Beta reader for either (or both) of two science fiction stories

Hi there.

I had a great (fantastic!) beta reader from the beta swap--Thanks again Sage for organizing!--and my 16K word story is so much the better for it--Huzzah!

You can read the old opening here.

This story will be a freebie on my website when the novel comes out. What I'm looking for is not feedback that would require me to overhaul the thing but perhaps feedback that is not too painful to implement. I'm usually good with pain, but I have a full few months coming up and really just want this story to be decent enough to hand out as a freebie. I could use line level stuff (I'm horrible with capitalization and commas), general thoughts that I can take and work with in my way.

The tricky part with this story is to make it meaningful to the world of the novel without spoiling the novel. It's not edge-of-your-seat (that's not my style) but does build the world in a way that complements the novel. It also provides back story for secondary characters in the novel. It's set 30 years earlier (a generation earlier.)

If you're interested in beta'ing outright, or swapping for a roughly equal word count, please pm me.

Blurb:

On planet Turaset, seventeen-year-old Celeste bakes another batch of muffins and fantasizes of life in the city. She’d abandon her parents’ miserable country inn in a hot second given half a chance. So, when she learns that Narona’s central university is offering classes to country folk, she sees her opportunity. She convinces Mama to help persuade Papa to sign her up.

Celeste soaks up city life and adulthood with gusto. She asks out a handsome young city boy, he says ‘yes,’ and soon they’re discovering Narona together and spending nights in one another’s arms. Life back home could never teach her what Anson can!

But love sours when Celeste begins to suspect that she’s just a country novelty to Anson. Narona’s different, but with no family will it ever feel like home? Celeste must choose between the safety of country tradition, and an uncertain future in a wildly different culture.

I had no takers on the piece in post one, AN AMAZING BETA EXPERIENCE thanks to AW on the first post in this thread.

I could use eyeballs on a second short story planned as free content for my website. (13,000 words, dual viewpoint)

I'm not sure where things fall apart plot-wise, or if they're OK from start to end. This piece tends to move marginally quicker than some of my other stuff--eight scenes each of which sort of jumps ahead in time. (That's a win for me, as a writerly lesson, to be able to jump in narrative time and not struggle so much with the scene transitions.)

Anyway the first scene is here and I've trimmed and tightened (a bit) and tweaked based on feedback there from two lovely AWers.

Here's the blurb for The Vastol Vendetta:

Career politician Berna Vanther is pushing hard to pass a bill that will clean up her city’s drinking water. The river’s been fouled by coal ash, and the industry dumping that ash denies responsibility. If the industry keeps declaring innocence, Berna knows her colleagues will agree to regulate their operations.

Young Melville di Vaun once killed for the industry, taking out anyone that posed a risk to profits. He left that life after a crisis of conscience and now cares for his dying cousin as penance. He’d give her painkillers if he could, but they were banned over concerns of addiction.

The head of the industry approaches Melville with an offer: Assassinate one of the councilors to force the political class to back off, and in return he’ll give Melville as much banned medicine as his dying cousin needs. Melville thought he’d left the assassin’s life forever, but with each cry from his cousin’s throat he finds himself edging back.

I'll swap equal length work.

Thank you!!!



And Oh My God what was I saying? A FANTASTIC AW'er did beta the story in post #1 when i requested it. I'll strike that in the post.

Brain fart. Sorry, fantastic friend. I blame it on age and being scattered by the amazon stuff and general disarray.