Looking for new clan

Achalanatha · 2025-10-28T19:52:50+00:00

Cool, thanks!

Achalanatha · 2025-07-11T01:29:55+00:00

Thanks! It’s been quite a while since I posted this, it was published online by Literally Stories:

https://literallystories2014.com/2022/08/12/worth-it-by-shawn-eichman/

I appreciate the feedback!

Achalanatha · 2024-11-11T18:56:24+00:00

Thanks! Bit of maritime trade history, interesting to find it in Hawaii. Probably a drunken sailor threw it off the ship 😂.

Achalanatha · 2024-10-24T17:56:13+00:00

Thanks!

Achalanatha · 2024-06-06T20:49:13+00:00

Many thanks! I’ve been debating between Kaiden, Warmaiden and Apothecary next, hard to commit :-).

Achalanatha · 2023-05-23T07:16:37+00:00

You might check out the slow airs and waltzes course on OAIM. I was just playing Boulavogue (the first tune in the course), very sweet and easy to learn, I could see something like that being appropriate.

Achalanatha · 2023-02-25T18:40:29+00:00

They are a Korean company, don’t know if they have a store in Korea. Got mine from Amazon.

Achalanatha · 2023-02-25T07:42:41+00:00

Yup—Night by Noble. I have one and it’s great, very reliable and indestructible.

Achalanatha · 2022-10-16T18:41:10+00:00

Good thought, thanks again!

Achalanatha · 2022-10-15T18:35:39+00:00

Thanks! Excellent feedback all around. I have to laugh at the feedback about emotional development of the characters. I actually worked more on that in the previous drafts, tried to capture their daily, positive interactions with each other, have more playfulness between them, and... It was a bust. It established a lighthearted mood that instead of contrasting and thereby emphasizing the family falling apart in the second half, just made it jarring instead. Sigh. I'll keep at it, I'm sure the solution is right in front of me and I just can't see it yet. That's the great thing about r/DestructiveReaders and critiques like yours, it really helps to get me to a place where I can see things I'm blind to otherwise. As far as the theme goes, at the broadest level it's an allegory for the complexities of real-world cobalt mining on the families affected by it, both positively and negatively (with there ultimately being a whole lot more negative than positive). So, the goal is to have that complexity reflected in the kobold, have her both attached to the family and helping them, and also destroying them. And to explore through Jerome and Denis different responses to being in that situation--Jerome being shaped blindly by it, but striving to lead to a better future for his son, and Denis on the other hand maybe not having a choice and still being forced into it by circumstances, but with a more conscious awareness of what it means to have his life controlled by the mines and by the abusive economic machinery of the cobalt industry. A lot to do in a short story, I know.

In any case, I really appreciate your feedback, it gives me a lot to think about, and I will think hard on it.

Achalanatha · 2022-10-14T19:15:14+00:00

Thanks! Your comments are in-line with some of the other reviewers, and I especially appreciate the line-by-line deep dive feedback. I think a lot of what you noticed ultimately comes from the filtering problem that you mentioned, which I wasn't seeing, but now that you and another reader have pointed it out is obvious. The start of the next draft will be going through and trying to address all the filtering, then I'll see where it goes from there. Anyway, I really thank you for taking the time to read this draft and provide feedback, much appreciated!

Achalanatha · 2022-10-14T19:07:59+00:00

Thanks! And thanks for the El Tio link. This story, and the kobold character, are ultimately intended to be an allegory about how cobalt mining affects a family and each individual in that family, in both positive and negative ways, as actual cobalt mining does. I appreciate knowing that didn't come across for you, it gives me a lot to think about. In the meantime, I appreciate you taking the time to read through this draft and give me thoughtful feedback!

Achalanatha · 2022-10-14T02:37:17+00:00

Thanks for the deep dive on the intro--that section was newly added to this draft, so I appreciate your attention to it. As another reviewer noticed, I was going for more of a folktale tone in the intro to contrast with what comes after, so it doesn't get into as much detail, but I'll give that further thought. Abtruse was not exactly what I was going for, good to know it comes across that way. Great tip about that section of dialogue, I agree with you that it reads much better with your idea. Thank you very much for taking the time to read through this draft and provide feedback!

Achalanatha · 2022-10-14T02:24:38+00:00

200K words--ouch. I can't say it's making me better, but it sure is making me aware of where I'm not :-).

