character a reader wants to follow to see if he can find a way out of this mess. I’m happy to add this to my shelf. If you have a moment, would you look at mine (Grain of Salt)? I’m in 3rd place but only holding on by my teeth. Burgio

Who doesn't like to read about conflicting emotions and personal struggles. I would love to read everything posted here, but time is not my friend these days. Well written and well paced. Backed.

Cat
"Twisted"

This isn't something I would normally read, but it caught my eye - great pitches - good job. I like your voice and the MC. I like this enough to back it - well done.

Great start to what promises to be an excellent book. This is well-written for the most part, the punctuation needs a bit of work; nothing major, though.
I'm happy to back this. Best of luck to you!
Libby

Anthony, great story, very topical and Russian baddies, needs a bit more editing in places. I'm keeping this on my watch list, let me know when you've uploaded the complete story.

Paula L
Rollover

A cracker of a premise and the reader is soon drawn into the story. Topical issue! Luv the melodrama.
Too many two's though; e.g. - a couple of year ago - I think this is in early stages aka first draft. Every good wish for publication.

I am always a sucker for the global apocolypse story, especially when it's not some monster but instead something as simple as a lack of rain.

Good Luck,
John Wickey
Future's End

The subject matter of this book resonates deeply....'Silent Spring' with a vengeance. It is written in a non-confrontational style...good dialogue, love interest.. which holds on to the reader. There is an important message being conveyed here, and I hope the author gets it published. Backed.

Anthony,

Chapter one describes an interesting and all too plausible worl: you have a good premise here to work with. The weaving of the meta story and a micro story of love and infidelity is also well done. I like the closing line to chapter one.

Sometimes the description lost me--that opening scene where Steve stumbled, for example. And on other occasions, like from the first time there's a knock at the door, things seemed to take too long to move along (I'm surprised the soldier didn't break down the door). The tension between Steve and Julia is well done--what's that thing about familiarity breeding contempt?--but some of the dialogue struck me as a little wooden. Try reading it aloud, I find that's a good test. The last observation I had was there was a little exposition creeping into the dialogue--things like Julia mentioning what Steve does, which really they'd both know . . .

So a promising story, with depth and promise, but perhaps an opportunity to tighten some of the writing.

Happy to give this a spin on my shelf.

Not need to say there's rationing, the situation is painfully obvious. The shower sounds a truly unpleasant affair. Conditions are a strain on everyone, and a threat to Steve's marriage. Though he's not doing much to help with the latter, 'I meant the door'. Okay, well Susan might be a part of the problem too. Then back five years to when the situation seemed more promising. George has a slight obsessive-compulsive tendency, but a fine taste in alcohol. The grey suited man seems a tad assumptive, and the butterflies and costumes and Tom are all a bit ... odd? Aqua Omega, salvation or destroyer?

An intriguing and horrifying glimpse of a future that isn't difficult to imagine happening. Aqua Omega is an interesting concept, and the science sounds plausible. Unusually for Sci-Fi (why isn't that genre ticked?) the characters don't play second fiddle to the technology, and we get a real sense of the personalities and peculiarities of Steve and his parents ... backed.

Possible nits: 'The sound of the alarm', this could have been any type of alarm at first glance, perhaps qualify by 'clock'. 'Have [you] looked at yourself?' 'You're a marine biologist', his wife wouldn't say this, as they both know what he is. Let the information emerge more naturally.

AQUA OMEGA 5/14/2010

I think you handled the notion of water shortage realistically. The other complications in the life of Steve Rock keeps the story interesting. The first chapter sets the scene well, but the next three are a bit slow. The introductions and narratives about the meetings and tours don't seem to add a great deal to the story line and could probably be cropped a bit to move the story along.

In Chapter 4, the security implants are ingenious, but I wonder, wouldn't the folks at the institute want to verify that George and Anne are actually George and Anne before granting George this security?

Even though the dialog is good, there is much of it that could better be served by narrative in the form of thoughts of the characters. I would rather know what's going through the mind of a character that unimportant dialog that doesn't really tell me anything about the story line.

