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TOTCB Chapter 4 ‘Brother my Cup is Empty’

Sup people,

Ok so news news news, the cover is almost done as you can see in the last post. Been really busy just spamming the free ebook which is cool, the subs to my mailing list are growing slowly but surely. Got a few podcast appearances lined up so hopefully that’ll help get me more subs/clicks/happythoughts.

I was thinking of giving away some early review copies of Green Sunday so I can have some reviews on release day, not sure how I’ll go about that.

I’m gonna be wrapping up what I was writing recently and I think it’s time to barrel ahead with book two of GS. Seeing some advice online, it seems best to get cracking on the series, strike while the iron is hot and keeping going til I run out of steam and then hopscotch to another series. Which is great news for me, because I kept giving myself excuses why it wasn’t right to start all the while chomping at the bit to do exactly that.

The free ebook is ready and it’ll be virtually shipping at the end of the month, what else?
No I think that’s it, oh no yeah, still going ahead with The one that came back as a standalone. Series’ apparently make more money but I still want to get traditionally published for a standalone title. I’m not ready as of yet to religate myself to permanent indie author status.

In the words of the immutable Kanye West; “You reach for the stars, if you fall you land on a cloud”. Or something like that.

Anyway here’s the next chapter , you can find it on inkitt of course with this link. Probably having this edited soon too before I start pitching it.

Brother my cup is empty

~

It was early, downtown Austin was quiet and heating up slow.

A red dodge pick up pulled up outside an irish pub on 204 east sixth street. The sign on the side was a picture of two merry Irishmen leaning on eachother and it read ‘The Gingerman’.

It was a grand old building. Three stories tall with a couple of red birch trees sticking out of the sidewalk out front. White stone in long columns that looked like it came straight off of mount Olympus. Tall brown doors. The floors above were apartments with tall thin windows that made for high ceilings but not a lot else. It was penned in by an Italian restaurant called ‘Gino’s’ on the right and some kind of science centre for kids on the left. A weird place to put it since almost the entire strip was just littered with dives and billiard halls.

Porter parked deliberately too close to a red striped mini cooper that was parked outside. He got out and went inside.

He passed over the tiled entrance. Passing framed adverts for Paddy’s irish whiskey and Cork Distilleries. Harkening back to some grand irish renaissance in the fifties, or something like that. It was kitch and it made him sick. He stopped to put his keys back in his pocket. He lifted his eyes to the Notre Dame sign with the fighting irish leprechaun. It was facing out hanging from an antique cabinet Patrick had decided to put right in the entrance for some reason. He shook his head and went into the pub proper.

The smell of dried cork and wood soaked in whiskey hit him as soon as he got inside. Real wood, real old wood. It was a classic irish pub with all that comes with that. Small round wooden tables with small round wooden stools that were as uncomfortable as they looked dotted very little floor space.

There were some square tables in the corner which had chairs with backs and cushions for when this place pretended to be a restaurant. Which usually involved Patrick grilling something that was once alive.

The walls were a warm orange and of course were covered with classic Guinness adverts and memorabilia of all sorts. Anything vaguely irish, leprachauns and whiskey were a key theme. There was space for one Texas flag that just had a silhouette of a steers head on it and the word ‘Texas’.

There were old black and white portraits of irish writers and musicians. There were shelves decorated with little kitch porcelain figures and old clocks. Dusty books, violins, ships anchors and mini ship wheels.

The bar was long and mahogany and was so shiney it almost glowed in the texas morning cast off. It curved around and went down almost the entire length of the bar but was sectioned off into little mini bars catering to different drinks. It was all tiled around the first foot out from the bar, the rest of the floor was wood, the same colour as the bar. Porter took a seat on the end at the elbow of the bar and grazed the bar with his eyes. Passing over more Guinness signs. A four leaf clover drawn on a chalk board with their specials until he reached the flat screen tv that hung at a jaunty angle on the corner of the bar.

It was a snooker game.

“Top’o the mornin’ to yah, what can I do’ya fer? A man with strawberry blond hair entered the corner of his eye as he tried to follow the snooker.

