Wild Life is Ben and William's first novel, the story of how they met and the fireworks that ensue.

It takes place before Firegrass, Coming Home, and Dirty Basement, so reading those isn't necessary to read Wild Life. (Though it never hurts)

Chapter one is up for your reading pleasure.

Thank you for this first chapter!

loved this beginning

Yay! Another story from you

I'll make sure to read it...Sometime when I don't have tons of homework to do

Ah, it's only ~3K words. And homework's overrated anyway.

Dude! Great stuff!

I don't think William put a lot of thought into this expedition..like what exactly was he going to do if he found a griffon.

Mediocraty can be a damning demon, especially for a Prince. He has not come up with a purpose for his life. It strikes me that Princes would have more choices than most. He definitely missed too many wizard classes.

So where's Ben already?

Superb start!

Conner

The brevity of the chapter (how could you fit a whole griphon in just 3k? ) is what's most disappointing of it.

Though William did not look much like a ass of a stupid prince as one could have thought reading university staff's comment in "Coming Home"...

Alas for him, he wasn't the most attentive of students. Nor the most enthusiastic. As for the point of the rest of his life to date, well... we'll get to that.


He's coming. Gotta get William in trouble first...


Hey, it was 3288 words! Not bad as book chapters go, though certainly short for internet serials

William's also much older now than he was in school. I may have been a bit too off-hand in mentioning it, but it's been a decade or so since he graduated. (William's in his early thirties at the start of Wild Life) Even vapid troublemakers settle down after a while. Which actually gives me some ideas for stories set later on, but I've gotta finish this one first.

-Dan

Okay, so I will read it tonight. I must. I can't put it off any longer...

Hey Zot,

I've read everything else you've written on GA, and I particularly enjoyed 'The Yankee' and ... well, all of them, really. So I was quite pleased to see 'Wild Life' coming up.

As before, I'm really enjoying your style of fast and dry prose. You've already established William in other stories, so characterization is no problem, although this chapter isn't the developing-characters sort. Still, you've managed to put in a good deal of info quite subtly. I think you could add, towards the beginning, a bit about what to expect from griffins in the first place. Are they supposed to be murderous beasts with an inclination towards decapitation? If so, why didn't Will take a few more precautions?

Also, just so you know, I am not a dungeons-and-dragons reader at all. As such, all this mana stuff is technical jargon to me. So far it's fine. However, I do have a suggestion to make regarding spells, etc.: don't introduce things when the action hits. Build it up. Otherwise, I'll be trying to commit to memory all these magic baubles while I should be biting my nails. Plus, it can be used to great effect. I'll mention Harry Potter as an example, although I really noticed this in Jin Yong's wuxia novels. In book 3 of HP, I got goosebumps when Harry used the Expecto Patronum thingie at the end. Most of the time, the spells are just spells. But JKR took the effort to build on that particular spell, so when it occurred at the climax, it felt climactic. It's the same principle in music. It can be done wrongly though. I was sick of Expelliarmus by book 7, and the whole elder wand thing didn't work for me.

Anyway, do update soon; happy writing!

corvus

PS I notice you spell them as griffons...

Well, I believe none of them knew what griffons were, and certainly weren't expecting the maniacal, hell-bent-on-slaughter griffon that they encountered. And Zot does mention what they were expecting of the griffons, even if it wasn't in the beginning:



Anyways, I finally got around to reading it. One problem I had with it was that you can't just end it like that. Not with another chapter not ready...

But, great read. I'm looking forward to more

You can totally tell I was sleep deprived. Or maybe stoned. But yeah, there it is, I need to learn to read more carefully. And I agree that this first chapter... is a teaser. The Zot needs to update, and fast.

Aha! Y'now, I've been poking at the edits to the second chapter, and things haven't been quite working the way I wanted. That bit made the difference, if I can only figure out quite what to do with it.

I actually do want the characterization to be clear in this, partly because it changes as the book progresses and the characters grow, and partly because I'd like this to be where new people start reading when they dig into the stories.


This is one of the tricky bits for me, 'cause I am a D&D player (reader... Feh! ) and a geek, so it's sometimes tough to not technobabble it all. I'm shooting for mostly descriptions of effects, with the occasional bit of exposition when things are quieter and appropriate. I'm trying to keep the 'how it works' stuff to an absolute minimum, putting it out only when it's important to the story. It helps that William's generally the character the POV follows, and he's kind of fuzzy on how it all works.


Yep. A legit alternate spelling, I double-checked. I was using both and had to choose one, and this was the one I went with, mostly to be contrary.


Heh. Shooting for a biweekly release. Just be glad I'm blocking on Carpe Diem, or it'd be an every four week release...

-Dan

Oh, no. Don't tell me that. I really wanna find out what happens to Bobby. And now there's this.

So Bobby or William?

Meh.