Necro's Writings

04/23 CAMP NANO PROJECT — SPEAKER by @tsainami

Genre: SFF > Urban Fantasy Status: Draft 0.5 (over 50k of vomit draft in need of cleaning) Camp Nano Goal: To finish a coherent outline/beat write for it. Pitch: Two sisters born to be enemies try their best to survive a world run by demons. Includes: sus trees + sus fruit + sus rats, sisters to enemies, a library of monsters, the mystery of an erased age and just a little bit of cosmic horror.

HOMEBIRDS needs Beta readers!

Homebirds is a 88k-word YA sci-fi/fantasy novel, the first of a series, following multiple characters' POVs.

In the Evergreen City, eight 17-year-olds live, study, fight and fall in love. Things come to a head at Margot Bishop’s 18th birthday party when midnight strikes and they’re attacked by a creature from another world. They discover their home is not their home at all; they’re from all over the universe. They have special abilities not found anywhere else on earth. And their future is more uncertain than they could have ever imagined.

I'm finally looking for beta readers for Homebirds! I'm looking for general feedback on plot/characters/setting, very story-based more than prose/style based!

This beta will run from April 21st to May 20th, but there is wiggle room! I have details about this on the form, so if the timeline is a limit for you but you'd still like to take part, please let me know. I'm running on no deadlines here but my own, so I'm flexible!

I am offering beta reading in exchange! Any WIP up to 100k words is fine, so if you're looking for beta readers in the future, shoot me a message!

Important links:

The Beta reader application form! (open until April 20th)

See the intro post/masterpost for more information

Check out this preview of Chapter 1!

“If she’s got the temperament for it, she should try her luck inland,” they advise. “No point her starting a temple here if she’d find her people elsewhere, with a little searching.”

At first, your parents are reluctant to send you away. Though you’re well-behaved and diligent in your chores, you’re a sickly child with no God to worship. And besides, you’ve always been the dreamy type–inclined to lose track of time watching the path of rain droplets chasing down the window, or the fronds of an anemone as it sways in a rock pool.

Instead, they send you to the temple of the Storm to learn all you’ll need for your own God. You are happy there, for a time: making up beds and serving food to the castaways who pass through, keeping vigil at the lighthouse, burning incense and praying with the loyal widows and orphans of the drowned.

One such widow, an old, old lady, touches the mark on your forehead. “I recognise those letters. We wrote this way in the town where I grew up, way off past the mountains.”

Your heartbeat quickens. “What does it say!?”

She squints, eyes engulfed by wrinkles and hidden behind smudged glass. “A… Ar… Oh, I can’t remember how to speak it. I left before I learnt my letters properly. There was a war, you know. But I remember,” she says, mistily, “the most beautiful pink and white flowers used to grow, on the borders of the wheat fields…”

You try to ask more questions, but remembering the war distresses her, and so you speak of other things. When she’s drifted off to sleep, you get to your feet, go home and tell your parents: you are leaving in search of your God.

I have recently got back into doing some writing. This writing has been multi-chaptered.

So, here is a trick I am going to share that I learned from knitting socks. There is a thing called "second sock syndrome" which is when you finish one sock but can't seem to get around to starting the second. So, when I finish a sock I IMMEDIATELY cast on the second sock and just knit a few rows.

Magic is supposed to be a boon, but if you still have people hand milking cows who?? Is receiving the boon here?? Automated milking and pasteurisation spells please!! A quicker and less dangerous way, for both person and animal, to dock lambs than having to hold them under one arm and take a sharp knife to their tails with the other! Or even spells to remove the necessity of docking at all, if you insist it’s cruel and not good hygiene practice! A way to check eggs for blood in the yolk before cracking them both because yuck and because it’s prohibited in certain dietary practices! Venting mechanisms for industrial pipe work to prevent bursts! Safe disposal of waste!! WATER FILTRATION SYSTEMS IN URBAN CENTRES!! HOW INHUMANE TO NOT HAVE YOUR SEWAGE SYSTEM MANAGED BY MAGIC IF THAT IS WITHIN YOUR POWER!!

Since my CR art has been rolling around on this hellsite (affectionately), please enjoy this assortment of absolutely horribly mismatched doodles of various doneness, some from references some not!

[id: two images. First image has a blue background with an orange central box, three headshots of characters superimposed. From left to right there is Riley, a grinning blonde white girl, Hernando, a middle-aged Latino man with tired eyes and a slight smile, and Lyssa, a young Latina girl with an inquisitive smile. The second image has an orange background with a blue central box. From left to right, the characters are Sherman, a frowning light-brown-skinned girl with a curly mohawk and several facial piercings, The Captain, a man in a full-face  green and black mask, and Javira, a dark-skinned Black girl with natural hair pushed back with a hairband and a friendly smile.]

