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The Fabulous Life: A Novelette (PREVIEW)

🕑 Added 2024-11-03 00:50:04 +0000 UTC

Comments

Intelexual Media

Thanks for catching that, I fixed it 🩷

poopee doodee

We love a multifaceted, artistic queen ❤️🥰

Apples J

You're welcome! It was a pleasure. I'm happy to read and give feedback, as group critique sessions were my favorite part of creative writing classes. I took several years of French in school to fulfill language credits. I settled on French because the language I actually wanted to learn was never available at my schools. I'm far from being conversational in French, but I can figure out a few things when reading it at least ;) I'm wondering about something else: on page 7 where is says "Bria was petrified, unable to move," should it say "Deon was petrified" instead?

Intelexual Media

Apples! I needed this long comment today, for the entirety of it my mind was off of the election. I smiled and cried. Thank you for reading! Do you speak French? Your interpretation of the ending is definitely on target! I also love that you pointed out the themes of food and desire (and also appreciate you reading Hunger!) This feedback is so valuable and it’ll be helpful for the other tales from Peachwood :) Thank you 🩷🩷

Apples J

*spoilers below* Thank you for sharing your fiction with us. It was a gift to read a rough draft of creative writing again (the last time I got to was in college). I always have respect for anyone who is bold enough to share their fiction because to me, it's intimate. It's cool to read about the worlds people imagine in their heads and see how their essence seeps into their storytelling. Yours definitely does. The voice of this story is undoubtedly, proudly, Lexual. I am most drawn to black speculative fiction like this, which merges supernatural happenings with realism. I like the details you used to carve the setting, time, and characters. Mentioning the flat-ironed hair smell stuck out to me and took me back to my childhood. Details like this feel like a nod to readers like me, because its undeniably black and femme without being overwrought. It's either you get it or you don't, and those who get it are in personal conversation with you. Also, I thought "prends-moi" being the password was a clever and subtle use of foreshadowing. I knew as soon as I read this that they were not about to leave that party lol. You chose to write without separating each line dialogue, just as you did in "Hunger." Then you introduced paragraph breaks when Deon, Lucretia, and Miles were speaking in the study. I assumed you were using formatting to give significance to this specific meeting, making it stand out from everything else in the story. But other lines (such as Deon's and Bria's paging and some of Deon's internal thoughts) were separated by paragraphs too, which contradicts my assumption that formatting made that specific scene special. I'm sure there's a reason why you chose to do your dialogue like this, but it eluded me. I found how Lucretia and Deon both shared a precarious relationship to food and self-image interesting, both starving themselves for different reasons. I like how you're weaving this in and I wonder how you'll further explore this thread, if you choose to. Food and desire seems to be a thread in "Hunger" too. I kept wishing for Deon to realize Bria was a horrible friend. I think if the things we rapidly learn about Deon's past on page 18 were sprinkled in or alluded to throughout, it would have helped me root the impressionability, vulnerability, and insecurity of Deon's character, leading her to being easily influenced by Bria time and time again, and why drugs was the hard line she would never cross. When you started referring to Lucretia as "the vampire" on page 13 and onward, I felt like you were pointing out something obvious that didn't need to be stated. I read it and I said to myself, "well yeah, I got that." This is admittedly nit-picky, and probably nobody else would care. I just felt like her being a vampire, or something like one at the very least, was understood because we just saw her sucking blood from a woman's neck with fangs. In "Hunger," it is unclear what or who the fishy old man is who killed Quincy with his gnarly teeth, and not definitively knowing made his dangerousness unrestrained by any preconceived notions. Labeling Lucretia's identity as a vampire right away dulled her mystique a little bit for me. However, the lore of Lucretia growing up enslaved and is now a vampire who took over the plantation (this is what I gathered when she talked about the "taste of the fields" she grew up in) is intriguing. There's so much to unpack there, so many directions you could take. I would like to share my interpretation of the ending, as doing so may be helpful to you. Since Lucretia said "time doesn't exist in here" on page 20, I theorized that time had slowed down in the mansion while years passed in the real world. Maybe the moment Deon stepped outside, it was winter some several decades later, and her body rapidly caught up to the affects of time passing, took on the age it should have been in the real world, and started deteriorating? This might be stretch. Maybe I'm wrong and I missed something, but that's what how I reconciled the cliffhanger. I have some more thoughts, but I'll stop here in case you're not interested in all that. This is already long, and I apologize-- I just like giving detailed feedback. All in all, this story took chances and was effortful, and I hope to read more about Peachwood. Between "Hunger" and "The Fabulous Life," it looks there are some other-worldy creatures preying on the humans there, and I'm curious as to why :) Thanks again!

Intelexual Media

I love this feedback so much! Its whatever you think it is ;) thank you for reading!

Chelsea Hicks

When I finished this, I said "mmm-MM!!" Love the descriptive imagery, the mystery was seductive, loved the subtle allusions to the character's background. I will say the lack of of paragraph breaks during dialogue in the first half was a little adjustment but not impossible to understand— but I did wonder if it was an intentional writing choice to denote when things deviated from the regular minutia of Deon's life to beyond the pale? Either way, I rolled with it. Would love to know more about the characters and the world you've crafted