Chapter 7 get to the villains and now I can get excited about what's going to happen.

This is a creative story. I think it will interest a lot of folks out there, what with current global warming and other impending difficulties with the earth's environment. Good luck with it.

Marc - Where's The Ivy

Anthony

This is an interesting premise, one that is particularly relevant at a time when wars are being fought over the availability of water. I enjoyed it - there's a strong storyline and your writing is clear and very readable.

It would benefit from being tidied up a little, both for minor grammatical errors and perhaps for a little restructuring.

Here's some examples I picked up in chapter one:

enabling him to grab hold of the gate, of the house he was passing - remove the comma after gate

Swore as his left knee hit the ground - is it relevent that it's his left knee? If it's not, maybe just say "his knee hit the ground"?

he double checked the date of the coupon, 15 April 2018 and headed down - comma needed after 2018

his oak was strong, maybe there was still a chance for it - this sounds a bit ambiguous. Maybe change it to something like .."maybe there was a chance it would still survive"?

Bean-shoots and water-cress: these aren't normally hyphenated. It should be bean shoots and watercress

Within half an hour, it was as if he had never worked there - omit the comma after hour

contemplated confessing to Juia, but who would suffer - needs a question mark after suffer

tha passage that begins "the third page outlined several survival..." reads a bit too much like an info dump, and you could perhaps find a better way to convey this information. In a similar vein, there's an awful lot of backstory in the first chapter, and you could disperse this information through subsequent chapters.

This has a lot of potential, but I don't think it's quite been realised yet - it's nothing that further revisions can't fix though.

Good luck with this.

Peter

Your book has great potential, its well thought out holding the readers attention.You are very talented when it comes to describing scenes. Your Idea's are brilliant and up to date with todays problems of saving the Earth.
Well done.SHELVED.

Regards'

Neville (The Secrets Of The Forest) Would be pleased if you could take a look.

This has such relevance to the ecological problems we face, it acts as a warning as well as an exciting read. I like the way you introduce the situation succintly, without slowing the pace. THr reader soon grasps that this world is very different than our own (at the moment). Water police, ID cards, no pets. You convey the information about lack of rain and spread of disease through convincing dialogue, this is well done.
As we learn more about Steve, we realise he has several dilemmas to face, beyond the ones of surviving in the water starved world and trying to find a solution to save the planet! As a marine biologist working for the authorities, he knows that the situation is far more serious than has been revealed to the public. He is sworn to secrecy and cannot reveal the truth to his wife, Julia. The second problem is that he's in love with Susan, a fellow scientist. Steve knows that when martial law is imposed and many of the population left to die (which will probably include Julia but not brainy Susan) he will have to make a choice between them. There is enough here to hook the reader and have him continue with the book.
An exciting and intriging read. I am backing this.
Cherry G.
The Girl From Ithaca

I've backed and commented before and I'm doing so again. Ch 5. So far, your dialogue has been convincing and the character of Anne builds up and we believe in her too. Interaction between her and Tom is good. However, when we come to Claudia, the representation of her accent jars. Can you risk calling her Merkel? I think it might be better to describe her accent through Anne's eyes rather than the z s etc.

Another suggested tweak. If you're not going to describe the meeting after leading up to it quite lengthily, is it that Anne's pleasure is going to be ill-founded and the content of the meeting pretty irrelevant or too important to divulge at this stage? If so, make that paragraph more dramatic.

Still enjoying. Still sold on the premise.

Rosalind
Good For Him
Stampman's Fair Critter group

Bloody hell, why's all the good ones incomplete?! I really like this premise, it's new and may give the conspiracy nuts something else to sink their teeth into.
Aside from a few missing words and stumbly sentences, this is good, real good.

Ashes2jewels, The Adventure of Pappy Jack

I read the first two chapters and the last one you've downloaded and skated between. I like the way you bring out the drought ridden environment through you're characters acting in it. You keep the readers sympathy with Steve but manage to complicate and so deepen his character as the first chapter progresses leaving him with a dilemma he will have to face in the future. it always helps if charachters are doing something during exposition and Steve not entirely succeeding in resisting Susan's advances does this nicely.

