Manuscript Title: Stone-Cut Gods
Manuscript Genre: Ancient historical fiction
Manuscript Word Count: 89,300
Is your manuscript finished?: Y
Any trigger warnings? Child murder
Hook:
Emgella defends her Bronze Age tribe against all outsiders. She scares off an intimidating band of poachers with just her bow and her desperate bravado. During the standoff, a warrior falls ill with debilitating seizures. Their Old Woman reveals that Emgella can sever this curse by performing a spell in a foreign city.
Emgella sneaks across the rooftops of one of Asia Minor’s first cities, learning how to blend in. The urban elites play by baffling new rules, as if modern society warped everyone’s minds. Emgella discovers that the spell will create enemies strong enough to casually obliterate her people. A less devoted woman would return home empty-handed, but she can’t stand to fail expectations.
First 750 words:
The Barking Men crouched around their campfire, spreading lies. Their carelessly loud stories mingled with the raspy noise that earned them their name. “Ark, aaarkhark!”
The tribes of the Barking Men claimed I was more wild animal than human. Idiotic Barkers. Obviously they were the ones making the animal sounds. No doubt you choose to side with them over me, but we both know you’re a lying dungheap.
I lay lower in my hiding spot in the grass, a few dozen paces downwind. A knapweed thistle blossom scratched my neck. The unfamiliar grain of my new bow disturbed my concentration. A woman should be disciplined enough to remain absolutely quiet, but some demon in my lungs wanted me to gasp for air, making me feel like I was underwater. I tried to appease it with rapid, shallow breaths, but it clenched its claw around my heart. How embarrassing I was, fumbling an arrow onto my bowstring.
To my left, two brothers stalked past me in the direction of the Barkers’ campfire circle. They hunched low and held their bows out of the dirt in their left hands. The farther they advanced, the thinner their riverside cover grew. The lead, little Imeda, was only here because he insisted that this season he was old enough to join the warriors. Imeda’s older brother Lasha followed behind him, the two moving in unison, navigating the same route around sticky green milkvetch shrubs.
Soon Pop panther-crawled behind them, also barefoot. He wore a scratchy hemp skirt and a hide coat tied at the collar, leaving his chest bare. The coat was purely a defensive layer on this warm summer night. His old stone axe flailed back and forth in the sling on his back. The flint axe head was slotted into a birchwood handle and secured with sticky birch-tar and a rawhide lashing. Sharp veins covered its head, marking the forty places Pop had abraded the original flint blank with a round hammerstone. He hadn’t intended for the axe to be a weapon.
Pop saw my vantage point and my nocked arrow, but his eyes didn’t take in my face. He pursed his lips into a lopsided frown, same as the face he had made at the council meeting, yelling about the unnecessary dangers of this ambush. He must have concluded our position was strong because he pivoted toward the campfire and crawled away through the grass with a wrinkled grimace.
I hung back with Imeda’s two older sisters, who kept sweeping their hair away from their bows. We weren’t overly adept at hand-to-hand combat. Instead, as the only women, our role was to provide support from a distance. Plus, the tribal elders hoped we could provide adult supervision for the males.
I visualized embarking on a normal hunting trip with my tribe. I imagined we had been stalking red deer, and then crouching, and stalking and crouching for hours. That made for a familiar routine. Hunting game was a fun day’s work. Everyone had confidence in my aim and trusted that I could place an arrow where my quarry would succumb, would have to succumb, no matter how desperate it might be to survive. These Barking Men were big game animals just like any red deer. I could bag them. Failing that, we’d at least drive them out of our territory. We guarded our food sources with our lives.
I had shaken free of my demon; my breathing submitted to me again. My bare breasts and knees and unshod feet pressed into the overbaked dirt. The air around the soil smelled tangy from scat. I avoided the spines of defensive plants that wanted to be left alone.
My companions stopped fidgeting, one by one. They were all happy enough with their advanced positions. I closed my eyes and listened to the muffled splashing of Puluku Creek until my hands didn’t feel hurried. It was time. A scrubby juniper obstructed my view of the Barkers from this low-lying vantage, so I raised myself up halfway, just above the grass line, to scout my target.
I positioned my bow at full reach. The other huntresses nocked arrows as well. My blood pulsed in my throat as I scanned the backs of heads hidden in the grass on my left and then right. The campfire circle was one big target, hard to miss completely.
Exhale… Aim… Fire!
What do you look for in a beta?
This manuscript has gone through several revisions, and the biggest problem before has been the pacing in the opening. The next most valuable feedback would cover whether the emotional arc of the main character rings true. An ideal beta reader would be comfortable with character development involving a faith journey.