“Any calls?”

~

0

After Shattered By Samantha Newburg

(Yes I’m too lazy to look for an actual header image so instead have given you all my gratuitous dick pic haha)

Ok so, at this the point the obligatory claus here is that I’m not the intended audience, I can’t really say what the intended audience of this would be. Probably woman, can’t say much more than that other than I would never choose to read this from the description or genre. I dont go near romance and I won’t touch drama unless it has ‘crime’ in front of it. So that’s just to tell you where I’m at with this and I’ll try to be as objective as possible.
As a first chapter goes, it’s boring, no two ways about it. I don’t know if any of the stuff in the first chapter is relevant to the story overall but it’s just tiresome exposition with some dialogue and a meeting in it. Nothing interesting happens unless hearing you have a new boss is some great revelation to you. You have to put the interesting stuff in the first chapter to force people to read the next chapter and if that’s the most interesting stuff to happen in this book then god help you.
This stuff might be all really relevent but it should be relegated to the second or third chapter not the first, you get one chance to make a first impression and my eyes glazed over with boredom. There’s way too much spoonfeeding, show don’t tell.
The story isn’t established in the first chapter, so I can’t say there is one, the characters are watered down, no one person really stands out. The dialogue is ok, but the first chapter just sort of ends.
I can’t tell if this is intentionally boring to justify what happens next in the book like american psycho or if this is just the bottom line throughout. I’m not going to know because I can’t read the rest of the book, I can only give you my first impressions of what I see.
I don’t know what to say other than it reads more like a diary than a novel and no one wants to read your diary except you (unless you’re a psyborg stripper from mars with machine gun for tits haha).
I don’t think it’s trash, it’s salvageably, just needs maybe some chopping and changing, revamping the first chapter to get a hook in the reader from the start. The rest of the book could be pure genius but no one is going to read past that first chapter unless you give them a reason to.

If you wanna check out the story for yourself you can by following this link.

After Shattered

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The Ghost Of You By Krystle Byrd – Review

The picture from ghost dad is completely unrelated to this story about a ghost who is not a dad falling in love with someone who is also not a ghost. Why the fuck not, when’s the last time you saw ghostdad? Go watch that. Ok now getting to the review.

This sort of premise has been done to do death, no pun intended. But that’s no reason not to do it again and try to do a twist on the previous stories. Most stories don’t have to be original nor are they when dissected. They just take something old and tired and breath new life into them. Which is what I think you’ve done here to an extent.
To be honest, this isn’t my cup of tea, I’m really petty so you put me off in the first paragraph when the main character says ‘literally’ when they mean ‘figuratively’. Just a forced reaction from me to cringe really hard at that, I can’t help it haha. Little things like that really set me off, like the characters name ‘Kai’ just makes me cringe every time I hear it.
Don’t get me wrong It’s well written, there were very mistakes that I saw when reading it but some of the dialogue is a little cringey in my opinion, but I’m not everyone and I don’t read romance novels, I’m not the demogrpahic this is aimed at probably the exact opposite. So for that exact reason I cut it a lot of slack.
All I can say is I didn’t hate it, and honestly that is the highest praise you can get from someone like me, a person that would rather glue golfballs to his eyes than read romance novels.

No but seriously, this is good solid work and you should be proud of it and keep it up.

If you wanna go check the story out for yourself you can find the link below.

Ghost of You

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Retribution-A Rex Braden Mystery By Zunica – Review

Entertaining if a little cookie cutter.

