Brady Hart

Some great show-don't-tell here. I like the voice and tone, too.

Love to see an untrained magic user with absurdly strong powers. Intriguing first chapter!

Absolutely love the worldbuilding here. Super cool creature ideas and good names, too! I love your ideas.

Super creepy! I love it. Strong visuals, strong voice. Worldbuilding is intriguing. Characters are intriguing.

FIRST CHAPTER: Antagonist introduced. Tone and sci-fi setting introduced. A tragedy sets in motion the Protag's emotional arc and the mystery of the book. CHAPTER 1 – DEEN’S DAD GOES MAD It’s a shame to be losing my mind on such a good night. As my ten-year-old son Deen hops carefully over the colorful reflections in a puddle, he looks up. I smile as his wondrous eyes track the multicolored glints that flutter around in the air like butterflies. Funny little balls of light, glints. Usually only yellow, green, and blue ones come out. But tonight, the air sparkles with the whole rainbow. Deen ignores my outstretched hand in a spirit of independence and hop-steps over the next puddle, this one painted with the reflections of oranges, reds, indigos, and even the rare violets. Means only one thing when all the colors are out—a big game is going on somewhere on the island. I look up through the cloud of glints at Rami, my older boy, who’s waiting quietly for me and Deen to get out of the way before he follows. I try to catch his eyes, but he won’t look at me. Lower Sanguine, or “LS” to those of us who call the hillside neighborhood home, has so many houses packed together on its sheer slopes that it breeds a certain kind of person out of its residents. A proud, salty kind of person who doesn’t mind scaling a sea of staircases many times a day. Staircase Mountain, they should call this place. We turn and start down the next flight of white painted stairs slowly, bracing against walls that seem to close in around us. In a particularly dark stretch of the alley, there’s a broken flowerpot I nearly trip on. I turn around to warn Deen. When I do, I glance into the darkness behind him and see The Figure there, crammed into a dark gap between two walls. He watches me carefully, motionless. Though he’s been following me for weeks, I’m not worried for our safety. He’s only something I’ve created in my mind. You do that when you’re going insane… imagine things that aren’t really there. A soft tone dings in my ear and a tiny voice speaks so quietly only I can hear. “You are experiencing a spike in anticipation and excitement. Chemical moderation has been engaged.” Blasted Emotiv. I grunt and fiddle with the little device behind my ear, toggling it to a low update setting. Work requires us to run the thing with full notifications to manage stress, and I’ve forgotten to dial it down since I finished my shift at the trainyard. Anticipation? Excitement? No smuk! As if tonight isn’t what I’ve been clinging to for months. What I live for every day. The only thing tethering me to the ground. “Are we gonna see any players tonight, Dad?” Deen asks casually. His voice is loud in the quiet of the vacant alleys. I look around as if to make excuse for his loudness, but of course there’s no real person there. Only The Figure, jammed in the blackness of the tight space behind us, uncaring that his pinkish-white broomstick arms are bent at strange angles in order to fit. “I don’t think so, Deenamite,” I say. “The action tonight is mostly across the city over in Osteon. That’s why it’s so quiet here.” He nods, looking deflated and we reach the bottom of the winding staircase. Another cramped landing, indistinguishable from the dozens. Healthy potted plants stand guard at every window. I can hear the broadcast of the Crossbound game through one of them. I see green and blue glints hovering in front of the doors at eye level like guests waiting to be let in. A green glint breaks apart on my chest as I walk into it, the individual light specks reforming into their shape when I’m through. I turn back and Rami is dawdling, trying to see the game through one of the windows. “Rami, keep up. We can’t get separated,” I growl, wishing my natural way to speak to him wasn’t so gruff. He looks up to glare at me and I brace myself for what he’s going to say. It’ll be something expertly cruel, no doubt. Nobody’s tongue cuts quite like my Rami’s. We’ve already spat fire at each other