FIRST PAGE: Unpubbed Erotic Romance
First Pageliterary critique17 Comments
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I was eight years old the first time I rode an elephant.
I was visiting my grandparents and the local zoo’s specimen had given birth to a dwarf, so everyone in the household wanted to witness the freak. They bustled up the whole lot of us, waved down some auto rickshaws and off we went, zooming towards the unimaginable feat of nature.
The dwarf was scared. And a complete bore, unless you’re into those kinds of things, babies and shit.
The mom was much more interesting and already back earning her share, offering rides to any souls brave enough to climb atop her back. My cousins needed no invitation and before anyone knew what was happening, grandparents included, they scampered up the poor beast’s back and were raring to go.
I stood off to the side and watched, shy and somewhat quiet, still a bit ill at ease in my new environs. It was not every day I was shipped half way across the world on a bird in the sky, summarily deposited with two elderly souls I barely knew and certainly did not trust.
But the elephant was a good move.
I was warming up to the two brown people smiling at me while they stole nervous glances at the brood atop the grey beast. My grandmother clucked warmly in my direction, offering some words of encouragement as the Mahout waved me over.
He was awfully scrawny, rather filthy, and I shot him a foul look, knowing there was no fucking way he was controlling anything if that grey monster decided to stop taking anyone’s shit. But I was eight and I was curious and it was an elephant for fuck’s sake. So I stopped putzing around on the outskirts of the action and leaned in–contemplative somewhat curious.
Which was enough for Mr. Mahout. Faster than I would have ever assumed he could move, he had me by the nape of the neck, hoisting me onto the dwarf’s mama.
Not with my cousins on her back but right behind her ears, on what seemed to be her neck, my hands resting on her head.
I remember being amazed by how similar she was to the old man who swam laps at the YMCA every Monday, always bending over to lotion his legs, providing me the perfect view of his ass: hairy and wrinkled and grey.
Settling in behind me, the Mahout gave his signal but old girl wasn’t going anywhere. She bobbed her head side to side and he yelled something in whatever language he was speaking, probably Tamil, but it was hard to tell when you didn’t speak a bit of anything from the motherland.
At least not at the time.
He yelled again and gave her some swats with his whip, but she didn’t give a shit. Instead, she hoisted her trunk into the air, pushed it about like a show off, then promptly raised it to her head and proceeded to sniff my hands.
I froze, for a second worried I might piss my pants.
I did not want to piss my pants, sitting there, high in the air, because really, I did not want to soil her neck. So I let her do whatever it was she needed to do, praying all the while her trunk wasn’t full of tiny teeth that could suddenly inhale my hands and then my arms and then my head to chew me up and feed to the dwarf.
I did not fly halfway across the fucking globe to wind up dwarf fodder.
So I shut up and homegirl sniffed me up and eventually she started walking, doing a slow rotation of the park, giving us kids the ride of our lives.
I was eight and it was magical.
I am now thirty-seven and let me tell you, ain’t a bit of fucking magic left in this world.
My name is Dutch Mathew
I kill for The Gate and I am a Keeper.
Hi Author and thanks for sharing.
I’m equal parts intrigued and repelled. Also contemplative, somewhat curious, vaguely lost…but I believe I’d read on a page or two further.
While I don’t always want or need to know everything about the MC right up front, for me there might be just a few too many mysteries surrounding him/her. Dutch is (to me) gender neutral. At first I thought your MC was a girl, but the language threw me. It’s rough, which could be masculine, or she could be a tom-boy. There are no clues.
I’m lost in time and place. I get a 1920’s vibe from language (automobile rickshaws), but a mid-century feel in other places (bird in the sky). Mahout tells me India; Tamil makes me think of Sri Lanka. Or Ceylon…depending on the year.
If intentional, because your MC is an eight-year-old, basically lost in the midst of his/her own family in a foreign country (although of the same heritage), then you have succeeded in getting me to feel ungrounded, 10 feet off the air on the back of a strange beast, wondering how the hell I’m going to get down. And who the hell I am.