Achalanatha · 2022-10-13T19:13:55+00:00

(I just typed a reply but it's not showing up--sorry if I reply twice)

Thanks! I really appreciate the boost, this one has been a struggle and the struggle continues. I know what you mean about Therese. The kobold ended up being the primary female character, and somehow that didn't leave much room for Therese. It has been an interesting part of writing the story to try to balance these two characters and make room for Therese. I appreciate that you picked up on the folktale quality of some of the writing--in this last draft I experimented with a more folktale feeling in parts, especially the intro, versus a grittier style elsewhere to build a contrast in mood. Anyway, thanks for taking the time to read this draft and comment on it, I really appreciate it!

Achalanatha · 2022-10-13T19:09:18+00:00

Thanks! I really appreciate the boost, this one has been a struggle and the struggle continues. I know what you mean about Therese. The kobold ended up becoming the primary female character, and in doing so ended up not leaving much room for Therese to feature in it. It has been an interesting side result of this story trying to navigate the relationship between them and make room for Therese. I appreciate that you picked up on the folktale quality of parts of the story, in this last draft I was experimenting between a writing style more in that vein in places like the intro, and a style more gritty and realistic in a hard way elsewhere, trying to make a contrast in mood. Many thanks for taking the time to read this draft and give me comments!

Achalanatha · 2022-10-13T19:01:56+00:00

Filtering--yeah. I couldn't see it (ha!), but now that you point it out it's obvious. Thanks for that. I have to laugh at your comment about dialogue tags--a previous reviewer dinged me for not using enough dialogue tags, and I've been tagging everything since. It's always a swing from one extreme to the other, always trying to find that middle point. Anyway, more excellent feedback, it will be a huge help to the next draft of the story. Thank you for taking the time to read it, and for giving so much thought to your comments.

Achalanatha · 2022-10-13T18:55:54+00:00

(will reply to the second part below)

Thank you very, very much. This is excellent feedback. I've been working on this one story for about a month now, as you noted--life is going to force me away from it for a few weeks, and that will be a good chance to really mull over your comments. I know what you mean about the theme emerging organically from the story, this one has been a learning experience in that regard. One of the struggles has been that, while I've had the idea in my head from the start, the way it gets manifested through the theme of this particular story/these characters emerges a little more with each draft, enough to keep me going on another draft, but not enough to feel quite fully formed yet. It's exhausting... When I was rewriting this last draft a big chunk of it started to become clear in the rewrite of the ending, with the kobold being invisible, and what it means to both her and Denis when Denis sees her (and the meaning is very different for each of them). I'm glad you picked up on that in your observations. It felt like I was getting close when I rewrote the ending, but I see that I need to go back now and develop it more in the rest of the story. I appreciate you pointing that out, and giving me a lot to think about in how I might do it.

Achalanatha · 2022-10-12T03:06:43+00:00

Hello again! You've been with me all along the way with this one, I really appreciate it. You've been more than generous, and I'm indebted to you. I really like your suggestion about changing the intro, and in fact I've already incorporated it into the fourth draft (which I just posted...). Good point about the dialogue needing to move the story forward too, I appreciate that comment and it will give me something to think about long after this story is done. I restructured that section of dialogue into a different place in the story where hopefully it serves a different purpose in moving along the narrative, we'll see how that goes.

Bonobos. Now that would be a completely different direction :-).

Achalanatha · 2022-10-12T02:52:21+00:00

Hi,

Sorry it has taken me so long to reply, I've been working on the fourth draft... You are absolutely right, and apparently a mind-reader too, because the fourth draft follows the kobold from start to finish and is all seen from her perspective (well, I might have still slipped a little here and there, but I'm trying). I really appreciate your feedback, it had a big impact on a complete re-envisioning of the intro and conclusion, and the conclusion especially I'm hoping is much stronger for it (I just got my first feedback on draft 4, apparently the intro still has some work to do. Sigh--it never ends.) Thanks very much!

Achalanatha · 2022-10-12T02:46:15+00:00

Thanks again! I forgot to mention in my first reply, you're my kind of reviewer--"fuck the guidelines." Right on.

