TITLE: The Adamant
GENRE: Contemporary Fantasy
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.
Miss Snark's First Victim
oooh i like this, just take out some of the looking and gesturing and you're there!
ReplyDeleteI love this opener. You do such a great job with showing us the characters, the setting, and that your MC is the only person who can see this mysterious man.
ReplyDeleteThe only part that made me pause was "Olive has experience with my intricacies. Self-preservation is strong with her."
I suspect this will mean something later, but at this point it confused me and I couldn't associate it with the rest of the narrative. I wonder if there's another way to be more subtle about conveying this.
Otherwise, fantastic hook, and best of luck to you ^_^
I thought your descriptions were a bit wordy. We learned a lot about this mystery man, and Olive, but not much about your protagonist. Interesting hook though, I'd read on!
ReplyDeleteI like your voice. And you left off in a place that really piqued my interest. I, too, would have liked to know more about your protagonist by this time though.
ReplyDeleteI like the voice and the intrigue here, though I was a little thrown by how formal and stilted the dialogue is. Still, I find this mystery man very interesting, and I would keep reading.
ReplyDeleteI love the opening when it says how galling it was that people moved out of his way - love that.
ReplyDeleteI would agree with slimming down some of the the decription in the opening scene. I am also very curious about this guy and wonder how he'll fit into all this. :)
I'd read on as well to find out.
I was really sucked in by the guy--but not so much the MC. I got voice, but it's slightly disembodied because I know next to nothing about her (him?)
ReplyDeleteYou need an edit. I saw some major syntax and punctuation problems.
I was a little turned off by what seemed like description dumps of the guy and Olive. And I couldn't translate "Olive has experience with my intricacies. Self-preservation is strong with her" into useful intel.
But I loved that the MC is both annoyed by and attracted to the very mysterious guy no one else notices. I think some tightening, a little less eye action, and weaving descriptions in a little more subtly will really bring out the intrigue of the story.