First 4 Chapters CP Swap - Adult Contemporary Fantasy Novel

[Kayla Koontz]

Hi all,

Back with another request for a critique swap. I'm working on the second draft(ish) of my adult contemporary fantasy novel. I've been driving myself crazy unsure if I'm on the right track or if its missing some incredibly important ingredient. I would love a more experienced writer to give it a read.

I'm happy to provide the query letter if you need to get a taste of where the book is going but I'm hoping that a sample will do for now, as I'm interested in how someone coming in blind would feel about the first few chapters.

OTHER WAYS OF KEEPING TIME, completed at 80,000 words, is a contemporary fantasy that combines the small-town haunted house and themes of community of Alix Harrow’s STARLING HOUSE with the romantic time-gap relationship of THE MINISTRY OF TIME.

First 300 words: 

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Due to circumstances that were entirely of my own making, I woke on the third of May to find the population of Magalia---my white picket fence California dream town---to be exactly one. Maybe one and a half if you counted ghosts, but I didn’t count ghosts. Nor did I believe in them.

It used to be that I could wake up, trudge two blocks downhill to the café, order an iced soy latte (yes, I still drank soy milk), stare at the bulletin board until my coffee came out to avoid unnecessary eye contact with the remote workers screaming into their headphones about synergy, and sip on a soggy paper straw until my caffeine-assisted-anxiety spiked enough that I would chew down a protein bar the consistency of soft tar, but then the town burned down. So now I made drip at home.

 

I always sat on my deck when I drank my morning coffee, usually, while imagining the former glory of my now-extinct soy latte. Even weeks after the coffee shop had been reduced to ashes and embers, I had yet to master the method of brewing a simple cup. I always ground the beans too fine so that it came out muddy or used water not quite hot enough so that the result was weak and yellow. As I drank my coffee I made sure to stare off into the horizon---a new hobby of mine, disassociation.

 
Not everything in Magalia had been reduced entirely to abstraction. There was my home and the once next to it that survived the flames. And, here and there I could make out the framing of a garage, or what had used to be one. (I’d had to get used to thinking in ‘used to be’s’ instead of ‘are’s’ and ‘am’s’.) There, I’d think, was a used-to-be tree. Here, a used-to-be car stripped to its blacken carcass. The pavement was still like pavement. Pavement you could rely on.

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Let me know if you're interested and we can swap samples to see if its a good fit.

Thank you all!

Kayla