Writing Blog Number 2 (continued)

20260128 Novel #38

Novel #38

Quick interlude – one of my favourite things I have written came in on the timeline here – a 20k word novella about a therianthrope called Walker’s Flat. It is not the best written, but the characters and their changing relationships are some of the best I’ve created, and not one is based on a real person.

Okay, next novel. Hunter is a 68k word novel that has a really muddled premise, and yet some interesting characters. The story is set ten years after the deaths of a couple. A teenaged girl who they had cared for has not got over their death, and some of the things they did together had taken on the idea of a dream. Then a man appears. He disappears as well. Literally. It takes the girl a little, but she learns this man is the brother of the dead woman, and he fights lizard-men. He can blink back and forth between worlds, which is something the girl used to be able to do.
         The man is the Hunter and uses his ability to blink to combat the lizard men in an alternate world. Then the lizard-men start appearing in Adelaide, attacking people at random, appearing and disappearing. The girl and the brother realise it is up to them to fight this scourge. And we have a lot of fights.
         The writing is okay, with lots of jumps and head hops, and I think the characters are fine, though the girl changes her mind way too quickly for my liking to helping out. I used what a friend of mine went through as a basis for the main female character, but reading it, it feels almost like fat-shaming.
         Not a great tale… but a tale.

Excerpt
Chapter 5
-6-
The stone building she was in was empty, but it shook with a slight tremor. She clutched her head as the pain bored into her skull. She wanted to look outside, but she felt paralysed, stuck to the spot, her legs refusing to move.
         The pain in her brain intensified, and this time she was sure she could hear a distant sound, an ululation, a deep-throated growl, a cry of…
         Triumph.
         Everything felt very, very wrong suddenly, as though this daydream world had changed, and yet the change was only just perceptible.
         The noise came again and she dropped to her knees, her temples pounding with the rhythm of a thousand drums. She closed her eyes and rubbed her head and…

-7-
“Are you okay, dear?”
         Chantelle looked up and blinked at the small crowd that had gathered around her. The fluorescent lights and crowded interior didn’t sit with her perception of where she was; her body trembled, as the pain in her temples flared once more, even though she could no longer hear that pulsating cry.
         The elderly woman who had spoken them reached down to take her by the elbow and help her up off her knees. Slowly Chantelle’s head cleared and the bookshop came back into focus.
         ”Are you okay?” the woman asked again, a little more urgently this time.
         ”Y-yeah, I guess,” Chantelle managed.

So, this is a section where the girl goes between worlds. This is a story that now just occupies space on my hard-drive. It will never be submitted anywhere.