A couple of minor quibbles. I'm not sure about the phonetic parts of Claudia's dialogue. I'd just say she spoke with a German accent but that's just personal preference. Also maybe Ivan and Boris are a little too obvious as names for your Russian characters.

Backed

Steve (Scar Tissue)

Your writing flowed in telling the story. I read what you uploaded and could have happily read to the end of the book.

I like to comment as I read, just my thoughts as if I was in a book shop. I don’t crit grammar or anything like that much. I have been doing it this way for a while and it seems to work OK and it’s fun.

Hello – Aqua Omega

Great title.

Good pitches, really grabbed my attention.

The Water Police – what a chilling thought. This is a really frightening premise and you have handled it really well. Your writing is tight and proficient, the flow and pace are good. Your characters are real and believable with natural dialogue. All in all I think this is super and am more than happy to back it. – Cheers – Diane

Your a terrific writer with great tone. I'm just not a fan of your 'short' pitch. I guess the point is to be vague...but for me it's a bit too vague. That's the only critique I can offer up though. Great work, by the looks of it you're doing very well (:
CamilleClasse
Life (As Told By Camille)

Anthony,
I read the first two chapters and hopscotched a little. You have a winner here. Your writing is terrific--your tone is great, too. The storyline is riveting, then you've thrown in adultery, lust, and divided loyalties. To top it all off I see the Russians on the horizon. Very, very good. I also see shades of On the Beach. I hope I can go to the movie. Best of luck. Please take a look at Summer Rose, different genre, different time. I'd love your opinion
Caroline/ KC Hart
Summer Rose

I like your style of writing, as anyone can read it, good dialogue and nice hook at end of chapter one. well done

Very interesting read, i am adding you to my watchlist to continue more reading

well done

Green H * through green's eyes

Very interesting read, i am adding you to my watchlist to continue more reading

well done

Green H * through green's eyes

Hello, this is a copy and paste comment as I am extremely busy during May and June with my Creative Writing edits and have no time to take notes and comment in depth in my usual way.

I have read a chapter of your book and am backing it because I love it - like it or can see potential.

In the spirit of the site, if this is a return read, thank you for your backing, it is much appreciated. If not, I ask that you might find time to take a look at my book, An Unbreakable Bond. There is no need to comment, unless you feel you must, but I would be grateful for a backing if it falls into any of the above categories for you.

May I also recommend: Impeding Justice, by Melcom

It is a fast paced thriller and is hot footing it to the eds desk. Let’s help this hard working, dedicated site member to achieve this. Thank you, my every good wish for success with your work, Love Mary.

PS: Do forgive me for having to do this, I will be back in force in July and if you particularly want an indepth comment, email me at mary.wood18@yahoo.co.uk and I will do my best to oblige.

Aqua Omega - a frightening, all too real prospect. A premise handled really well - good writing, best wishes, Love Mary

Hi Anthony
I read chapters 1 and 7. The basic premise is dear to my heart, and not too far off! Sadly. I look forward to reading how it develops
Your writing is fluent and you paint your characters well. Perhaps your Russian is a tad stereotypical though? Just asking...
The husband and wife tensions are well drawn and feel true to life - and I already didn't like Susan. So the human interest draws the reader in quickly.
I think there is a need to sort out all the commas which break up the flow. A lot of them are unnecessary.
I've put you on my watchlist for the moment - to come back to when you've added more.... please remind me. I will reserve the backing for a later time, but I anticipate that if you clean it up a bit I will back with pleasure.
Claudia Samouilhan - Fog in Channel

Hi Anthony
I read chapters 1 and 7. The basic premise is dear to my heart, and not too far off! Sadly. I look forward to reading how it develops
Your writing is fluent and you paint your characters well. Perhaps your Russian is a tad stereotypical though? Just asking...
The husband and wife tensions are well drawn and feel true to life - and I already didn't like Susan. So the human interest draws the reader in quickly.
I think there is a need to sort out all the commas which break up the flow. A lot of them are unnecessary.
I've put you on my watchlist for the moment - to come back to when you've added more.... please remind me. I will reserve the backing for a later time, but I anticipate that if you clean it up a bit I will back with pleasure.
Claudia Samouilhan - Fog in Channel

