Marlena

1. Story Statement: Julia must create a new family for herself and fight for equality between mutant females and humans. 2. Antagonistic Forces The antagonistic forces in the book are purposely twisted in such a way that the reader is surprised at the biggest antagonist. Julia is a mutant female with superhuman strength. Initially we believe non-mutated humans, most specifically men, are the antagonists. However, as Julia learns about her mutation she realizes that the true antagonists are other mutant females whose goal is to rule society rather than make it equal. 3. Title: The Mad-Happy 4. Comparables: The Mad-Happy is an upside down version of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale with women gaining the larger portion of the power and restructuring society in a way that puts them in control and men as their servants. The feel of the book is also reminiscent of the X-Men, with mutant females acquiring specific physical characteristics. Additionally, mutant females are fighting other mutant females, as well as defending themselves from regular humans. 5. Hook Line – Conflict and Core wound In a post-apocalyptic world, a mutant woman who has lost everyone in her life and is wanted for brutal experimentation seeks to find a new family, as well as figure out who and what she is. 6. Inner Conflict: Julia has changed physically due to the mutation. How does that change what she now is emotionally? Julia needs to figure out what kind of person she now wants to be. Secondary Conflict: Julia is in love with two brothers who become part of her new family. How does she resolve this without breaking that family? 7. The world is an empty version of a year reminiscent of 2023. The architectural structure of the cities and suburbs are like any we would see in 2023 around the world: cities with high-rises in their centres, pedestrian neighbourhoods with small shops, outskirts with shopping malls and suburbs with brick and siding family homes. However, it has been about two years since 99% of the world’s population died. The physical structures are not yet reclaimed by nature, but they are slowly entering a state of disrepair. Weeds are cropping up, roots are pushing up roads, shingles and siding pieces are falling off houses. The cities have been looted, and many commercial buildings have smashed windows and torn down doors. Remnants of people’s belongings litter streets, and bodies that there was no one left to bury litter the insides of houses and apartment complexes. However, in a secret spot outside of the city, a lone survivor creates a haven in an underground bomb shelter that resembles a plush country club. Leather furniture and expensive rugs and paintings decorate the living room. Meanwhile generators and solar power enable all the old comforts that are now almost non-existent, such as electric lights, heat and hot showers. On the other side of the city, a prison facility is converted into a group living centre and experimentation laboratory. This is where about three hundred people have turned the old cells into apartments and communally survive as hunters, gatherers and scavengers.

Hi Dom, Thanks for a great read. I thoroughly enjoyed it and noticed just two minor things: 1. In this sentence you accidentally flip from third to first person A wince flashed across his face, whether from his shoulder or my story, Albert could not tell. 2. Right at the end of the prologue you write The sweet nurse who’d put a daisy next to Albert’s bed died there in France. I re-read the prologue and could not find the instance when she put a daisy by his bed. If this is something we learn about later, perhaps it should be left out from this part as it confuses the reader? I could really visualize both Albert and Vito - physically and intellectually. I love good character development and really enjoyed yours.

Hi Ariel, I often see authors add in bits and pieces of appearance into descriptions of the action. For example: “Now, Sheriff Arceneaux,” giggled Agnes. slightly batting her large, brown eyes and leaning her petite figure on the counter “You can’t talk like that now that I’m a married woman.” Or As if summoned, my brown, fluffy cat came to sit beside me, leaning her head on my skinny leg. All of me was skinny and bony and somehow protruding and I wasn't sure why Pecan loved to snuggle up to me, but I loved her for it. Because Beatrice obviously loves Agnes and loves their time together, you can also get Beatrice to add their appearances into one of her thoughts of Agnes. For example: I was content to let life go on forever like this: just my sister and I. She a doe-eyed, petite in her proper-girl-below-the-knee skirts and me the tall, gangly one always in skirts deemed an inch too short. The two of us listening to music, talking about nothing. Time bent and warped under the smoke, and I liked it that way. Time could stand on its head, for all I cared, for all that I wanted anything to change. I'm just making up random physical characteristics for them and ad hoc adding them, but you get the point. Now that you explained the blowing the axe expression, it's actually cool! I wonder if there's a way to use it but somehow clarify to readers as daft as me what it means. lol