Sort of just an off the cuff review, Just going to highlight some of the strengths and weaknesses overall.
First mistake right off the bat; starting a the first sentence with the words ‘dazed and confused’ is just going to get that Led Zeppelin song stuck in my head the whole chapter long haha.
No but in all seriousness, the opening is good, some of the description is a little cheesey, to the point of parody. I always find it’s a tough middle ground with similies and metaphorical description in any way. You either make it too whimsical so it seems silly or too dry so it’s boring or unimaginative, it’s tough to get them where you want which is the middle. Otherwise it’s just cringe inducing.
Although I thought the opening was good, gives people a little taste of whats to come and gives a little bit of action and suspense which is exactly what you want when you’re about to tediously unravel paragraph after unbroken paragraph of spoonfed exposition at people at people haha.
Honestly, it’s not that bad but the paragraphs are just way too long, you just have these long monoliths of unbroken text that it becomes a burden to read. I found myself wanting to skim a lot of it and when I did I heard this name called ‘Cindy’. And I was reading back like ‘who’s cindy, weren’t we just talking about his father who killed himself?;
Then I searched for ‘Cindy’ and her name is only mentioned twice in that whole chapter, so we’re talking about his dead father then dead wife (I’m guessing) is just tossed on for good measure. I’m sure it’ll be explained later but highlighting it out of the blue then dropping it just as suddenly was strange since it goes out of its way to explain the dead father thing. Which I sort of didn’t like either, the suicide note was to me posed as a mystery then solved in the next parahraph. Essentially I think you should have swapped his wife and father, mention the father and don’t explain it, then explain the wife.
The writing is great though, very polished, a few mistakes here and there, a wrong word used, nothing that an edit wont pick up but something spellcheck always misses. The dialogue is a bit stiff but serviceable.
It almost seems like a japanse interpretation of noir. A little silly, a little wet, which I like. Some of the description and the dialogue seems like something out of a good point and click adventure.
As a fan of murder and serial killers, the murder is a little boring. I like a little theatre a la Dexter. But it’s realistic, although everything you’re mentioning is not something you wouldn’t find in any generic cop show of which there are a billion.
Overall though, it’s well presented and fairly enjoyable but suffers tonally and it gets a little tedious with the way it’s laid out. A fun read I could see occupying fans of the genre.

The header image is just a random photo I found when I googled ‘retribution’ haha. If you wanna check out the actual book, it’s all up for free on Inkitt of all places. Link below.

Retribution

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To Dream by Catherine Kopf – Review

If I was into YA fiction and 1984 wasn't one of my favourite books I'd think this was really original but since I'm not and it is, I have to say it's a little cliche'.
I mean the writing style is fine, the story works, the first chapter is nice, it flows well and it has somewhat of a hook, a thread of main plot to drive the story. On paper it's good, it's a little stream of consciousness, like it doesn't seem well rooted, it seems like one minute she's here and then she's there like she blacked out and there isn't a lot of description. The first person narrative is quite restrictive for a story like this but maybe that's what you're going for, so I can't outright say it doesn't work, I'll say it just doesn't work me. 
I'll be the first to say YA fiction makes me cringe to my core and the idea of a YA take on 1984 in line with something like hunger games or something is probably the worst thing I can imagine. I'm obviously not the intended audience but I can see what someone else who maybe hasn't read 1984 would see in it. 

So in summation, it's good but it's not my cup of my tea by a long stretch.

If you wanna check out the actual story head on over to inkitt to read it for free.

To Dream

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LCYE Chapter 11 ‘Ashes and Ghosts’

Bonjour people, gonna keep this short, cos reasons.

Nah I’m on a new diet which basically involves starving yourself for brief periods of time for fun. I’ll let you know how that works out.

Got the latest chapter of Ladies Close Your Eyes, it’s all up now on my inkitt page which I’ll link below,  but I’ll keep churning it out on here for the content. I’m gonna be having it edited soon too so hold your breath for that.

I hope all of my three readers had a good christmas, you know who you are. I got some fun gadgets and games and stuff to steal my much needed time away. Still on a writing fast, got my next project lined up for January and I’m just using this time to flesh out new future projects.

Ok so here it is chapter 11.

Ashes and Ghosts

 

~
James was standing in front of the blue door; someone had left it open. He pushed it and it opened with a rehearsed creaking sound. Allowing a thin shaft of daylight to spread in an arc across the floor.

James swallowed hard and in his head it was very loud. He gingerly entered the small room following the beam of light.