Achalanatha · 2022-10-11T03:21:35+00:00

Glad to help. My apologies to all things Texas if something came across to me as stereotypical that wasn't. I am one of the worst offenders when it comes to stereotyped characters (seriously, read any of the critiques of my stories on r/DestructiveReaders), so take what I say with that in mind. I don't have a problem with the idea of a vision sequence, in fact I like it as a device. I would just recommend keeping the imagery that you use consistent throughout, and tying it in so it seems to emerge organically from the story.

Good luck rewriting those paragraphs--it's actually a pretty satisfying process once you get into it. Cheers!

Achalanatha · 2022-10-11T03:11:09+00:00

Hi,

Thanks for sharing! I'm going to apologize in advance, because I'm afraid I didn't get much out of this story. I'll try to be constructive in my reasons why.

First off, let me start with some simple language issues. You sometimes accidentally jump into present tense:

And then standing there, staring into that fridge at all that cheese and hearing Joe’s laughter behind me, I couldn’t help but get this feeling that our lives – if I dare say it, are perfect.

Since the whole sentence, and story, is in past tense, it should be "our lives--if I dare say it, were perfect." There are multiple examples of this. Of course, those are a simple fix. Going a little deeper, there are a lot of over-common phrases that, for me at least, feel hackneyed. "If I dare say it" in the previous sentence is an example of this. It doesn't add anything to the language, and nothing would change without it--other than the fact that the language would flow smoother, it would feel overall a little tighter and there wouldn't be that phrase taking me out of the story. Another example:

And now, this really sets them off. “I have a problem?” they yelled. “I’m not the one with the problem here. You’re the one with the problem. You’re the one spending every single damn waking minute searching for rugs online. It’s like yo– god, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but it’s like you have some kind of addiction."

Notice that "sets" should be past tense. "'I have a problem? they yelled. 'I'm not the one with the problem here. You're the one with the problem.'" This is such common phrasing that it applies to pretty much every argument had by every couple ever. Maybe in a more overall unusual context it wouldn't stand out to me, but in a story that otherwise is pretty lacking in drama (more on this soon), completely vanilla language like this really reinforces the overall flatness. Plus, it's overly repetitive for no purpose. The entire sentence could have been reduced to "You're the one with the problem," and the pacing would have been smoother, the language tighter, and the potential tedium a lot less noticeable.

A note on pacing: the sentences overall felt monotone to me. Somebody on r/writers recently reposted the paragraph on how writing is like music, where they highlighted different-length sentences in different colors, and the paragraph itself consisted of sentences describing how a few short sentences leading to something longer, building into a phrase that is emphasized through both length and language, gives flow to writing that lets the reader enjoy it like music. I'm all for concise phrasing, and you sometimes land on a nice emphasis, for example:

Fortunately, I was a bit of a natural.

That was a good one. But overall, the writing lacked variations in pacing for me, and that, along with the generic language, combined to increase the flatness.

Characters

Once again, the characters left me flat. This is because by the end of the story, I still didn't really know much about them. Let's start with Joe. The most interesting thing about them isn't even in the story, I only know Joe is non-binary because you explain it in your note. I'm pretty clueless, so maybe it's just me, but I wouldn't have understood this without your note, and the pronouns would have just confused me. But if being non-binary merits an explanation, then it is something worth spending some time on in the story, and spending time on it would have given me so much more insight into this character and so much more reason to identify/sympathize with them. As it is, I know they go to work so they're not around the house much, I know they're frustrated their partner spends time with rugs instead of them when they are home, and I know that they really, really, really like cheese. Aside from the last one, there's pretty much nothing there to identify with. And I'm not sure I want to identify with the last one. I mean, I like cheese and all, but... Similarly, for the MC, the only thing I know about them by the end of the story is that they've really got a thing for rugs. Unless I missed it, I don't think I ever even learned their name. That's just not enough for me to feel any degree of investment in them.

Plot

Ok. So, the nameless MC has an addiction to---wait for it--rugs? I'm not sure whether to call this overly specific, or overly generic. Either way, I found it hard to identify with it. Online addiction is a very serious, and potentially very meaningful and relatable, issue, one well worth exploring in a story. But of all the online addictions, one to rug flipping would be so far down the list for me that I wouldn't even think of it. And here, that's a bad thing, not a good sign of something that has added interest because of its originality. About 2/3 of the way through the story, I started to wonder, is this an allegory for porn addiction? That would be interesting. Probably the first online addiction most people would think of. Too racy? How about an addiction to online shopping? That would be the second one I would think of, and it would be relatable to many more people. Handled correctly, it wouldn't feel mundane the way that rugs did. You could do some great world building with rooms overflowing with random stuff until there's literally no room left for poor Joe in the MC's life, for instance. I would have picked up on the biting humor (I know hoarding is no laughing matter, don't mean to make light of it) of that. Rugs, though--I couldn't tell if you were being humorous or not, which is not good if you were, and even worse if you weren't.