Hi Ariel, I really enjoyed the start of Crossroad Blues. I like the use of dialogue and the vibe of the small town that you set up. I could really visualize the little store and the heat. The thing that I couldn't visualize were the sisters. I was craving some physical description of them. I am guessing they are in their twenties from the way they converse, but it's the 1920's so they could easily be 18, since women married younger. Or is one in her teens and one in her thirties? What's the age difference? Who is older? It seems that Are they short or super tall? Slim? Curvy? The stores seems shabby so are they poor and do they dress/look shabby? Agnes seems more proper. Does she dress to reflect that? I kept trying to picture them and I couldn't and not being able to picture the protagonists distracted me from the story. There was lots of great foreboding with the starting lyrics from Bessie Smith and with daddy's whiskey being dropped. Because of the great job you did with that, I knew something was going to happen and was curious and anxious about it the entire time. I loved that. Due to that though, I felt the prologue actually took away from the mystery and wasn't necessary. I didn't understand the following: "blowing an axe near a flower." Swinging an axe? Also, this part confused me: “I ain’t lonely.” That was only half-true. And that statement was only half-true, too." When you say the first time, That was only half-true, aren't you talking about the statement? Thanks for the great story. I would love to read more and figure out what happens!

Hi Ariel, Thanks so much for taking the time to read my first pages. I appreciate the advice!

The Mad-Happy Chapter 1 I always wanted to be beautiful. My partner told me I was and I’m sure he had meant it, but I didn’t want to be beautiful only like that. I wanted to be the type of beautiful that stops a stranger mid-step, turns him around and makes him run after me. They do that now. That’s why I hid in the trees. So, I sat in a tall, tree canopy, concealed by leaves, and watched the weedy, unkempt parking lot of the Kingston Penitentiary in the distance. Everything was silent, as it had been for almost two years. The majority of the inhabitants of Kingston, Canada were dead, as were the majority of inhabitants of every city, everywhere. But I still hid. Within the penitentiary were most of the survivors of Kingston. It was now a communal living base, as well as an ad hoc research facility where they experimented on women like me. The treeless parking lot around the prison in the distance looked empty, but I knew that the guards were hiding in shaded spots, sleeping. There was no one left to attack them. Guarding was just a game to stave off boredom. Initially, I would come and watch the prison for my own protection. I figured out routines, took stock of the weapons, counted the number of men. That part I still did. There were precisely 279 men…that day. Every now and then a fight would break out and the number of men decreased by a couple. Not all of the men in there were archconservative goons, but enough of them were for me to make sure that they didn’t know I existed. After some time, I continued to watch the prison to try and figure out how to rescue the other women in there, who were like me. But I gave up on that too. So, finally, I just watched the prison as a routine, and out of loneliness. Just as I watched every other concealed survivor in the city, most of whom had no idea that I existed. I found some when they hunted in the safety of night. Others I found when they stole little moments to sit in the sun of whatever balcony or yard they thought blocked them from view. There weren’t many of them and most hid so well, it had taken even me a long time to find them. But eventually I found them all. I had nothing else to do. I lived all alone in a well concealed home I had claimed outside of the city. It was safe and comfortable and other than me, it was completely empty. I quickly grew tired of emptiness, preferring to spend most of my days watching other survivors from a distance. Emptiness was all around me; in the long-ago looted buildings, the streets and sidewalks that the weeds had claimed as their own, and the remnants of houses that the wind ripped off and blew around. A long time ago, they used to have those cowboy, theme-park towns where you could go and see people in period costumes demonstrate life in the eighteen hundreds. The world around me now was like a deserted theme-park town of the twenty-second century. Ninety-nine percent of men and women died. Out of the remaining women, half began to mutate. It happened so fast, they never did figure out how or why. All we know is that it happened at the DNA level. And it happened to me. I was now, what they called a Femme. The name they use for us ‘mutant women’ came from a combination of Femme Fatale and La Femme Nikita. It describes us well. We are something that looks like living anime dolls, with huge eyes and hair in shades that remind you of precious stones or metals, from rose gold, to black pearl and diamond, always sparkling in the light as if glitter had been thrown on it. Our physical proportions are perfect and our physical strength, agility and speed are like those of a panther. Whenever I got a bottle of wine and got drunk on a treetop I would inevitably start wondering if all this was the evil plan of a deranged feminist, gone horribly awry. None of the male survivors mutated. The goons at the penitentiary called the unmutated women ‘Clean’. The Clean women that were at the penitentiary, either willingly or by force, were being ‘preserved’ for the future of human procreation. The Clean women who were determined not to be used to restart the human race, were very good at hiding, as were the men who were determined not to be part of the penitentiary goon gang. But there were not enough of those people to make a difference and they were not brave enough to band together. At least not yet. Till now, they just hid, and I watched.