tonight, but it’s been a whole thirty minutes so we’re due for another go. “High reading: anxiety and anger,” my Emotiv whispers in my ear. I wait for Rami to snap back, but he remains silent. I move on to the next crooked stairway, releasing a tight breath of air. And on we go through an eerie quiet. Another landing to the right, another tight stairway to the left. Another tiny, overgrown courtyard lit by the colorful dancing lights in the air. “Dad, why are we going in circles?” Deen asks finally. I chuckle, amazed at how bright the boy is. I’m one wrong turn from being completely lost in my own neighborhood and Deen—at ten years old—can tell easily that I’m stalling, leading them in circles. I whisper deviously. “Maybe it has to do with… the surprise.” Deen’s frown is sharp. “Rami says you’re lying and there isn’t any surprise.” I freeze at the top of a staircase and swivel to glare at my older son, feeling my anger boil. Behind him is The Figure, backed into another dark corner, watching me. I ignore it and check the wearable on my wrist. It’s time. I take a breath and pretend to be nonchalant. “Well… the delivery bots should be gone by now. Why don’t we go home and see what they did or didn’t bring?” Deen stiffens, eyes wide. Rami actually looks interested. Deen bursts. “The surprise! I knew it was real!” I smile devilishly and take the stairs down two at a time, cackling like a villain. Deen runs after me, giggling. Then suddenly we’re free. Like mice climbing out of a bramble, we emerge from the tight alley onto a larger cobblestone street that slopes down the mountain, open to the night air on the downhill side. A breeze that smells like the ocean dances up to us, playing with Deen’s messy black hair and the loose Spectrum jersey Rami’s wearing. The street is nearly empty. Only a maintenance bot working on a nearby street lamp makes any sound. I swallow some clean, ocean air and feel a little better about things. And when I glance back into the shadowed alleyways we've come from and The Figure doesn't emerge, my anxiety dims even more. Maybe the good night won't be spoiled after all. “Come on, you two, home is just up that hill,” I point, but Deen’s already running in the right direction. I laugh and follow him. “Are you boys ready?” I ask dramatically, standing in the dark, quiet alley outside our front door. My sons nod their heads quickly. I open the door and we hurry inside to find the dark shape commanding the center of our living room. The shock in the boys’ eyes is delicious. A silverback gorilla. The muscly, black animal is huge, hammocked in a storage frame with thick ropes and straps. The jacket’s eyes are closed and it’s not moving—there’s no mind in it, of course. It was grown cell for cell in a machine like any other animal jacket. I whistle long and slow. I’ve seen the beast already since it shipped in a month ago, but it’s still impressive. The thing is truly massive: its arms and legs look thicker than my waist. Err—arm and legs. The gorilla’s left shoulder ends in a stub. “Surprise!” I whisper, almost reverently. “What do you think?!” It’s Deen who breaks the silence. “It’s awesome Dad!” he whispers, gazing up at the gorilla like a puppy looking up at an older dog. “A real ape jacket!” I draw a headline in the air and say, in a pretend announcer's voice, “Rami Arnabbo, hotshot Redknuckle brawler from Lower Sanguine qualifies for The Seagarden Cup! What do you think of that, Ram? You could make us famous!” Deen wanders up to the gorilla. But Rami just frowns. “It’s junk. I hate it.” I wish I wasn’t so weak that his words sting. But they do. I sigh, “Look, Rami… It’s missing an arm, sure, but that's why I was able to buy him! He almost sold three different times while I was saving up for him, but the buyers kept backing out because of the arm. And it practically cost me my own arm—and a leg—to make the down payment, but he's worth it! The two cat jackets he shipped in with went for millions of thalas! Plus, I think we can probably build a replacement arm with parts I scrounge in the train yard.” “I don’t like Redknuckle. I like Crossbound. And I wanted a lion bot.” Rami mumbles, then disappears into his and Deen’s bedroom. I’m uncomfortable. I should’ve known he’d hate my gift. Any second my Emotiv is going to start yelling at me about anger because I can feel it boiling. I feel sick to my stomach. Only