Alex Villasante

Looking to Critique

I’m revising a YA Fantasy novel, the first of a trilogy. It’s told from the POV of a 16 year old boy. It’s a coming of age story that’s also very action packed. I run a writer’s group where I live, but it’s small and where I am in my process (what I hope to be final/3rd draft revisions) I need as many beta readers as possible!
Here’s a description from my query letter:

Finial Smith lives in a world where discarded book characters, called Quasi-Reals, come to be recycled or pressed into servitude. The Smiths are the last natural-born family living in a village of QRs. Their Farm is renowned for the fine quality of QR workers they produce. But being the only real boy for miles is getting on this sixteen year old’s nerves. Fin’s missing his dead mother, bored at school and tired of hearing his Da tell him about Nobless Oblige – the duty all natural-borns have to care and defend the dependent and weaker QR creatures.

When Fin meets Anne, a QR who breaks away from the herd, he finds a girl who is more alive and real than anyone he’s ever met. A revolution is brewing in BookEnd with QRs determined to fight for the same rights as natural-borns. Fin has to decide whether to stand with his family and let Anne be destroyed, or to endanger the world he knows to save her.

I have dabbled here & there

Yes, I’m serious about getting published

Deep critique. I am experienced with critiquing., Regular feedback

Enforced structure and deadlines

Monthly

Unpublished, been writing seriously for 2 years.

I did one of those ‘who do you write like?’ tests online and the result was – Gertrude Stein. I think there’s something wrong with my computer. Authors I like: Audrey Niffenager, Neil Gaiman, Christopher Moore, Garth Nix, Phillip Pullman, Angela Carter, JK Rowling and 1000 more.

Across the Universe; Abhorsen trilogy; Into the Wild (nonfiction) ; Wither; Paranormalcy; Divergent

http://magpiewrites.blogspot.com

I take my writing seriously. Myself? Not so much. I believe in kindness and truth and if I can do both in a critique, I’ve succeeded. My goal in writing is to carve out what I call a ‘sustainable writing life.’
To me that means working towards being published, but working: writing, connecting with other writers, attending conferences (or online conferences like writeoncon.com) and learning.

In my other life I’m an event planner. I work mostly for non-profits and mostly at home in my PJs.

magpiewrites