drown

Oh wait, did I mix up characters? (Happened before). Please tell me if so. I'm scared of such occurences 😧

@CincyKris Oh and of course, as always, thank you so much for your support, and caring about the world and characters I created. All questions mean you're invested. And that means the world to me

The whole chaining up event was right before Grey left; shortly before he escaped, and then arrived at The Lunar Haven. Days, not years. I'm sorry if my convoluted storytelling led you to believe something else. This event here—3 years before Grey, Clara, Dave, and Mark at The Lunar Haven—was a breaking point for Grey and Mark. But there is 3 years of further pack goings-on and history they both share, good or bad, that I haven't told anyone about yet. It seems Dave wanted Grey to stay in the pack, so much so that right before he planned to leave, he had him chained up by telling Grey's dad.

@chris191070 Yeah, unfortunately, it does. 😕 Thank you for reading and your comments, as always.

All I can do is promise you that the people in my story will indeed forge their own destiny. But it is a long path to achieve that. Too many things were set in motion for them to fail that day. Grey's heart broke. And so did mine writing it. Thank you for engaging, it means a lot. ❤️

@akascrubber Just the perfect description. It is so helpful to know it makes sense outside of my head. Thank you so much! 💚 Mark's clearly torn between something and his affection for Grey. Time will tell if this behavior was warranted.

I'll just comment to commend you on your prose. Your choice of words and skills at describing bodily functions with fun and wit and without disgust is sublime. I enjoyed this. lol

😶 I’ll just take that as a compliment. Thank you for reading and commenting, as always. 🙂

Oh btw, one of my favorite shifter series, the Green Creek series by TJ Klune, includes both ace and aro characters. The author himself is asexual. More representation is always good. Life is never as simple as the established labels lead us to believe. We need loads of empathy to understand each other.

We’re all products of the society we grew up in, to an extent. But monogamous homosexual homoromantic gay men exist, and I would not like to invalidate their existence. It only becomes an issue when they fail to see the other shades of the rainbow.

I think you need to read further chapters now. 😛

Nooooo but I’m shipping the dragon and our human. I’m weird.

I'm shipping them so hard. <.<

I could’ve titled this entry “Doubt” again like the previous one. As the stakes of my story get higher, and the threads I’m weaving are only just beginning to come together, I have doubts again. More than ever before. Is it getting ridiculous? Is it still believable? Even a fantasy story has to be believable. I love these characters so much, and they’ve grown in me for such a long time, that it would end me if anyone hated them. I sound ridiculous. So to give my characters and story depth, I try to draw the reader in. I check my writing against this list I made: Vivid Descriptions: Are my scenes detailed and vivid enough? Can someone visualize what I imagined the scene to be? Are there enough sounds, smells, textures? Dynamic Characters: Do my characters fall flat in any given scene? I was acutely aware of this in chapters 4–7. So much dialog, so much having to establish these people as individuals and not just an amalgamation of voices in my head. Can you hear their conflicts, emotions, distant personalities? You’re all seeing this through one guy’s view after all. Strong Emotional Resonance: What the title says. Is it resonating? Ahhhhhh. Visual Storytelling: Is there enough show rather than tell? I have so much dialog. Is it too much? Is it balanced? Pacing and Structure: I mean, I already had comments for too many cliffhangers at the end of chapters. Haha. So there is a kind of structure. Is that structure working? How is the pacing? Do you get bored reading it? Use of Dialogs and Internal Monologs: Are the dialogs believable or are they “cringe”? Is my protagonist talking to himself in his head too little or too much? Is the wolf voice working? Dramatic Tension and Conflict: Does the plot come across? Am I just stringing people along? Carrot on a stick too much or just right? Imaginative and Dynamic Scenes: Is there enough action? Cinematic storytelling should come through here. I might be tainted by having watched too many shows and too many movies. But I don’t think it’s a bad thing for this to happen on page. Is it working? I’m very methodical. But sucking up all the information out there like a sponge still doesn’t mean you’ll be able to bring it all together. Maybe this list helps someone else, too. Now I’ll go back to panicking about the rising stakes in my story. Ridiculous.

It’s a good word for fantasy writing. I have overused it though I think 😂

I like Kastor, my kinda guy... 🤷‍♂️ Also:

Three years ago. The Strawberry Mountains, Oregon. The Belcore Pack. The day after a full moon always felt like a Sunday, with not much to do. There were no pack responsibilities for me today. And not for Mark, either. It was dawn. I woke up by the side of the riverbed and nuzzled my snout against Mark, who was still sound asleep. His fur was soft, calming. I listened to the steady rise and fall of his breath, watching the first faint light of dawn begin to break over the horizon. I wa

I like when first person POV characters talk to themselves in their head. It's one of the major benefits of this narrative, and you use it well. This is the first time I think they're cute together, but it's also bittersweet. Our protagonist being ace becomes apparent, yet Rhys is most likely the opposite, caring about sex more than anything else. I like that you're exploring the fact that even marginalized gay people are often very close-minded when it comes to sexuality, is our protagonist aego? I hope that Rhys' intense focus on sex doesn't become an issue. Thanks for posting, please continue. This chapter reads much better and more personal than the previous ones. Feels like we're in the moment now.

I can guarantee you, a werewolf pack has other safeguards. Grey just wanted him out of the way maybe, so they could talk. I myself can neither confirm or deny. I love all the theories out there. Clara has seen many things in her life. It doesn't faze her. Dave sure gets the most eloquent dialog (but he makes up for it with cute clumsiness) Maybe he's also just trying to lighten the mood a bit. Sure, he does have an ability he knows of, but until yesterday he thought it maybe was gone. For him, this is all very new. At some point in time, I thought this story would be told from Dave's point of view, but I would've run the risk of him being a Mary Sue character, a Jake Sully from Avatar. Thanks for calling him cute though. The hardest for me is giving all these people a voice, a character. And again, thanks for a thorough comment

Oh people always remember, I'm special.

I don't think that's a ... law. Maybe he's just going through the motions for Rhys, I don't know. I'd like to see an exploration of that part. I can't have sex with strangers, it does nothing for me. That confuses people in social contexts when I tell them. 🤷‍♂️

I wish you'd continue the story. I want to know more about them and where it leads. Both seem... bored? Spending time and having sex just to have something to do? The leather shoe made me chuckle... lol.

Thanks for the lists, @Myr — and yes I did notice the new layout changes. Nice Can we use the same formatting when linking to stories, too? The little tags at the end are really helpful.

Another in-depth review of the goings-on from @Zuri ... oh my, thank you The leaf or the sudden touching? Yes. I'm putting you in Grey's head. And I'm trying my best to have you go through all the emotions, even the subconscious ones. Ok, let's go I welcome criticism, thank you. Right now, I'm very dialog-heavy as it is. As we learned some of Grey's backstory in 3/Strawberry, I broke up the dialog linearity with a retelling. I personally thought it worked well here, but I will keep your comment in mind. I'm sorry, but that's what I came up with. I personally quite like the wolf dialog in Grey's head. His wolf is part of him, and he confers with him to get his bearings. The wolf also kept him from slicing Mark in half. restraint. I refuse to acknowledge this. There's a lot of me in Grey. It's my first story, how could I not turn it autobiographical. 😬 There's more chapters for you to figure that out 😀 😜 Supernatural mayhem is the best there is. If people want further hints, they can look up the difference between Trinity and Triad. I just needed a good word for "3", with a little foreboding sprinkled in. My mind is racing. Thanks again for taking the time to reach out. 🙂 Chapter Nine is coming this week, with Ten hopefully also following on the weekend.