"My Blood Runs Cold" -- Extended Preview

So I suppose it's
a fiction that this now appears on the post where you admitted you were begging and edited you blog accordingly.......

Oh,and I suppose you now deny you said this....

"What I mean is, though, that I need your financial support."

?

I don't see that on any of the posts in this thread. Seriously, now, let's hear your thoughts on the story. This nonsense about paragraphs-something-something-money-something-edited was jolly for a minute, but it really isn't the topic of this thread.

Oh dear God.

I knew the song, Lanz. Everybody knows the song. I just didn't know who the artist was.

So you deny that the quotes in post number 3 are yours?

Because if you do I am happy to report you for deliberate trolling in the Workshop.

I'm not trolling. I'm trying to get constructive criticism about a novel I'm working on. If anybody is trolling in here, it's you with this bizarre and completely off-topic interrogation. Seriously, fella, knock it off already.

So you accept no criticism for begging for money in order to finish your novel in the link you provided? Is this thread not about your novel?

I've done no such thing, and this thread is about the project itself, not about how I may or may not choose to fund it to completion. Now, do you have any constructive criticism to offer about the novel so far, or would you perhaps prefer to enjoy all of the other threads the board has to offer aside from this one?

Do you deny that the original link in this thread pointed towards a request for donations via PayPal and do you deny that you edited your page after by comments that it showed bad form?

Do you deny that you are lying in this thread?

Thanks, Kuranes, that's the kind of stuff I was looking for. It's definitely narrated in Rock's voice, first-person style, like some of the old hardboiled detective novels from the '40s and '50s. The 1870s cowpoke speaking voice is a nod to the world Rock lives in, which is actually set 80 years from now after a second Civil War results in massive decay of our current technological infrastructure. So you end up with horses, and horse-drawn carriages, sharing the road with electric cars from the more affluent parts of town. For the most part, imagine that metropolitan centers have re-ascended to about a 1940s level, while the areas outside those zones are at about an 1880s level.

Honestly, if you're going to persist in trying to derail this thread, I'm just going to ignore you.

How utterly gutless.

But since you didn't answer my question, I'll ask again.....

Also, do you deny that you abused personal information today?

Do you deny that I you used said information in an attempt to exact revenge for the fact that I didn't compliment your writing in this thread?

Still trying to derail the thread, huh? Okay, then, into Ignore-land you go.

You might not realize this, but admins can peal back the layer of edits, thus revealing that you have lied about the donation request and accompanying change of heart. This is trolling in the workshop, which is not allowed.

I didn't bring that subject up, and I don't see how refusing to discuss it can be construed as trolling. I was trying to discourage Chup's aggressively persistent attempts at threadjacking in the Workshop. I'd really appreciate it if this thread could be brought back on topic.

So who put the donation request in the above link and who previously begged for money on here before getting slapped down?

As for trolling, you have no grounds to claim innocent on that today....

I'm really enjoying the 1880s-meets-1940s-meets-2040s fusion of technological and social standards that I'm working with in this series so far.

Reviews have come in from published writers, and they are very positive.

Kuranes, thank you for your thoughts. I'd like to strike a balance between making the narration very identifiably coming from Rock Dylan, and in his voice, and other than that making the voice distinct. Thanks for lending some insight into your thoughts on that.

I'd definitely recommend adding that info to the overview of your story. I'd assumed it was a modern day story about an officer from the Sheriff's Office in Southern California.

Well, it gets explained in pieces, rather than a big expositional dump anywhere. I did originally have such a thing in there, but on the advice of a buddy of mine, I took that out and decided to drop the exposition in bits and hints.

My next big challenge is writing the prequel novella where Savvy figures much more prominently. The reason that's a challenge is that Savvy -- real name Nundahar Saviprakash -- is Punjabi. So I need to make his speaking style reflect that, but in a way that's not going to seem stereotypical or offensive. That's going to be a really thin line, making the speaking style identifiably Indian/Pakistani without making it a caricature.

Fortunately, we have a pretty sizable Punjabi population here in Tempe, and I spend a lot of time with them -- but the way they speak, other than the accent, is completely indistinguishable from native-born speakers, to my ear. There's no grammatical idiosyncrasy at all. Which means I'll have to inject one or two idiosyncrasies they don't actually display. That's the challenge, to make the speak "sound" Indian without making the character sound like Apu from the Simpsons.

Well, you might want to revise the name, because "Saviprakash" is a given name and surname squashed together. It's like calling your character Robert Johncastle.

These Asians you spend time with a lot, are they aware you are basing characters in your book on them, and that you are doing this at the same time you are busy using the racist term "Pakis" on Wordforge? You might want to think about that if they ever stumble across your posts here.

I appreciate your concern on that score, but this novel is set 80 years hence. The name could be perfectly valid. Us, 80 years prior, have no way to say yea or nay to it.

They are. They've also read the chapter where Savvy is featured, and they feel content with the depiction. The fictional Savvy's fictional wife, Priya, is actually very closely based on a real woman, whose name actually is Priya, who is the wife of the owner of The Dhaba, a Punjab restaurant across the street from where I live. She read the chapter with Savvy in it and saw much of her husband in the character. She's a lovely woman, very maternal, and is a big fan of the work. Simply put, Mama Priya's love and appreciation is worth a thousand times as much as anybody else's snide snottery.

Ummm... dude, considering how you're a bit sensitive on people finding out details of your private life. You may want to edit out the info about the restaurant's name in the post. Just saying.

There are about a million restaurants with that name in the U.S., afaik. I'm not worried about it.

Yeah but.... just trust me on this one. Don't pull a Dayton dude.

There may be a million of them in the US, but if this one is across the street from where you live like you say, it's pretty easy to figure out where your apartment is.

Nah, nothing like that. "Dhaba" is a Punjabi word for a highway-rest-stop diner in India. It's basically an Indian word for "restaurant." Millions of 'em. (Well, okay, "millions" is an exaggeration, but still.)