FIRST PAGE SATURDAY: Paranormal
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Welcome to first page Saturday. This is an opportunity for authors to submit unpublished works for critique. You are welcome to comment anonymously. The first page form is here if you would like to submit your own piece.
Chapter One
Lost At Sea
1
“What is that smell?” Ares God of War sneered, dark eyes glancing toward one of his women with a cold stare. Her name was Katrina but Ares never seemed to remember, even though she had been with him the last fifteen years and shared his bed each night along with whatever woman (or women) of his that he desired at the time. Ares never seemed to remember anyone’s name unless it was an Olympian or someone who may have had the misfortune of getting close to him. “Answer.”
Risking incurring his ire, she spoke cautiously. “My Lord, that is the third time you have asked me that.” She smiled a little bit for him before she continued. “I smell nothing but the salt air from the sea and the fire burning in the hearth.” Katrina met Lord Ares one night in Athens; she was twenty at the time and in the middle of a very heated bar fight with two men who tried to walk out on their tab. She had jumped over the bar with a full bottle of Ouzo in her hand and gone after them, her long legs bare and tan out in front of her and her long dark hair flying behind her as she bolted over the wood bar. Now at thirty-five and Mortal, her days of bar fights were over and her youth swiftly fading away. A decade and a half in the service of the God of War takes a heavy toll on a woman.
Ares’ upper lip curled into a snarl as he let out an audible growl and then sat up and leaned forward on his throne. Long before the Olympians bestowed the title The God of War upon Ares, he lorded over All Things Wild and Free, and still did. The wilderness and all of its creatures was his domain. As such he possessed the keen senses of his animal totem, the wolf—a shape into which he could shift into at will—and the odor was much more acute to him than it was to the Mortals around him. It smelled…sweet…something oddly rotting with a tinge of honeysuckle underlying the acrid scent of the coming decay. Something on the island was dying; something he could not identify. That was most unsettling, as Ares knew every inch of his island, every animal, every rock, every stone, and every tree right down to its moss and lichen. The scent was altogether unfamiliar and it disturbed him. “I’m going for a walk. You have my dinner on that table when I return, woman.” Ares ordered as he rose from the throne to stand at his full height of seven feet, his long wavy raven hair flowing around his broad shoulders, the razor sharp lines of the whiskers on his face bending upward as he gave an evil grin with those perfectly white teeth.
“Yes, my Lord.”
Sauntering through the hallowed halls of his empty cave from the throne room to the entrance, where four torches burned as the night began to descend, he passed the guards standing outside and paid them no mind.
Nicco had been standing out in here in the cool evening chatting with Daniel and David Jackson, twin brothers also in the service of Ares when the Master sauntered out of the cave with purpose in his long stride. “Would you like one of us to accompany you, my Lord?” Nicco, Ares’ Captain of the Guard, a tall strapping young man with dark skin and piercing blue eyes asked warily, not liking the glare in his Lord’s eyes.
The scent caught in his nostrils, making them flare. Swiftly he spun on his leather boot-heels. “Do you smell that?”
Hi author, thanks for sharing.
IDK, nothing here really grabs me. I think my main problem is, I have no idea why Katrina is there.
Nothing about your setup of Ares leaves me with the impression the guy is going to have the same steady bed partner for 15 years. So, why would he keep her there that long?
Also, Ares really comes off as a bit absent minded. I can understand being to arrogant to bother remembering mortals names, but not remembering you already asked about an odd smell seems a bit strange. Throw in that it seems he already knows what the smell is, and is just confused by not knowing the exact cause makes the repeated question a bit odd. (And, I can’t be the only reader who’s mind is immediately going to jump to “Who farted?” with that opening line.)
I guess I just want to know more about Katrina than I do Ares, but not enough to keep reading.
Katrina is the most interesting character so far. Ares comes off as extemely absentminded and as a fickle as the greek gods were made out to be I too find it odd that he would share the same bed with the same female mortal for an extended period of time to be.
I find the names of the secondary characters mentioned at the end to be an odd choice. It reminds me of Nico Di Angelo and Percy Jackson of the Percy Jackson series, as well as Stargate with the Daniel Jackson character.
The hook is interesting but as Area isnt particularly likeable I wouldn’t keep reading.
With Lostshadows there, I skimmed that page and wasn’t much interested. I’m non-religious, so to interest me in any type of “god” you’d have to keep from turning him into a joke and would need to stay with the original, and well-researched, Greek mythology. Here, I get the feel of Sunday school fantasies.
