Honest Critiques

My main issue has always been the synopsis. It is so hard to put into a few pages a complete 85,000 word novel and make it sound good.

"Hear the sands singing to us, A-ki-ki?"

Sammy looked over at Bold Eagle as he pulled his oar from the lake water and listened to the sounds coming from the shoreline just ahead of them. It didn't take him long to spot the source. On the beach was a young girl, and an older gentleman, dancing in slow, deliberate strides.

Every step of their bare feet caused the grainy sand of the beach to emit a deep pitched resonance that the Lake Michigan natives dubbed "the singing sands". Sammy used the binoculars hanging around his neck to get a better look. Although their backs were turned to him, he could see that the man was Asian [how? T.] and the girl couldn't be much older than fifteen.

She was slim, but firmly built, and stood a couple of inches taller than her companion, at least 5'4 or so. Her long, blonde hair hung down her back in a loose pony tail, and her delicate hands flowed through the air as she mimicked the man's movements flawlessly.

"Is that a dance they're doing?" Sammy asked, turning to his grandfather who was also watching the scene with quiet appreciation written all over his deeply lined face.

"They call that Tai-Chi," Bold Eagle replied and smiled at his 19-year-old grandson. Sammy shifted his full attention for a moment back to Bold Eagle, noting the melancholy tone in his voice. He knew that he was the apple of his grandfather's eye, and his best student. Bold Eagle never tired of answering his questions and Sammy felt a tug at his heart knowing that their lives would be parting soon, when he entered the Chicago Police Training Academy.

[...]

Sammy grinned as he watched the girl in motion through the binoculars. Strands of her hair flowed freely in the warm breeze, and as she slowly swayed around her face glistened with perspiration and intensity.

She had not spotted them as they sat staring from their perch on the lake, but Sammy couldn't take his eyes off her. For a moment he felt as if he were swaying with her. Though both men were still, the canoe gently started rocking back and forth, as if it was also dancing; creating a lullaby that connected just the girl and Sammy as one with the universe.

Sammy surprised himself with that thought. He was hardly the poetic type, but as he followed her graceful steps something he could not explain stirred inside him. Suddenly the world spun in slow motion. Everything else around him blurred and nothing else mattered but the charm and beauty he was experiencing in the simple movements of a complete stranger. It was as if he was in a trance and he had no control over the situation, which unsettled him.

[...]

When he looked back up the girl was staring back at him. His first reaction was to look away, the 'it's not polite to stare' lesson he had learned as a child instantly signaling his brain. But his heart won out and instead of avoiding her eyes, he lost himself in them.

Hers were the bluest he had ever seen, and he could almost feel her gaze touch his inner being and search his soul. Once again, it was as if the world no longer existed outside the two of them and they both smiled, as if remembering some secret that they had shared since life began.

[A conversation with Bold Eagle ensues]

Sammy shook his head in reply, grinning and rolling his eyes the way he used to when he was a young boy. He was proud of his Miami Indian heritage, but the myths of his ancestors he had learned in his youth were just stories to him.

He looked at his grandfather fondly. Throughout his whole childhood this man had taught him about tradition and the mystical connection between mankind and the spirit world. As a bright eyed kid it had all seemed magical, but as he grew the magic faded and the stories had become simple fairy tales to him.

Sammy frowned, trying to asses the situation logically. Ten years of police work had caused him to become overly paranoid sometimes and he told himself to relax. She was probably just waiting for someone to arrive.

"Sid, this is hardly the time to be girl watching," he admonished his partner with a smile on his face. Still he positioned his rear view mirror to get one more glance at her. When she finished her call and turned towards the runway, he tried to get a peek at her face. She was wearing sunglasses and the hat she wore cast a shadow that masked most of her features, but something about her tugged at Sammy's gut.

A sense of familiarity swept through him, which grew even stronger when she suddenly turned her attention to his mirrored reflection. She didn't move for a minute, as if she recognized him too.