Manuscript Genre: Ancient historical fiction
Manuscript Word Count: 89,300
Is your manuscript finished?: Y
Any trigger warnings? Child murder
Hook:
Emgella defends her Bronze Age tribe against all outsiders. She scares off an intimidating band of poachers with just her bow and her desperate bravado. During the standoff, a warrior falls ill with debilitating seizures. Their Old Woman reveals that Emgella can sever this curse by performing a spell in a foreign city.
Emgella sneaks across the rooftops of one of Asia Minor’s first cities, learning how to blend in. The urban elites play by baffling new rules, as if modern society warped everyone’s minds. Emgella discovers that the spell will create enemies strong enough to casually obliterate her people. A less devoted woman would return home empty-handed, but she can’t stand to fail expectations.
First 750 words:
The Barking Men crouched around their campfire, spreading lies. Their carelessly loud stories mingled with the raspy noise that earned them their name. “Ark, aaarkhark!”
The tribes of the Barking Men claimed I was more wild animal than human. Idiotic Barkers. Obviously they were the ones making the animal sounds. No doubt you choose to side with them over me, but we both know you’re a lying dungheap.
I lay lower in my hiding spot in the grass, a few dozen paces downwind. A knapweed thistle blossom scratched my neck. The unfamiliar grain of my new bow disturbed my concentration. A woman should be disciplined enough to remain absolutely quiet, but some demon in my lungs wanted me to gasp for air, making me feel like I was underwater. I tried to appease it with rapid, shallow breaths, but it clenched its claw around my heart. How embarrassing I was, fumbling an arrow onto my bowstring.
To my left, two brothers stalked past me in the direction of the Barkers’ campfire circle. They hunched low and held their bows out of the dirt in their left hands. The farther they advanced, the thinner their riverside cover grew. The lead, little Imeda, was only here because he insisted that this season he was old enough to join the warriors. Imeda’s older brother Lasha followed behind him, the two moving in unison, navigating the same route around sticky green milkvetch shrubs.
Soon Pop panther-crawled behind them, also barefoot. He wore a scratchy hemp skirt and a hide coat tied at the collar, leaving his chest bare. The coat was purely a defensive layer on this warm summer night. His old stone axe flailed back and forth in the sling on his back. The flint axe head was slotted into a birchwood handle and secured with sticky birch-tar and a rawhide lashing. Sharp veins covered its head, marking the forty places Pop had abraded the original flint blank with a round hammerstone. He hadn’t intended for the axe to be a weapon.
Pop saw my vantage point and my nocked arrow, but his eyes didn’t take in my face. He pursed his lips into a lopsided frown, same as the face he had made at the council meeting, yelling about the unnecessary dangers of this ambush. He must have concluded our position was strong because he pivoted toward the campfire and crawled away through the grass with a wrinkled grimace.
I hung back with Imeda’s two older sisters, who kept sweeping their hair away from their bows. We weren’t overly adept at hand-to-hand combat. Instead, as the only women, our role was to provide support from a distance. Plus, the tribal elders hoped we could provide adult supervision for the males.
I visualized embarking on a normal hunting trip with my tribe. I imagined we had been stalking red deer, and then crouching, and stalking and crouching for hours. That made for a familiar routine. Hunting game was a fun day’s work. Everyone had confidence in my aim and trusted that I could place an arrow where my quarry would succumb, would have to succumb, no matter how desperate it might be to survive. These Barking Men were big game animals just like any red deer. I could bag them. Failing that, we’d at least drive them out of our territory. We guarded our food sources with our lives.
I had shaken free of my demon; my breathing submitted to me again. My bare breasts and knees and unshod feet pressed into the overbaked dirt. The air around the soil smelled tangy from scat. I avoided the spines of defensive plants that wanted to be left alone.
My companions stopped fidgeting, one by one. They were all happy enough with their advanced positions. I closed my eyes and listened to the muffled splashing of Puluku Creek until my hands didn’t feel hurried. It was time. A scrubby juniper obstructed my view of the Barkers from this low-lying vantage, so I raised myself up halfway, just above the grass line, to scout my target.
I positioned my bow at full reach. The other huntresses nocked arrows as well. My blood pulsed in my throat as I scanned the backs of heads hidden in the grass on my left and then right. The campfire circle was one big target, hard to miss completely.
Exhale… Aim… Fire!
What do you look for in a beta?
This manuscript has gone through several revisions, and the biggest problem before has been the pacing in the opening. The next most valuable feedback would cover whether the emotional arc of the main character rings true. An ideal beta reader would be comfortable with character development involving a faith journey.