Hi! Welcome to the forum!
nickijah said:
Hi all, I currently have a series of horror short stories on Amazon’s Kindle store (where else?)
Don't ask rhetorical questions with hundreds of legitimate answers; smart-alecks like me answer and it's like someone pops your balloon.
Where else indeed:
Barnes and Noble
that second-hand bookstore in the Bowl-o-rama plaza I like
Baidu
etc.
Why no
hyperlink?
Anyway I read the first few pages. You tend to put things in a perfect tense when they shouldn't be, I think, but whatever. That's kinda the least of your problems.
I kinda like the "memory eaters" thing, like a baku.
But this had, like, zero atmosphere. It's like they're all in space, standing around on the surface of the moon without any air, but less interesting, because they're not actually in space.
Nah, you just infodump in awkward ways, and it was kinda boring.
paragraph two said:
His vampire friends would make jokes about eating rats or squirrels but everyone knows there is no sustenance in the memories of something so base, so far down the food chain.
I had layers of reactions, like a matroysha doll, every time I picked one up and dealt with it there was another one inside, staring up at me with beady babushka eyes.
1) Oh course, everybody knows that! Well, except me, the reader, since you're trying to do something different with vampires. Actually that's probably true of all the readers, so I guess "everyone" would be just you, the author.
2) It's called the "food web" now, because the "food chain" thing was too linear, it was a bad metaphor.
3) Actually, since rats and squirrels, as animals, are on at least the second or third tropic level, they're closer to the top than the base. Well, if you eat them, they're only one step away by definition, so no matter what they can't be "far" in any direction. And since they're both rodents they're really, really close to humans from a biological standpoint.
4) Why would rats and squirrels have memories like Diet Coke? I'd think they'd be really intense.
4) If this is a spooky story, shouldn't it be something like, "eating animal memories turned you into a bestial monster, like a ghoul or something", rather than it being Diet Coke?
5) ...Vampires have friends?
Then "the priest" showed up. I couldn't tell whether he was supposed to be Father Anderson or Torquemada, but turning to the audience and telling us about him in vague bullet points was probably the blandest possible way to put "Church vs. Vampires" in your backstory. I mean, even if you just referenced some terrifying "The Priest" without explaining why he was scary (of course this would require that the vampire John be scared of him, which didn't seem to be the case), then that would be spooky in my imagination.
next page said:
He saw someone he thought he could bargain with. It was a curious instinct that vampires had evolved which allowed them to see who might have something inside they no longer wanted, and he was sure this person had such a something.
He crossed the street and into a bar which he knew was for men only. He normally liked to feed off women, the humans found some kind of intimacy in the feeding that he found strange, but if he was going to be intimate with someone then he would prefer it to be a woman. He was acutely aware though that beggars can't be choosers so tonight a man would suffice.
Again with the little dolls!
1) Wait, did he see someone and then ignore them to go into this bar? Or do vampires have, like, x-ray vision that he could see INTO the bar for this guy? Nah, I think it's just sloppy writing.
2) Why is it a curious instinct? Does it tingle like spider-sense, or is it like kirellian photography where you see aura waves emanating from people?
3) ...Vampires evolve? How?
4) A "bar for men only." I couldn't tell whether this was a bar for gays or chauvinists. I guess it could be both, actually.
5) You always put "feed" in the passive tense. "Tonight he would be fed", "he knew he could feed off them," that sorta thing. It makes it sound like vampires crouch down and lick the footprints left behind by their victims, only not as freaky. It's just bland.
6) If the humans assign an intimacy to the feeding that he finds strange, then why does he euphemistically describe it as "be intimate with someone" in the next clause? I mean not even the next sentence, it's even sooner than that. This is straight-up contradicting yourself.
In conclusion, I can't really recommend this. It could be interesting, but it isn't.