I think that’s a good thing.
And it just occurred to me that this is listed as an erotic romance…or possibly a PNR. Possibly this is even more intriguing…or more confusing. I think I’d still read on. :)
‘I’m lost in time and place. I get a 1920’s vibe from language (automobile rickshaws)’
“Auto rickshaw” is a mode of transportation still very much used in many countries. My family was based in India for years, and getting an auto somewhere is the standard form of transportation.
Unfortunately, or maybe purposefully, you succeeded in disgusting me to the point that I would rather chew nails than read on. I also do not like reading about 8 year old children within a book I should consider being erotica. No way.
@Sonya Heaney: That’s fascinating and interesting. And for you, it makes sense. But for me, I guess because there’s no time context for the word, my mind conjures up a very specific image in time, and it’s not a modern image. I like the image, but I can’t say that it’s accurate.
Hi author, thanks for sharing.
Some of the language feels like you may be trying too hard. If you’re going for the impressions of a little kid, the vocabulary seems a bit advanced. If you’re going for someone looking back at the past, things like “bird in the sky” seem a bit forced.
I’m also having some issues with the elephant scene. I went on the zoo elephant ride as a kid and unless this is a pretty small elephant, I’m having trouble visualizing someone being able to just place a kid on their neck that easily. They also don’t really have handholds, so I’m not sure how you would scamper up one. Also, the description of the mother elephant as both a “poor beast” and “offering rides to any souls brave enough to climb atop her back” seem a bit at odds with each other.
I would probably keep reading.
“That’s fascinating and interesting. And for you, it makes sense. But for me, I guess because there’s no time context for the word, my mind conjures up a very specific image in time, and it’s not a modern image. I like the image, but I can’t say that it’s accurate.”
Oh, absolutely. It’s very much a country-to-country thing, so I guess it depends on your audience. I’m (obviously!) not from that part of the world, so I might be confused if I’d never lived there.
Just realised: I should add that a rickshaw is different to an auto rickshaw. This isn’t some man running, pulling people in a carriage. An “auto” is a motorised vehicle.
There were a few nice moments in this, but my overall impression of Dutch is that he’s a jerk. He has a lot of negative comments tossed off as asides: he doesn’t trust his “brown” grandparents (what color does Dutch view himself as), the newborn elephant is boring, the mahout filthy, and the guy at the YMCA has a gray, hairy butt.
I really don’t want to spend time with him.
While there is alot of intriguing writing here, I couldn’t go further. The way the dwarf is spoken of as a freak and the Elephant as a beast and the way the animals are portrayed in general- it literally upset me. The way the elephants were spoken of made me wonder what year this was placed in. Is this a present day story, or decades old? Also, I can’t reconcile in my mind that these are the memories of an eight year old child- who is cussing constantly and referring to someone’s hairy and wrinkled grey ass? That was also upsetting for me the whole way through (and believe me, I’m NOT a prude about characters cussing, the heroes I write are Marines, ex cons, Motorcycle Club members – lots of cussing, but it fits their character and situation). And the whole time I’m reading this scene the setting is like a mystery for me that’s never solved, I can’t get a handle on where and when this takes place and if the MC is a man or woman. I get to the end and it finally says:
My name is Dutch Mathew
I kill for The Gate and I am a Keeper.
Normally, I would love this type of scene ending, but as was mentioned above, Dutch still isn’t a first name that let’s me know if the MC is male or female. So I’m still left unconnected to the MC and instead of being ready to move on with the story, sadly, I’m floundering and annoyed.
Thank you for sharing your wip. Good luck with your revisions. :)
(Is anyone else reminded of Bejanum Sriduangkaew? You know, the author behind Requires Hate? I’ve read a little of her fiction, and I swear, this has the exact same voice. It’s uncanny. Maybe I’m just sleep deprived and seeing things.)
My dad is from India, his whole family speaks Tamil as their first language, and the part of India that we visit very much still has autos. I loved riding in autos as a child!