The light ended before the opening of a tiny bathroom. Looking inside, it had no windows. Just a shower bath combo with a shower curtain pulled closed all the way around in the right corner running along the wall. The toilet was to the left in the other corner but the room was so small they were almost touching.  The sink was in the small amount of space in the right corner closest to the door in front of the bath. The bathroom was tiled all around in a black and white pattern that went from the floor to the walls. The ceilings and places untouched by tiles were the same desert tan colour as the outside of the building. The toilet seat matched the patter, the porcelain was naturally white but the seat and lid were black.

There was just something off about black in a bathroom, it hid the dirt but it also felt dirty.

There was a loud dripping noise coming from the bath tub.

James approached the bath and gripped the edges of the shower curtain which met at the corner of the bath.

He parted them swiftly, like ripping off a band aid.

The bath was full of a brown dark liquid, a putrid rusty water that had a dank smell. The bath itself was filthy, the gaps between the black and white tiles were black with mould. The shower head and bath fixture were also covered in the same black mould. He examined the taps and the shower head but there was nothing leaking.

Remembering himself he set to looking about the bathroom for any clues. Shy of sticking his hand in that filthy water and draining the tub there was nothing of interest in the bathroom. He could have stuck his hand down the toilet, but why would he do that?

He left the bathroom and returned to the bed/living room area.

The bed was un-made and showed signs of a struggle, the satin sheets were half off the queen sized bed. The long red curtains were drawn, the chair in the corner of the room was empty and there was nothing on the coffee table. The room smelled like sex and cheap perfume.

The old TV was in the same place as his dream but the screen was dark.

“Dream?” As he said it he started to feel light headed, his heart started to race and he couldn’t get it to stop. “Was it a dream?”.

He stumbled and knocked the TV off its stand leaving a large crack down the centre of the bevelled screen.

James collapsed into the chair in the living area and tried to catch his breath, he closed his eyes and tried to centre himself, stop the spinning. It felt like something unnatural was happening. Like his brain was rebooting, trying to make sense of two memories overlapping.

Just like that he felt something poking him from the side of the seat cushion. He put his hand down the side to see what it was.

It was a business card.

‘Dr. Alphonso Moral’

 

~

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The Butcher of Barclay’s Hollow by Nick R B Tingley – A review

Well written but underwhelming.

I first chapter just didn’t really grab me. I moan about this constantly on inkitt. People just plonk a first chapter down and then move on to the next one, but the first chapter is really the most important. It’s like a summary of everything to follow. It has to be linked to the overall plot somehow and it’s the first step into this greater world, so stuff, a significant amount of stuff needs to happen or if it’s even very little it has to be pretty powerful. I mean what really happens in the first chapter? A butcher saves a little girl from being maimed and then gets criticized by passers-by. And although I expect their distaste for him to be a theme I doubt it ties to the main plot at all. So really this incident is irrelevant as a starting point.
I get you probably want to ease into it and I usually like pieces like this and reading this encouraged me to get out my copy of Hound of the Baskervilles. And even in that, a flowery period piece published over a hundred years ago the first chapter gets to the point. They’re not talking about the Hound but they’re talking around it, building up to it. but it’s clear that its building to something and then the next chapter is called ‘The curse of the Baskervilles’. We have none of that here, it’s just one scene with no foreshadowing or hints of an overarching plot at all.
I think this entire chapter could have served better as just a flashback or a story relayed by the girl at a later date and you could have started further on in the story to start at a more relevant point. Giving the main character a little more mystery. You hinted vaguely at a tragedy backstory, so I expect he had a wife and child that died and thus builds a connection with the little girl over the course of the book. As it stands now it’s sort of throw away.
It’s well written, I like the period style although there are some typos and errors. It needs a good proof read because these obviously slipped through spellcheck. I have to say I cringed at some of it because it just seems like it’s trying too hard to be period even in the non-diegetic stuff and it’s kind of unnecessary when it could be done better. When I read a modern period piece I expect to be hit in the face with the research involved rather than just flowery language and period accents. I want to be shown more than I’m told. It was easier for Conan-Doyle because he was obviously immersed in it. But it’s not really an excuse, what in this story really justifies a period setting? You could take that entire chapter and just change the carriage to a car and it would be no different.
Overall, it’s very serviceable if a little cliché, I save my harshest criticism for the work I think has potential. I like the title, I like the premise, the style is good but frankly your first chapter is boring. The skill is there but the hook is not.
I hoped this helped, I wish you the best of luck with it.