Sammy felt the customary stirring in his body and he could hear Bold Eagle's voice inside of his head telling him not to ignore this gift.

Some would call it a sixth sense, heightened awareness or intuitiveness. His grandparents called it instincts. Whatever it was, Sammy had learned to live with it, and even used it to help out in cases without any leads.

Martial arts expert Jenna Richardson and Chicago Police Detective Sammy LaRue have a few things in common. They were born with intense instincts, they were raised to believe that the spirits have blessed them, and they were lovers who died together in another lifetime.

Other than that, they are as different as east and west.

The only thing Jenna has ever wanted to do since she was ten years old living in Okinawa, is to grow up, find the people responsible for her family's deaths and kick their ass. Fourteen years later she sits in a Chicago police station waiting to be interrogated on a bogus murder charge. The interrogation she can handle. It's the being whisked back to protective custody by U.S. Marshall Dan Janovich that upsets her. The Marshall is the only obstacle in her way to accomplishing her goals, but she is about to meet the second.

Why Sammy volunteers to help protect the very person who just ruined his stake-out, he isn't certain. His partner, Sid, who also volunteers, thinks it is because she's a looker, but Sammy knows in his heart that it is much more than that.

It isn't who she is that attracts him to her; it's who she once was.

Sammy is a full blooded American Indian, raised by his grandparents on a farm in Indiana. For years, since a mysterious encounter just before he entered the police academy, he has been experiencing strange dreams, which abruptly turn into visions as he and Jenna draw closer to each other. When his grandfather suggests they take a spirit journey together, they reluctantly agree. Through this journey they are warned that their horrible fate in a past life is destined to repeat itself if Jenna continues on her path for vengeance.

My mom always claimed that the reason I came out a girl was because my daddy never went to church. Daddy claimed it was the other way around. He claimed he never went to church a day in his life because prayers never go anywhere, just float around our heads like swamp gas, stinking up the place. He had a reason to think that, of course. It's well-known Riddleback lore that not a single one of his prayers ever came true.

For starters, when he was a kid, he prayed every night that he'd grow up to be a famous magician with a mysterious handlebar mustache and quick slender hands made for plucking exotic animals out of thin air. Preferably one with a dramatic Houdini-style death to boot. But when, in his mid-twenties, it was discovered that the only facial hair he could manage to sprout looked at best like cookie crumbs and that his hands were more like mallets than they were wispy and quick, he had to set his sights a little lower.

He began concentrating instead on praying for money and women. He prayed for a supermodel and got my mother, all five feet, 200 pounds of her. He prayed for riches, but being a door-to-door rubber eraser salesman, could barely afford cheese puffs on a regular basis. None of his prayers ever seemed to be answered.

So when the time came for him to pray that his expecting wife would have a baby boy to carry on the proud Riddleback name, it really was no huge surprise that I came out missing a few parts he'd really been counting on.

With all those unanswered prayers floating around his head like mosquitoes, it's a surprise that he believed so vehemently that his prayer for an heir would be answered. But somehow he managed to eek out enough faith to believe just that. According to my mother, this is how it went:

"Margaret," he called to my mother, who was busy drying dishes. He was all red and sweaty from the vigor of his prayer. "Buy one of them footballs, ya hear? We're gonna have a boy."

My mom, never given to believing any statement of fact, waved a hand towel at him. "Oh, Cletus, now you know you can't count on those darn prayers of yours. Why, I think you're praying to the wrong person."

But Daddy was persistent, bringing home footballs and buying a large-pawed slobbery mutt, and eventually even my mom became a believer. They began painting everything in sight blue and even came up with a name for me: Gary.

I was born and after they were both finished crying over their misfortune, they made a command decision. The world might have seen them as pioneer battlers of sexism, but really they were just too lazy and forlorn to do anything else. They kept the footballs, the blue paint, and the name Gary. Even the big mutt, Juliet, stuck around. When I was five, I renamed her Fred so I wouldn't feel so unusual.