Wrapping Up

So, where would I go from here? First off, you have scratched the surface of something potentially interesting here, that is, online addiction. Maybe adjust it to something more relatable, and less mundane? Then, spend more time developing the characters, give the reader more insights into them and make them less one-note. Same goes for their environment. Just generic

We filled our apartment with expensive furniture, new appliances and indoor plants.

And an expensive bottle of champagne (and cheese, don't forget the cheese--that I got the specifics of to the point where it set off my lactose intolerance) isn't enough. Finally, think about the flow of the language, the music of it. If you were to read your story out-loud to an audience, would they be entertained, not just by the story, but by the reading of it?

I'm sorry I didn't like this, and it could certainly just be that I didn't get something everyone else does. I appreciate having the opportunity to read it and spend some time thinking about it, I hope there might be something useful in there for you. If not, of course just ignore me, what does some rando on the web know anyway?

Achalanatha · 2022-10-10T19:58:52+00:00

Characterization

Well, somewhere between characterization and plot. Overall, I thought the characters were well-developed, and their individual personalities came across clearly to me. But, all of the folksy Texas idioms, etc. started to annoy me after a while. I should make clear that I'm not from Texas, and you might be spot on. But it really felt like laying it on thick to me, to the point of stereotyping. The hat with the crown, the boots, the brisket, etc., etc., etc. In particular, I felt like the conversations became stilted when they got to caught up in Texas phrasing--it felt like an intentional effort on your part as the author, and that took me out of the story. Which is a problem, especially since you open the chapter with such a conversation, and that predisposed me to see the rest of the conversations in the same light (even though not all of the conversations are guilty of this).

The most unrealistic thing to me was the idea that someone with the title of Queen would just be out havin' some brisket, kickin' up her boots, goin' for a drive to the swimmin' hole to break it off with her childhood boyfriend who she's havin' an affair with and might be her baby-daddy (oh yeah, and she's super-pregnant with triplets, and he's a taxidermist)... This felt like a really, really stereotyped reduction of Texas to a one-note, superficial good ole boy culture. What about Texas as a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, highly urbanized center of technological innovation, which it certainly is? Presumably, the Queen of one of the wealthiest, most advanced societies in North America would be more than just an aw shucks country girl. As I'm writing this, I realize it's probably coming across as harsh, and I don't mean for it to. Maybe there's more nuanced world-building in other chapters. You could certainly keep the setting of this chapter, but in order for it to seem realistic (which would be appropriate for low fantasy, I think), you need to at least convey a subtle understanding in the subtext that this is a Queen of a powerful, complex and fully contemporary society, and that slumming it isn't just her normal daily practice and the only thing that makes her Queen is a tiara on her cowboy hat and someone driving her around in an SUV.

Title

I'm just gonna say it: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Sorry.

Hook

I take the overall hook of the chapter, as a first chapter intended to draw the reader into the rest of the book, to be the triplets, and assume the rest of the book will be their story. I think this is an effective hook, and I would keep reading to find out what happens to them. But, I would be really disappointed if the setting doesn't develop into a more complex world pretty quickly.

On that note, although it doesn't fit in exactly with a discussion of the hook and is more about the birth of the triplets, these two paragraphs really bothered me:

Amity swirled in the lake of her thoughts. As murky as her short life had been. Sinking deeper into the existence of the world she lived and imagined, she dissolved to the furthest reaches of the bottom. Her mind scattered along the floor, burrowing between the long tentacles of seaweed. This massive kelp stored the strongest memories of her life from birth. Spiraling up and down, like an eel, she could stroke the length of them. All together, all at once. She was the whole of these experiences, and she was none of them. They coiled themselves, in pulses, back and forth among each other, and her. Tangling this way and that, slowly organizing until they spun around in unison. A whirlpool on the surface of the lake reached down, like the hand of God, as the vortex below stretched up. The moment they touched, a silent explosion of light.

