Apathy's Hero, Critique Partner Blogfest

The Critique Partner Blogfest entry.

Genre: Contemporary Fantasy. The Adamant

Status: Completed. Polished. In the paranoid, neurotic stage of 'is this good enough'.

Feedback: I am looking for understandable prose, flow, and everything in between. Line editing would tickle me fine. Looking for help on my query, synop, and first chapter and willing to do the same.

Pitch: A sentient relic made from the horn of a unicorn believes Shamira Kelley is its willing acolyte but possession doesn't sit well and she fights the relic and those who would use it against mankind

First Two Pages:

His lazy strides across the mall caught my attention. Like he had time to kill and everyone else could wait at his leisure. Most galling was how people moved out of his way. No glares. No commotion.

He appeared to be about my age early twenties with black hair that curled just below the collar of his white shirt, height under six feet. With the body of a dancer, slender waist, and broad shoulders, his physique should have been drawing stares.  But that wasn’t what piqued my interest. What set me off was his arrogance. Not his looks. Totally secondary. I barely noticed. Really.

Glances from the people in the crowded mall slid off, went around him like light bending around the source.

“Will you look at that,” I said to Olive, my former guardian.

She turned away from matching towels, threw me a hard look, and shot a quick glance around us.

Olive has experience with my intricacies. Self-preservation is strong with her.

Slender, taller than me, with shoulder length honey-blonde hair, Olive looked younger than her forty-two years. But even with the body of a model, a fluff head she was not. 

 “What?” she said, her voice low.

I gestured. “That guy. The one walking like he thinks no one will touch him. He’s the picture of arrogance, isn’t he?”

Olive’s shapely brow gathered as she focused on the area where the black-haired man paced unimpeded. He moved like a king among his subjects.

“Who?”

I gaped at her. “Him. That man strutting across the mall.” I pointed.

Her gaze sharpened but then shifted to me again.

“I don’t see what you’re dithering about.” Olive shrugged. “You have the weirdest notions.” She huffed and went back to sorting through towels. “Which do you think? Peacock blue or this aqua?”

“That guy,” I said. For some reason it was important that she acknowledge me. “The one walking there. Those shoppers just moved out of his way.”

“So? A man is walking across the mall. Why is that arrogant?” She wasn’t paying attention, still measuring one color of blue against another.

A couple had paused with a stroller in the man’s path then casually shuffled out of his path like magnets of opposite polarity.

“You don’t see that?” My voice rose into a higher octave.

Olive made an exasperated sound. “I see shoppers. I see people,” she said shortly then gave me a hard look. “Why? What do you see?”

“A guy, white shirt, long sleeves, black jeans. Right there,” I said and gestured with one hand, “parting the masses like King Kong. Everyone just moves out of his way.”

The arrogant man had stopped to watch a bunch of teens that braided around him. He was smirking behind his hand. Kids towed their harried parents to one side making crow-like calls of excitement.

Olive’s attention was on the teens not the man. I had an inclination to stomp my foot.

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I am willing to trade query, synop, first chapter with CPs and betas in my field of fantasy/sci-fi. YA is fine but I am not good with MG.

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*Book Cover photo is with permission of my good and valiant friend Jenn at Into the Wild Blue Yonder.*