Ares is a jerk. Why Katrina, who looks like she once had some guts, puts up with him is a mystery to me. It’s not a mystery I’m all that interested in exploring.
I don’t like jerks.
Hi Author, and thanks for sharing.
This shows up on Goodreads, copyright 2010 by Lisa Beth Darling-Gorman. I discovered that after writing my thoughts, which I’ll leave here anyway.
Who’s point of view is this written from? It starts out as Katrina, jumps to Ares, then to Nicco. I believe you’re going for third person omniscient? But it doesn’t appear to have a narrator, so it reads as head hopping third person.
There are punctuation issues, mostly missing commas. There also seems to be something odd about your sentence structure. I’m terrible at identifying the exact term for what I’m reading, so maybe someone else can help both of us.
There’s nothing here that grabs me. It’s mostly a large info dump, oddly worded, with an MC who’s irritating, forgetful, and not very likable. I don’t think I’d read on.
The POV is bugging me. It’s too distant, I don’t feel close to the main character. This reads omniscient or a very distant, removed third. I need it to be a close third. I think this could really work if we were in Ares head, that would be interesting going through the story with him, not an outsider looking in. Also, it might work if instead of you saying that he can’t remember her name, you show him in dialogue not remembering her name. There’s also alot of dense paragraphs that could be segmented into shorter paragraphs to free up more white space on your page and to make bits of dialogue, etc more interesting.
Ares God of War sneered, dark eyes glancing toward one of his women with a cold stare.
How does he know that his own stare is cold, or that he’s sneering?
Ares ordered as he rose from the throne to stand at his full height of seven feet, his long wavy raven hair flowing around his broad shoulders, the razor sharp lines of the whiskers on his face bending upward as he gave an evil grin with those perfectly white teeth.
Would he really be thinking here of how he is seven feet tall with long, wavy raven hair and how his teeth are perfect?
Nicco, Ares’ Captain of the Guard, a tall strapping young man with dark skin and piercing blue eyes asked warily, not liking the glare in his Lord’s eyes.
Now are we in Nicco’s POV? Head hopping? How would Ares know that Nicco doesn’t like the glare in his Lord’s eyes?
You see what I mean? I feel this needs a POV overhaul, I wouldn’t continue reading because I’d know there’d be more of the same.
And I’m assuming this is a PNR romance…No PNR are sold with the POV like this. They are all third deep pov, or first person. Just letting you know to help you with genre conventions.
Thank you for submitting! Good luck with your revisions (We ALL have to do them). :)
@Carol McKenzie:
Wow. If this is planned plagiarism in the making, it’s a novel approach to say the least (pun intended). This is part of a long series of books by the look of it, the last published in 2014. It’s unlikely the author would post her work here so I’m left wondering who did and why.
This is weird…
@Jane Davitt: I found it odd that it was published so long ago. I believe there was an instance where a more recently published piece showed up on First Page, and the author explained they’d submitted it here, forgot about it, and then self-pubbed the work.
This is strange though.
maybe testing the waters to see if anyone caught it ?????
It’s not plagiarized but I didn’t realize it had been published before either.
@sao: there go 90% of all romance novels ever written .
@Anon:
Unfortunately.
Though thankfully easy to detect, and authors wonder why they get low ratings.
@Carol McKenzie:
Very curious. Someone having a fun afternoon?
I stumbled on the fact that the heroine was 35 and her youth was swiftly fading away. Really, at 35? I’m almost a decade past that and I’m just starting to get nervous, looking in the mirror. Mid-thirties is young, folks.
Hey I deleted the last comment from the auntie offering the book. First pages aren’t meant for publicity but critique.
The combination of Greek Gods, sexy women, and an unique writing style has me intrigued! I love when a writer breaks the writing rules and makes a work uniquely their own!
Oh lord, head-hopping would stop me the minute it switched as it did three times in that little snippit. No excuse for that. I LOVE stories about Greek Gods but I’m not willing to sacrifice quality and accept bad craft (which is not breaking rules but by being lazy about learning craft) to read a story about them. And I don’t like any of the characters so far.
Head hopping isn’t really bad craft — it’s a perfectly acceptable technique, especially if it’s done well. It used to be used more frequently in romance but it fell out of favor. It’s more of a taste issue than a craft issue (although, certainly, it helps to know that much of the romance audience seems not to prefer it. Not that THAT means much, though — le Nora uses the technique all the time, and it hasn’t hurt her much. So there are always exceptions.)