The language here is off putting to me. I get that it is an older person looking back on a childhood memory, but the cussing seems like it’s coming from the 8-yo POV which doesn’t quite mesh with me.
Also as someone who has ridden a mama elephant (in India no less) it doesn’t quite fit with my own experience? We had to climb onto a tall platform, and from there climb from the platform to the elephant. I do like the description of it being magical, I remember it that way.
Again, this is my personal experience from like 10 years ago in an elephant park in India, so it may not be accurate to everywhere and I’m sorry if it’s not. But. I also remember all the workers being very caring and respectful to the elephant, so the sequence with the whip threw me off.
Also I am not at all getting erotic romance from this page. I don’t necessarily need the sex to be right on the first page, but this doesn’t have that tone at all.
As of right now I don’t want to read on, but mostly because I have no clue what the plot is. If I thought the plot was interesting (from the blurb or whatever) I might read on but with reservations.
I enjoyed the setting and narrator’s sense of being lost. I did not enjoy the cussing 8 yo and the hairy ass (which made me gasp, how is that 8 yo not traumatized?).
I also felt there are too many single sentence paragraphs here. They’re fine when we need to make a point or reveal a twist but there’s nothing special about “At least not at the time” or “But the elephant was a good move” that cannot be fit into other paras. One-line paras just give off a juvenile vibe to me, whereas the rest of your writing does not give off that vibe.
I would definitely read on if the above-mentioned issues weren’t there.
Personally I was put off at the dwarf being referred to as “the freak”. I don’t know much about elephants, but how would you even know if the baby was a dwarf?
I was perplexed as to how an 8 year old child was placed on an elephant.
My impression of the elephant that I touched was how hairy it was, there’s nothing here that suggests that.
Not sure if this is paranormal or not, but the trouble with paranormal is it either it works or it doesn’t. And that might be reader specific. Twilight apparent works for millions of middle-aged women and a fair number of fanboyz; doesn’t work for me. But it probably needs more than a few paragraphs to suss out.
Also, I’m ok with erotic people have been children and having their own kid memories that play into who they are, because, yo, that’s sorta inevitable. We were all kids once. OTOH, if eroticism involves children directly, then yeah, count me out too, without question.
Honestly, this is too brief for me to judge much. I’m not getting a clear mental image of the scene portrayed (I’ve worked with and ridden elephants in and out of zoos which really doesn’t help). The main character seems quite unpleasant and sneering. I wouldn’t read much farther in the book if he or she keeps seeming to sneer at “brown people,” scrawny, gray, etc. That’s not a judgment on the writing skill — it’s just my personal taste where if I cannot like the main character I usually stop reading.
Not a criticism because true of beginning of most books — but, if hadn’t been labeled “Erotic Romance” I would never have guessed that was the book’s genre. The end note about killing for the Gate and being a Keeper implies a paranormal or occult element. But a “dwarf elephant” being a prehistoric/Pleistocene creature implies time travel like possibly Science Fiction elements–unless by “dwarf” you meant what in U.S. would be called a “runt” instead of an offshoot of mammoth or maybe as another name for the Asian “pygmy elephant.”
Where will this be published? If for U.S. English audience there are some odd phrasings and punctuation making it hard to picture the scene or connect to the character. I think it might be improved if the elephant riding was more realistic; possibly introduce the M.C. in more detail at beginning instead of a brief identifier at the end–making it clearer it is a flashback. I may be stuck too much on the elephant and odder phrasing parts — but those jarred me out of the story where the scene just wasn’t being pictured mentally.
I’m further confused by the comments about the auto rickshaw where I have no idea what those are. I just cannot picture what’s meant after initially picturing an Asian elephant in a country which had human-pulled rickshaws. Are they robot vehicles? taxicabs? rental cars anyone can use (guessing not because if you can flag them down there must be a human or robot involved).
Okay, my cousin cleared up auto rickshaw for me.. They are the three-wheeled taxis we were used to seeing in India.