Hi Anthony,
In Aqua Omega you paint a vivid and bleak picture of your future. This is very well written and aside from a few puncuation errors is flawless. I predict a best seller here.

backed
Pamela Frost
aka scatteredfrost
Houses of Cards

Awesome. This is very well thought out and the craftmanship compels the reader to keep going. It as if the next page will be more facinating than the one we're currently reading. C W

I love it! The characters and the setting. Good luck!

NJ Capaldi
Crescent Heart

Excellent beginning. Immediately, the reader is grasped and pulled in to this premise and intrigued by the realistic potential. Your attention to detail increases the believability, and your characterisation is incredibly realistic. A few people have mentioned the need for a polish, but the typos do not eclipse the unque and intriguing concept or the strong characterisation.

Backed with pleasure.
Abi xxx

Nicely written with good pace and dialogue. You may want to consider changing font to one that easier to read off screen? Backed with pleasure. Colin

Your first line has a typo in it which would be worth correcting now (dropping->dropped) just because it is right at the beginning.

This is probably just me but it took me a long time to realise the two bottles he weas carryinmg at the beginning were empty. The way you described them mademe think they were full of water.

The concept for this story works very well, makes sense and the gel responsible also feels plausible. I think you've set it up well, while keeping it on a small enoug scale to feell personal. Steve's marital problem are nicely entwined ith hte global disaster.

Overall the writing isn't as polished as it might be, the odd word missing or typos appear quite frequently. It doesn't spolit the story but it does make it a less smooth read than it might be. The premise and the plot are very interesting and work well. Backed.

Anthony,

Your idea is very well thought out, and your plug is fantastic. This is a non-stop thrill ride. I am shelving this book!!

Regards,

Rob

Very clever distopian vision. I liked the way you underplay the darkness you see for the future - setting it relatively close to the present, developing a crisis not unlike what the world currently knows, and that you haven't created an extravagant futuristic setting. Instead you throw out a number of emotional strands that effectively draw the reader in, by emotion not the usual sci-fi glitz.

Some of the text in the first chapter needs more f your attention - this one i the very beginning sends the wrong message about your craft ... "...and as he stumbled, he dropping the two..." "You smell nice?' with a question mark? Didn't read like you intended a question to me. Your fine story deserves better. Create a good impression. I enjoyed what I read and hope to read more..

See you at the ED.

Sincerely,

Will

Anthony,

I did something different with your book. I picked a random chapter to look at instead of the first one. I picked Chapter 5. I immediately felt Anne's tension and excitement at having two different tests run in the same lab. With all that's going on now with the BP oil spill in the Gulf, I think your book is extremely relevant.

I'm not saying that tragedy is good, but it's certainly PUBLIC. If that's what it takes to get you book noticed, then so be it. Try pitching it right now outside of this site. It just might get the attention it deserves.

I'll put you on my watchlist and move you to my shelf after I give the other books I shelved a chance to move up first.
Good luck,
Lu-Lu :)

HI Anthony, It is a very interesting concept, intriguing and I back the book. Harold Alviun(ICON)Wesley

The country running out of water, and a select few get to know it before anyone else. A gripping plot, but how awful to be the one in the know! You do a good job of putting us in the middle of the action, revealing the problems one by one. You write well, good plot, good environment and good characterization. Thanks for the read and good luck!

Fair Critter. This is a scary theme, thought provoking. For me, the cover doesn't do its job although the visual references are there. However, the pitches are great. Don't change a thing.

Your writing flows very smoothly off the pen, no blots. I want to identify with Steve. He must be wracked with anguish and his situation forces various other emotions too. i don't always feel these. This is the victim of the skilful plotting. The sci-fi element is very well done.

Whole heartedly backed.
Rosalind
Good for Him