- Joined
- Mar 27, 2011
- Messages
- 1,282
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- Location
- N. Calif
- Website
- www.racheltaylorwrites.com
Hi -
I'm struggling with my opening and am hoping to find/trade for some fresh eyes. Blurb is below. I just stuck the opening pages here. This is not my first book, and this particular book has been through several rounds of betas as I work through its (my) issues.
I'm an experienced beta reader and am more than happy to return the favor for about the same page length (15k-ish words). I'll ready anything but erotica.
Rachel
******************
Stay Me with Splendor & Sword
In a land of palm trees and pomegranates, seventeen-year-old Emrie Das is an over-looked younger daughter with a budding gift for the forbidden witchcraft. When she accidentally betrays her gift to her father, he doesn’t have her fingers cut off as expected. Instead, he insists she use it to keep alive a political prisoner who’s been locked away and abandoned under their city-oasis.
This is Emrie’s chance to prove herself, but she can’t get the witchcraft to do anything other than make her fingers tingle. When she finds a way to reach the prison anyway, she’s terrified of the foul-smelling, rag-covered, fierce-tongued boy within.
Emrie’s no quitter, and whether or not either of them like it, the prisoner’s entirely dependent on her. He reveals that he’s the center of a powerplay to control the city-oasis, one that her father is trying to win using her. The prisoner can only see a single way out: his own death.
Emrie refuses to accept that. She comes to care not just about him but for him. Getting them both out of the situation, and possibly the city-oasis, will take not just learning the witchcraft and outsmarting her father but convincing the prisoner he has reasons to live, starting with her.
I'm struggling with my opening and am hoping to find/trade for some fresh eyes. Blurb is below. I just stuck the opening pages here. This is not my first book, and this particular book has been through several rounds of betas as I work through its (my) issues.
I'm an experienced beta reader and am more than happy to return the favor for about the same page length (15k-ish words). I'll ready anything but erotica.
Rachel
******************
Stay Me with Splendor & Sword
In a land of palm trees and pomegranates, seventeen-year-old Emrie Das is an over-looked younger daughter with a budding gift for the forbidden witchcraft. When she accidentally betrays her gift to her father, he doesn’t have her fingers cut off as expected. Instead, he insists she use it to keep alive a political prisoner who’s been locked away and abandoned under their city-oasis.
This is Emrie’s chance to prove herself, but she can’t get the witchcraft to do anything other than make her fingers tingle. When she finds a way to reach the prison anyway, she’s terrified of the foul-smelling, rag-covered, fierce-tongued boy within.
Emrie’s no quitter, and whether or not either of them like it, the prisoner’s entirely dependent on her. He reveals that he’s the center of a powerplay to control the city-oasis, one that her father is trying to win using her. The prisoner can only see a single way out: his own death.
Emrie refuses to accept that. She comes to care not just about him but for him. Getting them both out of the situation, and possibly the city-oasis, will take not just learning the witchcraft and outsmarting her father but convincing the prisoner he has reasons to live, starting with her.
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