Still, they each blamed God for the fact that I was born sans-penis, either one way or another. They argued about it often, especially after it came to light that my mom would have no more children. They were stuck with me and they both hated the very idea of it.

"Cletus, quit blaming God," Mom would say. "You're the one at fault. If only you'd stopped praying long enough to go to church every now and then, that girl would be a boy right now."

"You're right," Daddy would holler back. "It's not God's fault. It's yours! Why just look at what your constant yammering about church has done!" He'd point at me as if I were Exhibit A in the Trial of the Riddleback Sins.

I didn't take their disappointment too hard. I didn't feel bad about myself particularly; I just tried to be what they wanted. I tried to be a boy. I rejected anything feminine, ripping heads off of any stray dolls that I happened upon, using fingernail polish for war paint, and always insisting on playing full tackle football with the boys rather than "house" with the girls. For my parents' sake, I ran the streets with no shoes, my feet as black as snake eyes. I scratched my butt in public and got quite good at blowing a snot right out of my nose and into the grass.

Chapter one.

1910
Gravitas, Wisconsin

To call Gravitas a town would be doing it a favor it didn't deserve. It was barely a place in-between two places that were actually on the map, two places so important they needed a highway between them. That highway did what most highways do, it crossed another one, and that other road led to a bunch of farms in every direction. I grew up on one of them. It only made sense to put a feed store and a granary and a post office at that very intersection between those bigger towns. The granary at the intersection was called the Gravitas Granary because it was once owned by a Greek guy named Gravitas who went back to Greece. Soon there was the Gravitas General Store where you could buy clothes made for you by someone else, the Gravitas Barber Shop where you could get someone else to cut your hair or even shine your shoes, and the Gravitas Diner where you could get someone else to cook your food. My daddy thought these establishments were a waste of money because any damn fool who couldn't make their own clothes or cut their own hair or shine their own shoes or cook their own food didn't deserve to live.

That's how daddy talked. There were a lot of people in his eyes didn't deserve to live, but his favorites were the local busybodies coming round our farm trying to tell him how he should do his business or raise his family. My main memory of my daddy is him chasing varmints away from our home with his shotgun. That's what he called them. Varmints. I wouldn't make this up.

My mom and dad called me Joshua so that's what you can call me.

For some reason there was a ruckus, a whole bunch of people gathered around the feed store where there was this funny, smooth talking guy in a fancy suit who was giving quite a speech about something he called the marvel of the century. Somebody mentioned the new century started only ten years ago and somebody else shouted out everywhere but here and everyone laughed because they was right. Looking around Gravitas, I couldn't see nothing or nobody that hadn't been there at least ten years. Didn't look like no new century to me.

This guy in the suit wasn't like anyone I'd ever seen before. He sure wasn't from around here with his fancy clothes and strange way of talking. He stood in front of his wagon which he parked in the empty lot next to the feed store. He explained that he was actually on his way from one town to another when he broke a wheel in Gravitas. It was going to take a day to fix so since he was here anyway, he'd do us all the big favor of setting up his Kinematographic Theater. It was like one of them gospel shows where everyone got their souls saved only there weren't no preacher, just a big tent with some chairs and a machine he called a projector, which looked sort of like a lantern with a crank on the side. He set it up at the back of the tent and he said it was going to do something we wouldn't believe, it was going to make living pictures on the wall of that tent.

There was a light shining from the Kinematographic projector and you could stick your fingers in it and make a dog that looked like he was barking which I thought was pretty entertaining but everyone else didn't and asked me to stop. I sat right down front and suddenly it weren't no screen no more but a window into another world and in that world I was sitting somewhere in some other place, some town with a lot of people who were walking around. There were lots of carts and horses and them new Model T automobiles on the street. The buildings were real tall and the title said New York City and I could read it now because I was facing the right way. I sat there watching these people in the city and it's like I was there, just sitting somewhere, looking out at the real world, but a different real world, a world where things were not what they seemed, a strange and jerky world where something was missing. I know it sounds stupid but it took me a while to realize what it was. There weren't no color. Didn't matter. Color would have been too much.