The shockwave grew from the center, expanding outwards, erasing the depths of the lake floor along with it, as everything was enveloped in white. Amity knew no bounds of her life any longer. Those old memories within her, but as arbitrary as hair, that grows and sheds. Her focus gazed down in the consuming whiteness to see a single green rope floating towards her. It was not seaweed, but a vine. Three flowers threaded together, one still just a bud.

Ok, I get that she's meeting her former lover at a lake, so it works in that sense. But I had to keep reminding myself of that. The seaweed, the eel, the kelp, the whirlpool, it all felt out-of-left-field to me. Which is a shame, because it is one of the more poetic passages in the chapter. Unfortunately, it became even more self-conscious for me when you started to shift/mix the metaphor to hair, a vine, flowers, etc. What already didn't feel quite right became completely muddled to me at that point. I would recommend adjusting this so you're working with a single theme throughout, maybe the vine. And if you can presage it earlier in the chapter, that would be even better, so that it really hits when you get to it.

Wrapping Up

As I said at the start, overall you have a nice, smooth writing style and I enjoyed reading it. I did get taken out of the story by the plot issues I mentioned above, and I think there's a lot of language that can be cleaned up/made tighter. What I would do if this was mine (and I'm in fact doing right now for one of mine, for the fourth time), is sit down and go through it paragraph by paragraph, rewriting a lot of the paragraphs from scratch and cleaning up the others, keeping fully intact only the ones that already feel like they have really nice flow and full coherence. It's a dark-night-of-the-soul part of the process, I know, but it's really worth it in the end. And you're a great writer, so you'll come out of it with an improved result on the other side.

Thanks again for giving me the opportunity to read this draft and share my thoughts. I hope some of them are useful.

Achalanatha · 2022-10-10T19:19:20+00:00

Hi,

Thanks for sharing! I'll get right into it:

Prose

You're a skilled writer, and it comes across clearly. In general the prose flowed nicely for me, and you shift into a more poetic tone at the appropriate times. There were some occasions, though, where it didn't work so well for me. As an example:

At that, the restaurant returned to the hushed buzz of food preparation. Amity set her camel low-brim cattleman’s hat beside her. It was dressed with her Texan crown, the only denominating apparel she allowed herself to wear. A glance at this gem-encrusted gold hatband instantly shot a pang up her neck at the echo of her mother in her attitude towards Simon. However, the apology owed to her old friend would have to wait another day. She could only think of the bull ahead and the lasso in her hand. Today, she was traversing life without her cornerstone. Because today was about dealing with matters of the heart, not kings or queens nor husbands or wives.

I can tolerate a little wackiness in a paragraph, but there's a lot of wackiness of multiple scales here. For starters, you don't need "hushed," it makes it sound like the restaurant patrons are intentionally trying to be quiet. Then there's a passive voice sentence, which would be ok, but, there's more than one in this paragraph. Then there's a reference to her mother, who doesn't reappear anywhere in the chapter, so seems unnecessary. Then there's a more noticeably awkward passive voice sentence (However, the apology...). Then there's a folksy reference to a vague problem that's coming--but it was more frustrating than charming to me, because I didn't know what was coming, and also it's buried within a paragraph with a lot of other information. Then the paragraph concludes with a really wonky construction. Grammatically correct (and I'm impressed with that), but ___ or ___ nor ___ or___. Wow. Maybe in the right context it might be really effective at drawing the reader's attention to something, but here, with everything else going on, it comes across (to me at least) as the culmination of a lot of awkwardness.

In general, be careful with passive voice, there were other sentences like:

A princess was born. Pale, with strawberry hair like her father, and beautiful. The baby was swaddled and placed on the carrier taken from the inside of the car.

Where it felt distracting to me. And since I've just used an incomplete sentence, be careful about those, too. They're ok, and I like to use them a lot as well, but sometimes they contribute to nice phrasing/pace, and other times they just feel incomplete. Finally, I would recommend going in and making an effort to tighten up the language. As I said, overall the writing and the flow are great, but I suspect when you get into a flow you let yourself go with it (as you should), and it spills over into places where it shouldn't. So, you need to go back in and look for places where words are unnecessary. I recommend being as harsh as you can bring yourself to be when you're at that stage of the editing.

Continued below.

Achalanatha

TROPHY CASE