:BUY MY BOOK HERE!:

UK version here!

Since we have just over a month until my debut publishes in the US (omgomg this is actually happening???), I figured I should introduce the central characters of Strictly No Heroics!

Riley Jones

Your trusty narrator! Riley just got fired from her summer job after decking a superhero. Obviously, the solution is to become a minimum wage henchperson, doing the villains’ dirty work. No way this can end badly. Nope. Nosiree.

Alyssa Garcia

Riley’s little sister, aka, a metric shit-ton of annoyances compacted into a frame that would be 100 pounds soaking wet, including the prosthetic leg. She’s a total goober - but also consider that both I and Riley would die for her.

Hernando Garcia

Lyssa’s dad and Riley’s… guardian (SPOILERS: HE IS ONE HUNDRED PERCENT HER DAD). Tired 24/7. Works objectively too many hours, but the rents keep on a-risin’. Loves his girls so much, guys. So much.

Sherman

Hot bi biker chick. Her scowl is so pretty because it’s full of secrets. No, Riley isn’t staring. She just… zoned, while gazing into the middle distance. Not her fault Sherman’s stupid sexy face got in the way.

Javira

Riley’s braniac of a best friend! Who Riley happens to be in love with. Help. Jav is heading off to Harvard soon and abandoning Riley carving her own path in life! And Riley is devastated heartbroken terrified so happy for her!

The Captain

Riley and Sherman’s work dad. Small, swears a lot, blood at 50% caffeine and 50% pure stress at any given time. Deserves many pay rises and a long nap. He is also… tres gender. I did not intentionally write him as a trans guy as I was still figuring A Lot out about myself back in 2016 so he isn’t representation per se, but like. Here we are? Can I slap a retrospective headcanon on my own character? :shrug:

If all of this sounds fun to you… poke the link below!

:BUY MY BOOK HERE!:

This is a screengrab from Findaway Voices (the big audiobook distributor everyone who is not Audible exclusive basically uses) Rights Holder Agreement. The Rights Holder is generally the author (sometimes a publisher) but almost never the narrator.

Author friends, if any of you have audio work with Findaway please also opt out and side with our voice actors on this.

Not just because it's the right thing to do, but because this sets a precedent that will affect ALL of us.

There is no doubt in my mind that this kind of thing will also be used to feed authors works to AI writing tools to mimic our work. They’re coming for our illustrators, our voice actors and they’re absolutely coming for us.

Summary: Sometimes, when things go very wrong, the Chosen One gets a wish. That’s where Danielle comes in. (Tagged with Blood, violence, child death)

————–

Danielle is cursed.

This battlefield is nice. It’s early afternoon and the breeze that comes from the forest to the east is sweet. The fighting has only just begun and the scent of blood is still hovering at the edge of her senses. It hasn’t erased the taste of the dead girl’s last meal – bread sweetened with honey – yet. She’s used to storm clouds the size of mountains roiling overhead, the electric sting of lightning against her skin, the crash of blades against armor and arrows against shields. The sun is warm and honey-sweet against her cheek and there’s no fighting going on right now. There’s only the low murmur of voices from all around and some muffled sobbing.

If she weren’t waking up in the body of a dead girl, she’d call it picnic weather.

Time to pay attention.

“—Chosen One is dead,” a man says. His voice matches the weather more than the situation. Calm. Even. Gentle. A wave lapping at the shore before the tsunami. She can feel his aura undulating through the ground, dark and demanding. Demon King? Mad Emperor? Dark Lord? One of those types. He projects his words over the renewed sobbing. “Do you see your folly now, honorable knights? The wasted months of defiance? You were never going to defeat my army even with years and seven fabled soldiers at your mercy rather than the one. Here, the day of your final rebellion, your Hero lies dead after only one volley.”

Hero. Danielle is cursed, she shouldn’t be feeling pity for anyone but herself. But there it is, the familiar bile in the back of her throat, the prickling of her eyes, the tightening in her chest. This dead girl was their Hero. They made her their Chosen One. From the feel of it, they didn’t school in her magic or train her in swordsmanship. Her muscles are burning from death, yes, but also from overexertion.

What do you want? Danielle asks. All of the right systems are under her control now. The ground is cold against her back, the girl’s tiny curls a tickle against her face. The air is sweet underneath the scent of a dying blow and she can hear the conversations around her clearly. The Dark Lord is still gloating, giving the knights their time to mourn and his own forces time to ready the next attack. Sweetheart, what do you want?

The girl’s soul shudders. I-I’m not dead?