Then it changed to somewhere else, I think it was Paris cause there was this building in it called the Eiffel Tower and right away it felt like I was really there, sitting at a cafe with all these people walking around even though I knew I'd never been to France. Man, these moving pictures were something else. I was enjoying the tarnation out of them.

[...]

He let me sit through three shows and I just kept watching and watching. Turned out the work he wanted me to do was turning the crank on the projecting device when his arm got tired. At first it was hard to get it to go at the 20 frames per second it was supposed to run at, but I couldn't help myself. I just kept speeding up and slowing down the cranking and it was the funniest thing I ever saw, people jerking around and walking fast, then I'd slow down the fast stuff and speed up the train, but never stopping, like Buck said, or the film would burn. I couldn't stop laughing and the audience liked it too, especially at this one part where they were showing a scene from some Shakespeare play, I think it was A Tale of Two Cities.

It was a love scene that turned into a fight scene that turned into a love scene again. You were supposed to read all these titles to know what they was saying to each other but you didn't really have to because you could tell what they was saying just by the way they was looking at each other. This guy was dressed up and rich and clean shaven except for a little mustache that he must have spent a lot of time on. He was really angry-like and I didn't know why because the title went by too fast.

The lady with him was so beautiful, her skin so white, her hair and nails and dress were the prettiest I'd ever seen. I could look at her forever if that guy weren't yelling at her. What was his problem? How could he treat her that way? Why wasn't he treating her like the princess she obviously was because when she started crying, actually crying, you just wanted to go up to her and say hey baby, it's all right, nothing's gonna get you, I'll protect you, let me hold you my precious and protect you from all harm forever and ever.

It wasn't long before I realized I was feeling something I'd never felt before. Either I was getting sick or I was in love. I figure about four seconds was all it took. It was true love, I guarantee it, because after all it's only true love sets you on your way, like a cannon, straight from the heart, and I was on my way. I couldn't believe such beauty could exist. She was perfect, my heart's unknown desire come to life in a magic lantern show.

Chapter two changes to the third person, in which we meet the real Ashley Welles and find she's an egotistical dipshit, the exact opposite of Joshua's dreams. The rest of the chapters alternate between first and third person as Joshua, my Candide, works his way to Hollywood. It's an interesting device I've never seen anyone use before, and I do it so smoothly that most readers don't even notice.

Yet I just got a rejection from an agent who told me to fix it. I'd hate to lose Joshua's first person voice, which I think is entertaining and very fun to write. But a lot of the story takes place when he isn't there, and I can't lose those parts either. Making those parts first person from a different character's perspective would be even more confusing.

I know it's hard to tell without reading the whole thing, but don't you think my original concept is sound?

Moisture, cold and penetrating awakened her senses. The smell of damp earth was overwhelming to her. Wiggling around just a bit brought it home in crushing fear.

"Oh God," she thought, "I'm in the ground! Buried alive!"

She screamed and struggled but eventually understood that the screaming was all in her mind. With that thought came overwhelming despair and she just lay quiet, unmoving. After what seemed a very long time she began to contemplate her future, or lack thereof, and she began to plan a resolution to her problem.

Realizing that she was able to breathe, to somehow exist without surface air, soothed her enough to relax and think coherently.

"At least I'm not claustrophobic," she thought.

