Quote:
Originally Posted by Reif
Unfortunately, no I am not a professional author...though I have to admit I wouldn't have an immediate theme ready outside of TG fiction.
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Read some contemporary urban fantasy novels. Your work reminds me a lot of a set of books I posted in the Evil Conversion thread by this author:
Richelle Mead (
long excerpt of first book) in regards to also being an interesting treatment of succubi with some excellent 'romance' scenes. You are really almost there with these sets of stories with a very similar theme minus the process scenes and a tone down or removal of the TG. In fact I'd rate you higher then most of the professional authors of that genre that I do read.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Reif
You saw the ending coming from the beginning...DRAT  what gave it away? |
Kind of hard to say how I saw it coming. Basically knew that her Succubus creator was still around and as the story from the get go seemed to be about her dealing with her Succubus-hood as most of the femininity was dealt with between stories and how there was only one chapter (should call it book with how long you write) left after this one...stood to reason that she'd be a antagonist at some point. As it became obvious that the story was going to focus purely on Zoe and her Succubus nature I just knew that there was a coming 'I've got you my pretty' cliffhanger coming down the pike. Though once Las Vegas was mentioned I knew for certain that my suspicion was correct. Also don't be too concerned. Most of my friends and my parents refuse to watch TV mysteries and the like with me because 5 minutes in I can almost chart how the entire damn story is going to go. It's a curse.
You did throw in some pretty good red herrings quite nicely though. The whole female energy she was giving off making the weird things happening in her office/home/way to work almost made me think maybe her creator (you should come up with a unique term or identifying word for the Succubus that uses someone else to spawn another calls their offspring and their offspring calls their 'mother' in the coming book) was just playing with Zoe and wanted to screw up her relationship by making her extra hungry and making her lust higher then normal... I do though assume something slightly odd is going on at that sandwich shop though as that seems less like Zoe's giving of power and more like something getting drained. One of the 'mystics' mentioned taking advantage of Zoe leaking power to discretely drain energy from the women at the office maybe, knowing the power would quickly be recharged by a leaky succubus? (Oh just noticed the irony in Werner fixing the pipes when the most dangerous one was right under his nose...neat! Yeah I'm not too quick often on things like that.)
Anyway, what you should have done if you wanted to make the ending somewhat less apparent is mention Zoe's creator/sire/spawner/demon mommy much less often. The amount of times I saw her mentioned made the ending or at least her appearance more and more apparent. Instead you could have made an internal demon character that she fought against perhaps developing her subconscious a little more and mentioning that instead, as you did a few times when Zoe wasn't railing against 'what SHE would do'.
On the other hand you could have also thrown in a few more odd effects that in the end could have been explained by Zoe's leaking of energy, but which she maybe could have noticed and wondered what was going on before it was explained to her. Zoe could have assumed that there was another supernatural character or her momma around draining from her. If she was then a little on guard and paranoid as to the cause and then it was revealed that her evil mommy in fact had nothing to do with anything in the chapter after hinting throughout that her creator possibly did the ending would've been much more surprising.
In regards to your desire to characterization criticism: Well, Zoe's marriage with Scott at the beginning felt a little too perfect. You added lots of nice elements to make it much more difficult as the story went. Perhaps requesting Scott to change the dreams around a tad for his own benefit and pleasure or wanting to play more of their online game when Zoe didn't want to to create a minor argument would have made for a slightly more realistic character and marriage. Scott in general seems a tad too perfect. Needs a couple more character flaws. I think if you were to submit something similar to this to a major publisher they'd tell you their relationship/marriage needed some more arguments/incompatibilities. I think others would think it was a tad too fluffy and happy. I can see that easily being a major point of contention for you moving forward in regards to realism. Though myself I enjoyed their relationship quite a bit and made the struggles you later introduced all the more dramatic. Other then Scott though felt quite nicely polished. The minor characters were filled in superbly.
As to another place to share it...well none other then FM really comes to mind. Though I have a suspicion that people on the fukufics.com forum would like the story as it too has a very good succubi story written by that boards creator. Sadly that site is for fanfiction and they don't like direct links to adult material so...probably not that good an idea.
In closing I'd also like you to know that your cunningly concealed representation of WoW Rogues is quite offensive to a former Rogue player. I was a highly skilled invisible ninja of death. Damn Tanks just could never position the mob right! I blame them...So not my fault I died it's everyone elses!
In all honestly you try running around and trying to find a damn hit box to stand in on certain mobs that's two inches wide perfectly without dying when the mob has to constantly be repositioned because the tank likes to see the mob dance (tank liked to play farm runs gradually more and more inebriated).
And there is another 50+ minutes of my thoughts with a ton of edits I give you as 'payment' for your great stories :P.