Nathan Bransford - The Forums

Hi All,

I'm looking for more of a writing buddy/crit partner to exchange sections of work with and to help motivate each other. I'm about 3/4 of the way through the first draft so this is more a work in progress, encourage each other to keep going, point out any major plot holes/character flaws before they become too ingrained in the story kinda deal.

If anyone is keen I'd love to hear from you.

Here's the first page of my WIP to give you an idea if you could handle having to read this on a semi-regular basis :).

~

The day my mother died was the day I was born. She didn’t die in childbirth, as people were led to believe, she was murdered.

On September 5th 1991, the contractions started. My Gran has told me the story many times, at my insistence, and I have committed it to memory. It’s the last link I have to a mother I never got to know.

We were rushed to hospital through a cold drizzle, the windows fogging up as my mother huffed and puffed in the back seat. After 6 hours of ear splitting, hair raising labour, I arrived, small and red and screaming into the world. Gran doesn’t gloss over the facts.

There were no complications; mother and baby were fit and healthy. I roared as my lungs filled with air for the first time, but gradually settled into a drooling contemplation of my new surroundings. The cheerful, scrubs-clad nurses oohed and aahed over me before quietly stepping out into the corridor. Briefly we were left alone, my mother and I.

They say before the age of three you have no memories, but I do remember this: as I lay there, gurgling softly and staring up at my mother’s dazed, glowing face, darkness entered the room. It was no more than a shadow, stealth incarnate, wrapped in a cape so dark it ate the light around him. It coiled its tall, slender body into a predators crouch, waiting in the corner of the sterile hospital room. It slunk forward on silent feet, pausing at the side of the bed to take stock of its target. It wasn’t a part of this world, no one could see it, no one was aware of its presence: except me.

The creature swung its head toward me for the briefest moment and I stared into a face created from darkness, not even the glint of an eye discernable beneath its hood. In that moment it considered my fate, only to dismiss my fledgling spark of life as insignificant, paling against my mother’s roaring inferno, and that is where it made its mistake. It swung its faceless head toward her and leaned in, dipping its head low as if for a kiss. With one rasping breath my mother shut her eyes, never to open again. The creature left the way it had entered; completely unaware it had killed the wrong person.

This sounds super intriguing. In the next couple of weeks I do hope to start my next project. It'd be fun to have a good second eye as I go. Here's an excerpt from the short story I'm going to turn into a novel for the next project. If it sounds like something you'd be interested in I'm totally game for swapping chapters as we go along.



The aeroflyer floated over the mountains at the high-speed pace of two miles an hour. Snow still dotted their highest peaks, a never-melting reminder of winter’s harshness. A harshness which lay just three months away.

For now, though, the mountains below the snow line came alive in a cacophony of colors. Lanna adjusted her goggles and wiped their fronts with a grease-laden cloth that once might have been blue. She jabbed a couple of buttons in the console in front of her, pulled a cord or two and adjusted some levers.

Her craft lurched forward, guttered, then began a thrilling plummet toward earth. Lanna grinned. She saw Tallyn’s Reach below. It grew closer as she fell faster. In her mind she pictured the townspeople running through the cobbled streets, panicking because they see their doom headed towards them. She grabbed two levers, one in each hand, and pulled hard.

The town hall’s spire, a gaudy thing decorated with lizards and other unpleasantness, inched closer. Its tip came a breath from her aeroflyer before the craft nosed upward once more and she was airborne, laughing at the dumbfounded faces below her. She waved as she flew off toward Mount Gartreh, the second-highest point of the Quaturi Mountains. And her secret lab.

Hey Steph,

Your excerpt looks great, and I'm definitely keen to see more of what's going to happen with your MC. I do have to warn you though, after browsing your blog it sounds like you've got a bit more experience in the realm of wannabe authordom than I, but if you're still keen let me know :)

Sari

I'm totally into it. Like I said, I'll be starting a new project soon. School just started up for me today so I'm going to be working on getting a new groove going here over the next few days. Writing will be a part of that groove.

Great :)
When you're ready to start your new project and swapping words let me know.

Sari

Will do!

Hi Sari,

I might be too late since it looks like you've found someone, but if you're interested in more than one writing buddy, I'm looking for pretty much the exact same thing you are in a critique partner and your WIP looks really interesting! I'd love to read more.

I have what I suppose you could call a full first draft, but it's nowhere near in shape to show anyone the whole thing (in fact, most of it is in the process of being rewritten), so I'm looking for someone to chat with about our writing, exchange bits or chapters, and talk through plot issues etc etc.

Here's a page or so near the start of mine to see if you'd be interested. It's not the first page because, frankly, the first page sucks, but it's near the beginning. :) It's contemporary YA--not exactly fantasy but with some fantasy elements. It's about a girl who discovers that she and her mom are rogue members of an ancient secret society...and they want her back.

***
Jack watched her leave. She wandered past knots of people, stopping to watch the scene unfold once more.
Everywhere, people talked of the bombing. It was still new enough to be a shock, though it was not a shock to Jack. He felt the familiar pang of regret, but didn’t let it slow him. Instead he tuned his trained ears to catch anything out of the ordinary. He heard nothing. This town was no threat. But that was not to say that there was no threat in this town.
He looked around. He didn’t see the enemy, but Yuri was at least as cunning as Jack at disguising himself. Still, Jack could not help but hope that he had beaten the other man to her; that his task would be more easily completed.
He looked at the girl again and almost felt pity for her.
But it was not his place to feel. It was his place to do what he was born to do, and that was to do for his Family the best that he could.
This feeling, this uncertainty, was not something he was used to. Emerson’s words rang loud in his head.
This once, he had said, you must fail.
You cannot take her. Let him take her if he must. For the sake of not only your Family but of them all, you must fail.
You must fail.
The words echoed in Jack’s ears. Failure was not something he was accustomed to or something he much enjoyed. But the words had come from a trusted source.
You must fail. Just this once. You cannot do your duty this time.
Emerson had refused any further explanation, and Jack had stormed from the house, certain that the old man was going mad. But now that he was here, so near to completing his task, he wasn’t certain. It was unlike Emerson to be unnecessarily dramatic or to ask something of Jack that wasn’t of the utmost importance.
Jack worried the sleeve of his coat. He watched Avery Hunter leave the throng of onlookers and walk outside. She talked to no one.
The girl had no idea what was in store for her. She was so small, so delicate looking. So young. But he wasn’t about to allow himself yet another allegiance.