She would grasp at anything for a little comfort. Knowing that she would have quickly become mindless with terror if she had been claustrophobic, she clung to that little bit of knowledge like a drowning person clings to a life jacket. She wondered how long she could survive buried God knew how deeply in the ground. She felt the bone-chilling cold creeping through the darkness of her involuntary confinement, making her drowsy, and in time she fell into a deep sleep of renewal and nourishment. After an indeterminate amount of time had passed, the ground once more began to warm. Slowly she awoke, squirming just a little to test the boundaries of her unearthly subsistence. She thought she felt a bit more room around her and heartened, she thrashed and kicked and struggled until she exhausted herself. Once more her tomb of dirt smelling of unknown minerals and dank, unseen things she refused to acknowledge, began to cool. Dejected at her lack of progress in freeing herself, she fell into a fretful sleep. She dreamed of the sun on her face, raising her limbs to the skies and reaching up and up as the sun smiled down at her while he moved farther and farther away. There was no sun on her face, only dampness. Was she crying? She could no longer tell.

On the second morning of her 'dormancy' she awoke to muffled voices above her. With an urgency born out of desperation she pushed higher and harder until, Oh God, is that sunlight? She reached higher and sod began to drop away. Encouraged, she struggled harder and was at last rewarded for her grit and determination.

Breaking free of her earthen tomb, she stood tall. Shaking off the last clumps of dirt she finally succeeded in reaching her goal. Lifting her face to the gloriously blazing sun she heard...

"Oh, look honey, the sunflower's come up."

Til's linen tunic was soaked through. His mail hauberk chaffed. Five days on a reave and it lay heavy on him. His bones ached, his eyes were gritty with tiredness, his legs like swollen birch held too long in water. Still, he was pleased. His little band had acquitted itself well. The Ri had complimented them on their courage. They had claimed the heads of a half a dozen Firbolg and lost none of their own, though one of the young bloods had been wounded. The herd of dun cattle they were coaxing home only sweetened the deal.

He paused in shade beneath a copse of alder. No breath moved in the valley floor. Like a heavy hand, the sun pressed pressing him into the earth. Still, he could smell the river ahead and knew that Pale was less than a league away, over two forested hills, known as Maiden's Pair. Wildgrass on the hills wove delicate green patterns as the wind caressed it. Poppies and lemon Filam grew in wild profusion. He quickened his pace. He would be home before Jahila birthed. He had promised her as much, and he was a man who kept his promises.

#

The village swept down two sides of a hill toward fields on the Meridian Plain below. A ring fort, fires burning on its stone battlements, crowned the hill. Below it, reed-thatched longhouses lined the streets, arcing toward the quays, their eaves steep triangles almost touching the ground. Cattle and sheep grazed on the long swathe of the grassy commons in front of the temple of the Dagda. Outside the wooden palisade surrounding the village, barley and rye danced, a pulsating emerald wave in fields ringed by unmortared walls stretching away from the River Sila. The green river wound through the plain, its muddy banks covered in reeds and clusters of willow.

A small crowd, alerted by outriders and the hill pickets, waited for them outside the bronze-plated gates of the Main Guard. The clan leaders stood amongst the mothers and wives and children of the returning warriors. Two priests decked out in saffron cloaks, sporting antler helms, intoned the gruss, a prayer for the safe return of travelers.

Garl the Tanaist, known as Giant, strode forward to meet them, his braided hair glinting like autumn wheat. He smiled a troubled smile, wrapped Til in a bear hug, and said, “It is her time, wife-brother. All is not well.”

Til’s blood chilled; his heart froze. He sprinted up the hill, past the market square and the cattle grazing on the commons, to his longhouse. The door opened before he reached it. His mother strode out, rubbing her hands on her kirtle. The look on her face told him all he needed to know.

#

Mag the Midwife, his mother's maiden sister, pulled back the woolen blankets as he ducked into the recessed alcove. Jahila lay on soft heather on a long bench of packed earth, sided by planks of pine. He knelt beside the bed and clasped her hands in his.

Runnels of grimy sweat meandered down her forehead. Her face was a sickly, pale. She smiled weakly and tears welled in her winter-green eyes as she whispered something he could not hear through cracked lips. He held her hand, cradled her head, and wiped the matted hair from her fevered forehead. He soothed her when the contractions again wracked her tiny frame.

Hours passed, punctuated by the coming and going of the two midwives, clucking together as they toted water and medicine. A priest came. He brayed prayers to the Dagda in Ogham, and tied a staff of elder at the foot of the bed.

