drown

Heh. Your story are tiny fragments snippets from life, so I was like ... well they are on the road trip now, but where's Torchwood Rhys? Who the fuck is Max? XD

Life Is Strange: True Colors

You should play the game!

Wait, who is Max now?

Oh my wolves do exist Neurodivergence is an interesting topic, but this is not the Divergent series. Synesthesia again is an interesting topic, but this more like a 6th sense. If you want to pick an inspiration, I would say Life Is Strange: True Colors would be the biggest one. There extra wolf senses are meant to be quirky and interesting, for humans to understand. I'm a romantic at heart. Sorry. But there's gonna be true mates and all that. 😛 😀 Thank you for the comments and for reading this odd tale of mine.

@JohnnyC lol. I love your take on things. Thanks for reading and commenting. (All misses, though)

Yeah, if the ending of chapter 3 is any indication, he would just be off celebrating his birthday for now. Feeling... stronger. But how much the atmosphere further deteriorated between our flashback and present day is something you will have to figure out together. You are very perceptive, but yeah, there is nothing to it. My wolves heal very fast, they don't bruise. Makes abuse very easy to hide. Thank you for your very keen eye. And for reading and commenting!

It doesn't happen often. I have a huge backlog

Because despite what you said, you do like romance. Busted.

It's a tricky subject. But you weaved the plot in a bittersweet way. He couldn't even remember being a hero until the very end.

I'm happy Stella was there

Aw, how sad He saved Stella, but his own amnesia ruined them being friends. I understand her though, her life is hard. She is just trying to protect herself. And I'm glad he's leaving. Let's go for the epilogue. You weaved a tiny melancholic tale. Makes you think.

Please don't think that way. You did her justice. If we shy away from diverse representations, we will never have diverse representations. So you are doing a good thing. It's commendable for you to have included a sensitivity reader as well. But you are right, it's walking a thin line between representation and appropriating someone's lived reality.

Sure, keep the compliments coming. I'll have some celebratory champagne. 🙂 I did not! Thanks for catching it. My characters all have very extensive backgrounds, but we see the story from Grey's POV, and he's not the kind of guy to go "OH LOOK, A BLACK WOMAN!" I also really dislike paragraphs of character descriptions. They feel so out of place. We get to know them bit by bit. Thanks for the comments again

Exciting. I really like your addition of the Stella character. I think you do her justice.

I hope you can see past the fact that there's romance here :v But people have already criticized me for people not getting it on fast enough. This might play in your favor AHHHHHH. Stop saying something so nice. Thank you! Hope it managed to lure you in at that point so you can't put it down. Thanks for the comments, they mean a lot!

Lost was just lost. They went episode by episode making shit up. And just forgot whole plot lines altogether. This show infuriated me so much, it's impossible for me to ever watch it again

This ^ His behavior is driving me nuts. I would fall out of love with the man within mere seconds. Anyway, next chapter please, I want to know more 😛

Yes. Oh man, I have so many books on it. My favorite is "The Seven Basic Plots". But knowing how to do it doesn't really help, at all. The only thing that really helps is reading and writing and reading and writing, and then being lucky enough to grasp what's going on in your head. I think it needs a kind of intuition to know what works on a page, and what doesn't. Do you know The Snowflake method? It tries to shoehorn your plot into neat little segments, and while I get that this might help with the overall plot and pacing, I find it so utterly restrictive. My biggest issue seems to be plotting anyway. Once I know what's in a scene, I just write

Thank you so much for your detailed response, @Zuri — feels like I didn't just publish it into an echo chamber I grew up in Germany, too! But the German language never really did it for me. I don't have an editor or beta reader right now. It would be presumptuous of me to ask for something so valuable of someone else without having any klout here. Also, I would need to be perfectly aligned with them. Instead, I heavily, and I mean heavily self-edit. I am happy with the quality right now. Yeah, I get that. It would be nice to have a story partner to just bounce ideas off of. I think something like that—which I'm lacking—would be really beneficial. I'm going to read your blog post right away! If you read my story, I think you can tell that I did all the above in chapters 4–8. Just whenever it felt right. I still think it could use more "show, don't tell" about the place itself. To really put readers there, but I already have so many words on the page. That would be great My story is about relationships between people, and about a very broken pack that is not featured for a long time—and definitely not in chapters 1–8, with 3 being an exception because of a flashback. I don't like to focus on pack dynamics and words like alpha, beta, and omega too much. Werewolves are magic, and a magical world functions for me when it stays mystical. Rigid rules don't work. (My magic system has its rules, but I'm not shouting them in your face.) Nevertheless, the world I imagine is vast, and goes way beyond just wolves. If you like Egyptian mythological themes, I tried that as well. Thanks for engaging, it means a lot!

A very nice review, thorough. Thank you for it! The Green Creek series is one of my all-time favorite series ever. And especially Book One called to me. I understand every single thing you say about most of it, especially with regards to pacing. But Ox just drew me in. I was living this character through and through and couldn't get enough of it. For some people—like me—this was more than perfect. His voice is so strong. Read it three times, then listened to the audio book. Even cried a little while walking outside... yeah, I liked it that much.

@andrewj Ha, yeah I'm particularly fond of the protagonist being thrown into the chosen one role. I love it. Can't get enough of it. So I enjoy this part of the story a lot. Greg is our window into the world of vampires, and he takes us along while learning his place there, and at the same time upsetting the status quo. Easy recipe for a win.

I kept thinking back to this thread. Because I like statistics. I had no data to go by when I originally posted a reply here three weeks ago. Now I do. OP's data is unfortunately just wrong. Just no. I am a nobody. I started writing here on December 28, 2023, just a little over three weeks ago. I have had no followers, no readership, no story to my name. The only thing I have right now is one story, and it's not complete, so there are no reviews either. If the "best an author might hope to achieve, is 1000 page views per chapter", then how does a nobody get 2,215 views on chapter 1 of a story within its first three weeks of publishing? I am so incredibly thankful to the community for accepting me and giving me a chance here. It has been incredible. It is driving force for me to get better, and to continue posting, because all of you are awesome. I have received nothing but good feedback, and some criticism—which is appreciated—, and have been welcomed as someone who is just trying this writing thing. If anyone reads this who is wondering if posting to GA is a good idea: It is. And the readership is anything but small. I'm looking forward to reading your stories, too. Please don't be discouraged.

2024 is a good time to re-read the story that started it all.

And I can't wait to show it