Sunday Wattpad Feature

Hey all, I’ve decided that on Sundays, I’ll review a Wattpad story that I especially like. First up is:

Bloodlines

https://www.wattpad.com/story/115952641-bloodlines

Genre: Mystery/Thriller

Completed: Yes

Mystery/Thriller/Crime Fiction are not my favorite genres, so it takes something pretty special to catch my attention there. So far I’ve enjoyed Bloodlines so much that it’s one of the stories that I actively monitor for updates. The author has a real skill with ending each chapter on a cliffhanger or similar pausing place that leaves the reader with questions, curiosity, and dread.

Zane, our protagonist is a young guy with a lot of problems. The story opens with him fired from his job, his mother dead in extremely questionable circumstances, his young teenage sister homeless and parentless, and the girl that he loves slipping away from him with ever increasing speed.  The modern day poverty-stricken Oklahoma setting is dark, and it continues to get darker as Zane tries to navigate his way through the maze of pit-traps that his life has always been while the traps just keep getting deeper.

Atmosphere is a big thing in any genre of suspense writing, and lynnlipinski writes the Oklahoma setting with an insider’s knowledge, but with a clear eye that neither sentimentalizes nor sensationalizes the problems of rural poverty.  H.P. Lovecraft once recommended that the sense of place or “atmosphere” can almost become a character in its own right. This is certainly true in Bloodlines.  There’s a literary feel to Bloodlines that takes the already gripping storyline and moves it up a notch.

I also have a great deal of respect for the author’s portrayal of Zane’s Native American father and Zane’s own half-blood status. As the daughter of a Native American myself, I appreciate portrayals of Native Americans as individuals and not tropes. Zane’s father is a complicated person not only because of his culture and the crushing poverty of Reservation life but also because he’s a complicated and flawed person due to his own choices and circumstances.  Zane is a flawed protagonist who makes the frustrating kinds of mistakes that a young man in his position might make no matter what the color of his skin. He’s likeable despite and because of his flaws, and all the more believable as a character because of them. Zane’s accompanied by a supporting cast of secondary characters who are also all drawn that a sympathetic but clear-eyed view that brings them to life so sharply that they feel like people you know.

You can see other Wattpad reviews of mine at Island of Lost Toys, my Wattpad review book.

Ran Shaipur Chapter 1.2

In which our hero does his world’s equivalent of “Hold my beer!”

Read Here on Wattpad

Ran Chapter 1.1

Chapter One, Part One: In which Ran discovers that getting what you wanted isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be.

Bon Voyage, Ran!

And the first installment in my serial novel, Ran Shaipur, is up on Wattpad. Read it Here, if you’d like.  I’ll be updating on Fridays and Tuesdays.

I have a lot of mixed feelings, angst, and trepidation about it all. It’s a quirky story that got both positive and anguished feedback from Beta readers. The anguished feedback was stuff like “people will think that you’re a bad person if you write this!” Alas, dear readers, I am not my characters and just because I can imagine a thing does not mean I am that thing, or that the thing is some deep desire from my subconscious. Goodness, do crime writers who write about serial killers get that kind of feedback? I hope not!

With Ran, I was going on the world-building premise that one day we humans would settle other planets. The settlers would be given supplies and support, but would mostly have to build their societies from scratch from local resources. And so while Ran is set in the far future, the local tech isn’t much above what we have right now.

Ran’s world, called Dobruja, is a forgotten backwater that’s somewhat resource-poor. While other planets may have managed to build and trade up to the highest tech and newest of everything, Dobruja’s been making do for a couple hundred years with no help from the rest of the galaxy. Don’t feel sorry for the Dobrujans, though! They (mostly) like it that way. Even so, as we open this story, Dobruja is in trouble, and more trouble is on the way. We’ll see what Ran does about it. Expect him to make a LOT of mistakes along. To paraphrase Firefly: “He’s a doofus, but he’s our doofus. Cut him some slack!”

Serializing on Wattpad

Tomorrow (Friday June 30th) I’m going to launch a story on Wattpad. Here’s the cover!