Halin, the leech, appeared, sniffed the air in the tiny alcove and shook his head .

Til pulled him aside. "Will she live?"

Halin shrugged. His turned his eyes skyward and signed a Souling Ward; the gods and spirits would decide.

NIANA, daughter of Til of the men of Pale: Born a warrior, to the despair of her mother and the exasperation of her father. Her will is fierce and unbending and her heart knows no defeat but her penchant for rash violence may lead to disaster for her people.

HARN: Niana's twin. Physically weak but with kenning of the Dreamways. An accomplished seer and walker on the Paths of Power. In his heart he guards a secret like a viper and guilt threatens to destroy his soul.

CONSTANTE Di Silva. Master of Henlia, Commander of the First Lardron Riders, victor of Kildan's Pass, Redburg and White Ford. The most accomplished of Caedian generals. An honorable man, a man who loves his family, his land and the ideals of duty. A man who, if he is to succeed, must choose victory over honor, duty over love, death over life.

JULIAN Di Silva, Constante's cousin, inquisitor in the church militant, Governor of the New Lands. A half-blood whose only duty, as he sees it, is to himself. There is nothing he will not stoop to for power and wealth.

The Tribes of the Free Peoples.

A loose coalition of related tribes whose lands stretch from the Mountains of Mourne and the borders with Caedia to the towering mountains known as Landspine. They hunt, they fight, they laugh, they drink copiously and guard the borders of their humble realm, blissfully unaware of the approaching storm clouds.

Caedia:

An ancient empire. Famed for the stark beauty of its cities, a beauty that mirrors the starkness of the mountains which gave birth to its people. Famed too for its cruelty and the injustice bred of its social order. A place where corruption is a byword for justice, where both money and blood flow towards the lowest common denominator. Caedia is surrounded by enemies and, to defend its borders, has turned to armies of the half-dead, the ferocious hilka, whose damned souls are parasites in living bodies.

The empire drowns in the blood of those it sacrifices to maintain these hilka. To survive it must find another way to fund its army.

They were taking no chances this time; all eight webs remained on me as Lannis' face came into view. I tried not to look, but trying not to breathe would have been easier. I had to look, I had to see.

Lannis was dark and beautiful, yet hideous. The evil in her made her appearance appalling, it clung to her features like rouge. Between dark red lips, two sharp points emerged, and as I saw them I knew my own death was near. I thought of Raine, and the tears flowed freely. Lannis saw this, and laughed.

She brought her wrist to her face and bit deep, savoring the taste of her own flesh. Her expression then was one of exquisite pleasure; almost erotic. Blood flowed around the edges of her lips and ran down her chin, much as my tears coursed down the sides of my face. Eyes closed, she let out a soft moan that spoke of an ecstasy beyond my comprehension. She was clearly lost in her own taste and touch. Lost in the blood.

Then, in one unforgettable moment, her eyes opened, and they were no longer dark and foreboding. Instead they glowed with a welcoming, pinkish light. She removed her wrist from her mouth.

"And now, Vincent," she said, "I will show you the Light in the Darkness." With that, she placed her torn wrist against my lips.

"Drink," she commanded.

I tried to resist, but all at once the hunger swooped in like a raptor, devouring my strength. My insides burned with it. If the webs hadn't held me in place, I would have doubled over with the pain. The urge to feast was maddening, the Hunger demanded to be fed. Here was blood, right in front of me. It poured from the wound in Lannis's wrist and made a macabre goatee around my tightly closed lips. I could smell it. God, but it smelled wonderful! The heady aroma filled my nostrils and whispered the truth of Life as Chosen live it. Predators feeding on their prey. All creatures must eat, and I was no exception.

And so, with the hunger pounding nails into me, the scent and feel of her blood on my face intensified the already incessant need to taste... to feed... to live.

"Drink," Lannis said again.

...and, God help me, I did.