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ISO beta(s) for my Historical Fantasy novel

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Tepelus

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Greetings. I finished the third draft of my HF novel today and now I think it's ready for some betas to rip it to shreds. Gently, and in a civilized manner. :tongue

It's a biggie at 180k words, I've tried to cut the fluff as much as I possibly could, but I could use another set of eyes to see if more could be whittled down without removing huge chunks of the story. So I guess that's what I'm looking for mostly, someone who can see things that aren't needed that can be cut or rewritten, continuity problems, shit that just doesn't read right or make sense, you know, whatever glaringly sticks out that is a problem. Bonus if you're familiar with 15th century Romania and Hungary.

A bit about the work: Vlad returns to the man who left him to die as a child, his father Vlad Dracula (the Impaler) in search of answers to his past only to be sent to the king of Hungary to be trained as a soldier, but is then married into the wealthy Báthory family solely for his blood ties to the Walachian throne, all the while stalked by a vampiric hellhound bent on tormenting him into insanity.

That's the basic gist of it. If you want to know a little more, you can go to my blog (link in my siggy) where I've written about it a little more extensively. Oh, and BTW, this is book one of a planned series, if that matters.

So you know, there is violence of the graphic sort, there is sex though only one scene which is graphic, another simply implied because the age of one of the characters is a minor (by today's standards, not by when the story takes place). There's swears. There's LGBT themes. There's a Frisian horse named Goliát. There are dead animals and children (but nothing too graphic). Hmm, I guess that's all.

So if y'alls are interested, send me a PM. Looking forward to working with you.

Forgot to mention, I can send you sample chapters to see if it's something you want to take on before sending the entire thing. If you decide it isn't something you want or can take on, let me know. I'd rather someone tell me they can't finish it than to not reply to me ever again.
 
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Tepelus

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I'm on the hunt for another beta or two. I've started my forth draft after a four month hiatus from my work and have been using my beta's notes to guide me through my edits/rewrites, but I would like to have another beta's notes to compare with the ones I have. I seem to be having the most trouble with conflict, according to the beta, and a few other things and would like to know if someone else sees the same things. I'm working on cutting the length (176k as of now into chapter 10 of 37) with the aim to getting it closer to 160k, if not lower. Pretty much everything I described above has remained, except the sex scene has been mostly cut. I can send you the edited first chapter to see if it's something you may be interested in.
 
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