The Butcher of Barclay’s Hollow

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Don’t Look Close by LoweFantasy or T.S. Lowe – A review

I didn’t look too close.

Hard to follow some of those really in depth reviews. I like to give my first impressions, I come from a comic background so the first ‘issue’ the first chapter is god, there’s nothing beyond the first chapter. It’s like an essay where you try and sum up everything you want to do with the rest of the work in the introduction.
In the first issue of a comic you have to deal with a serious attention deficit crowd, so the first part really needs to hook some noses in your direction, it needs to say everything you want to say right then and there but still leave people wanting more.
You don’t dump it all in their lap, you just give them enough to grab their interest then reel it back so they chase it throughout the story.
I think the first chapter is well written, it’s very easy to read but I don’t feel invested enough really in the characters to want to read more. That’s not an indictment on you as a writer as much as it is on me as an incredibly fickle reader who isn’t into romance unless there’s zombies somewhere hinted in it haha.
I just think it feels a little bit like you’re thrown into this person’s life and instantly expected to give a shit and I just don’t, obviously it’s probably a slow burner and I’m one of those people with the attention span of a nat. I’m fully aware I’m not the intended audience and the other people that reviewed this are.
It’s interesting but it’s not a story that hasn’t been done before, it’s probably all character based but if this were I comic it would have a very niche following and it would get snowed in under an avalanche of shehulk’s haha.
I think it’s because our styles of writing differ so much, I like to think I’m really ostentatious and what you’ve done here is very subtle and heartfelt and genuine and I’m just butthurt haha.
Overall I think it was well presented well, there were a few mistakes but I wont labour the point because without spellcheck I’m legally retarded and when you come to look at some of my work you’ll shred me asunder deservedly so haha.
In summary I’m not the intended audience by a long stretch but it’s competently executed and I could someone really enjoying the characters interplay alone.

If you want to read for yourself, check it out on inkitt for free.

Don’t Look Close

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Hide & Seek By Jakayla Toney – A review

Usually what you’ll find on inkitt is people will only read the first chapter of a story and review that, for brevity but also because the first and last chapters are arguably the most important.
The first chapter if you’re going to send this to an editor/publisher/literary agent will in nine out of ten cases be the only chapter they need to read to ascertain whether they want to use your work. So essentially paired with a good synopsis/blurg, the first chapter has to be almost a summation of whats to follow in the entirity of the story.
I understand people like to slow boil their horror which is fine if you’re out their making a name for yourself with that and accumulate fans who like that sort of horror. But have you ever noticed that at the beginning of a horror movie there’s always a sort of prologue where someone else is suffering from the problem the protagonists are working their way towards. Not always but on average you’ll see it as a literal forshadowing. Even in the shining you’re told what happened to the previous caretaker as an effort of foreshadowing, the first conversation they have in the car on the way to the hotel is about the Donner party. People trapped in the winter being forced to eat eachother.
After reading the first chapter and the blurb I have literally no idea what the story is remotely about or have a good feel for any of the characters. You started the story at a point where literally nothing happens except a game of hide and seek. A game of hide and seek which neither serves the story or really develops the characters in any way other than the main protagonist is an excellent hide and seek player.
Other than that, I seem really critical but the writing style is effective, there were a few grammatical errors, even in the first paragraph. But the writing is solid, the first chapter is just too short and nothing happens, You need a hook in the first chapter to force people to read the next chapter, you can’t just end the chapter with “Oh wouldn’t it be cool to play hide and seek in the forest alone” that’s not a hook. It needs more.
Again sorry if this seems harsh, the style isn’t all that bad I’m just telling you how I see it, It’s not bad, I’ve read a lot worse, it’s just not great.

If you wanna check out this story for yourself and a lot of others, head on over to inkitt for the grand total of zero monopoly money.

Hide and Seek

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