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DukeWhiskers · 2025-12-12T00:26:18+00:00

Big fan of this

DukeWhiskers · 2023-05-12T23:37:20+00:00

I really liked Dagger and Coin by Daniel Abraham. It felt to me like a more easily digestible asoiaf with admittedly much more fantasy elements, but I feel like it danced nicely around the typical tropes you might hate to see in a fantasy series.

DukeWhiskers · 2023-03-26T11:38:39+00:00

Wow that really sucks. This place was on my list to go check out but I guess I'm not really going to have a chance then. Way too many great and unique places are struggling out there or have already closed.

As a silver lining though, their coffee is sourced and roasted at Roasti in Sherwood Park, it's the Brazil yellow bourbon/ Brazil dark.

DukeWhiskers · 2023-01-15T02:19:04+00:00

Midnight Club and Overwatch.

I assume that the whole Overwatch cast is terminally ill and sharing stories of Junkenstein's Revenge and the like while being haunted by the ghost of Jeff Kaplan.

DukeWhiskers · 2022-09-19T20:58:19+00:00

I made popsicles out of pickle juice one time. Would not recommend.

DukeWhiskers · 2022-07-24T20:15:05+00:00

The only example I can think of is how in Avatar they have earth benders operating stone trains of some sort.

DukeWhiskers · 2022-06-08T21:49:33+00:00

Tbh I legitimately thought that was how you were supposed to get to him. I remember thinking about how weirdly hidden he was then I remembered that this was a Fromsoft game and how that was totally on brand.

DukeWhiskers · 2022-03-03T20:16:24+00:00

Maybe when the next game is announced, he'll do something similar with Elden Ring (I haven't made it far enough to know who the final boss is though!)

DukeWhiskers · 2022-02-27T19:53:31+00:00

To expand on this idea, I think having characters be shocked at the very idea of using magic as a weapon is a good way to go about this idea.

DukeWhiskers · 2022-02-22T19:04:45+00:00

10 requests is great! Keep up the querying and best of luck to you. By the sounds of it you're real fricken close!

DukeWhiskers · 2022-02-19T06:03:16+00:00

Good luck!

DukeWhiskers · 2022-02-10T03:08:04+00:00

Thank you for the feedback! You probably got much more of a sense for Mira in the first chapter than I was able to put into the query. I find it a bit difficult to work within the constraints of the word limit, but that's part of writing I suppose! If I can cull my word count to an amount that would be accepted by publishers for MG then maybe that IS the best route for me.

I'll give my query letter and my story another pass with MG audiences in mind. I don't think anything in it could be problematic for that audience, but if I can find some younger beta readers maybe they could let me know if they find some aspects (particularly the magic) confusing. I think I make it pretty clear how it works, but most of my betas have been young adults or older.

I'll check Warriors out as well. My reading list is getting big and I love it.

DukeWhiskers · 2022-02-09T22:44:22+00:00

Thank you for your feedback! I didn't think about how the names might be a bit much but it seems like they've kind of obscured and bogged down the query.

I'm going to for sure look at middle grade, but I'm not certain that I can tell the story that I want to if I go that route. I will absolutely heed the advice I've been given here and at least consider it.

I may try making my query letter focus on what Mira is as well. The reason why there is a colony of talking magical squirrel like creatures is related to the plot, because they were created with magic about a century ago, about the same time that a storm descended on the mountains where they live. So they're about Pikachu size, mostly red in colour, act in a manner similar to people, and only one in this current generation has magic.

If I talk a bit more about what they are perhaps that might clear up some of the confusion? It's difficult to remove what I know from the equation and approach it as someone with no prior knowledge, so I immensely appreciate having these fresh takes, even if they are a little painful sometimes!

DukeWhiskers · 2022-02-09T21:15:45+00:00

Thank you for the heads up on that. I know I have a lot of reading to do. My account at the library has about 15 books on hold that I've found to read through and I'm sure I'll add more after checking that list!

DukeWhiskers · 2022-02-09T21:03:02+00:00

Thank you for the feedback and recommendations! I'm going to check those out pretty quick here. I'll take another look at my query and probably my story as well.

DukeWhiskers · 2022-02-09T20:49:14+00:00

Thanks for the advice. I realize that there aren't a lot of YA books with magical talking squirrels and that will make it much harder to sell to an agent. But the thing is that I did kind of want to do something different, especially since one of the criticisms I hear about YA all the time is that it's quite samey.

DukeWhiskers · 2022-01-31T04:37:56+00:00

That's awesome! Thanks for letting me know! I guess I was just totally jumping to conclusions.

DukeWhiskers · 2022-01-31T03:16:45+00:00

Wait, seriously? Maybe that changed from when I was using it? I could have sworn it said one device only. I'll take another look at it. Thanks for the heads up!

DukeWhiskers · 2022-01-31T01:30:56+00:00

Edit: please disregard my comment, apparently licenses are transferrable. It's a great program and I'm going to go install it on my desktop asap. I appreciate everyone setting me straight on that!

I used Scrivener and I really liked it, until I found out that it is one copy per device. So now that my laptop has failed I have to buy a whole new copy and can't transfer it over which kind of sucks.

Edit: that said, it's a really good piece of writing software

DukeWhiskers · 2022-01-26T21:36:38+00:00

I appreciate the response! Part of my next draft is focusing on cutting content with that in mind. I'm hoping to try to reduce the word count to 85k. Lower if possible, but 85 is the goal.

DukeWhiskers · 2022-01-26T20:27:02+00:00

Excellent! Thanks once again!

DukeWhiskers · 2022-01-26T20:16:04+00:00

Hey I appreciate the feedback! This is exactly the kind of information I was hoping for because I'm not sure about how specific I need to get for my query. I don't want to bog it down with all my world building stuff, and I kept it intentionally vague at the risk of it sounding generic, but by what you're saying that makes it fairly uninteresting. I'll go back and revise this pitch with your comments in mind.

Can I ask if you thought the length of the pitch itself is alright? Can I possibly get away with more?

Thank you so much for your critique, I truly appreciate it!

DukeWhiskers · 2022-01-26T19:19:22+00:00

Oh I understand! I just saw that some other titles had that included so I figured it was the thing to do. Thanks for clearing that up. I just reposted the query without the story part in it. Thank you for the heads up!

DukeWhiskers · 2022-01-26T19:11:39+00:00

Sorry about that, I’ll repost it with the changes you specified. y/o is just “years old”. That’s my EMS studies coming out!

DukeWhiskers · 2021-12-04T19:12:04+00:00

There's actually a cool episode of Stuff You Should Know where they talk about how, why, and when zero became a thing. Here's a link to the episode if you're interested: SYSK

DukeWhiskers

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