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Mary J Hunt's avatar

That was creepy. It sort of sucked me in. Kind of reminded me of Goosebumps, which I love, even today. I enjoyed this very much. Too back I missed it right before Halloween, but great writing and description. Great story.

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A. R. Crocker's avatar

I'm glad it had some good suckage :) Chapter 7 is coming up soon. the book gets less scary as it goes along....until the end. Thanks for reading!

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Nick Winney's avatar

Being used to generally shorter pieces on SS, and knowing there is something of the supernatural in this story, I found myself speed reading sometimes to get to the scary bits, then having to wind my neck back in and slow down.

I'm impressed with the attention to detail and time you have spent bringing the house to life - I have a vivid picture of this house, the sounds, the light, the smells and the history steeped into it. It does seem you have got something of a novel in mind (?) with this, given the pacing and care you are putting into developing the back story and character details of the old friends - I find that quite hard to do just with one character, let alone 3 - Unless they're charicatures, I find it hard to make them come across as different people. I'd also really struggle with three female friends so hats off to you there.

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A. R. Crocker's avatar

Thank you, Nick!

Yes, this is probably going to be my first book. I have three in the works, all in various stages. One I'm still developing the plot; the other I'm finishing up the outline, but need to do more research. This one managed to eek itself to the front of the pack.

I decided to serialize it because I felt the plot was strong enough with enough cliffhangers and details to hold up. This chapter is probably going to be the longest one as I had to introduce so many characters (Annie, Vera, the feral cats, the house, and, of course, whomever is in the upstairs window).

The next chapter will be shorter and covers a bit more of Vera's backstory of when she moved into the house as a young girl. We'll meet her father and the previous owners of the house.

I'm glad I'm doing this because it's a learning experience! After the next chapter, this story will be the longest story I've written thus far.

Thank you for reading!

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Nick Winney's avatar

Excellent - good on you!

"...this is probably going to be my first book. I have three in the works, all in various stages...."

this is horribly familiar territory, so I wish you all the inventive essence that a fellow writer can muster from the ether !

I am struggling to decide which of my three potential novels to "bring to the front" and im posting random chapters from them to see which gets the most reactions...

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A. R. Crocker's avatar

I'm glad it's not just me! I feel like each of these stories are my children, and love each of them in their own way. LOL

I posted the first chapter to Medium and it got boosted. That kinda made the decision for me!

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Nick Winney's avatar

what is Medium? is it another forum?

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A. R. Crocker's avatar

Medium.com Yup, it's another writing site. Similar to Substack, but not geared towards newsletters. I think Substack is also more community-oriented with the Notes feature. I do some editing work for a publication on Medium called The Kraken Lore.

https://thekrakenlore.com/

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