a moment ago things were looking up. And now, the darkness is back. Rushing in like— “Woah! This says he’s older than you, Dad!” Deen blurts. He’s already flipping easily through the settings on the gorilla’s module. I smile fondly. He’s such a sharp boy. Smarter than I was at his age. It’s in that moment, looking at Deen, that the realization thumps in my chest. Rami may never see things the way I do. But maybe it’s not about Rami. And right then it happens. You pathetic failure of a father, The Whisper says in my head in a resonating voice. I freeze as the hateful words echo loud in my skull. Pitiful. Rami will never love you. I told you he’d rather be with his mother. Or with anyone else. You should give up. Not now! Lately, I get The Figure on most days. But it’s only on really bad days that I get The Whisper, too. I start to panic. I can’t do this tonight… Not in front of my boys. “Go away!” I mutter under my breath. And I immediately regret it. When I acknowledge The Whisper, it seems to get stronger. Deen looks at me funny. You don’t tell me what to do! I tell you what to do! You’re nothing! You’re waste! You’re rot! You’re— I hold my head, trying to squeeze it out. I can make it end—the suffering. You’re so bad alive… why not try something else? Just come out and see me for a few minutes. We’ll take a nice swim! Pacing furiously around the room, I notice Rami peeking out of the bedroom. He shares a worried glance with Deen. I should say something. I should reassure them. They must know what this is by now. They’ve seen it. They have to know their father has lost his mind. The Whisper starts to speak again and in a moment of panic I turn and point a violent finger at Rami. “This is your fault!” I shout and he winces as if I’ve struck him. Immediately I regret it, hating myself. Rami disappears into his room. “No, Rami,” I backpedal, rubbing my face, “I didn’t mean that… I’m sorry… I…” But when he reappears, he’s carrying his running away backpack. “Where are you going?!” I whimper, blocking the wide doorway to our gardens. “Wherever I can be free of you!” He growls, “You’ll never be a good dad! You’re poor! You don’t have a good job! You can’t even afford a normal jacket! I don’t need you. I’m leaving.” He turns and heads to a window. Deen tries to stop his brother but gets pushed out of the way. Rami climbs up onto the sill and jumps out, landing in the overgrown, dried-up canal that bumps up against the back of our house. I hurry out through the archway into our garden. “Rami, stop!” My madness shows me The Figure crouched out in the bushes, watching us fight. Rami runs right past it, disappearing in the warm night air. Before I can go after him I hear Deen crying. I stop and sigh. I’ve told him. I’ve tried to explain that Rami is growing up and doesn’t know how to express himself. That Rami and I will work through our disagreements. I walk over and sit on the floor by him. “I’m so sorry, Deenamite. I lost my temper again.” As my Emotiv warns of spikes in anger and sadness, he sobs softly in my arms. “It’s okay Dad. I forgive you,” he says, looking into my eyes with sparkling cheeks. “Rami is so mean sometimes.” I never deserved Deen. I wish for the hundredth time that he had been the first, and Rami had come second. “Why don’t you go get us both a drink of water?” I ask him quietly. He nods and leaves the room and I take a few deep breaths. The faucet turns on in the kitchen and then Deen shouts over the sound. “Dad? Who is that? Out in the canal?” I shout back, tired, “Don't worry about him. It’s just The Fig—” Wait. I jump to my feet and hurry to the kitchen, heart thudding. Deen’s gazing out over the garden boxes to where Rami just jumped out into the canal bed. The Figure is there in the weeds, his misshapen form like a tree among the bushes. “You—you can s—see him?” I choke. My chest is heaving back and forth, drawing tiny breaths that are too small to carry any good oxygen. Deen’s curiously quiet. “Yeah, Dad. I saw him earlier too, but when I looked he ran away. Who is he?” And then it starts moving toward us, clawing through the bushes slowly. I grab Deen’s arm and rush him to the front door. I yank it open, pull him through and slam it shut behind us. The glass rattles loudly in the iron frame. There’s no one in our little alley. I’m panting, struggling to draw in breath, starting into a panic attack. “Tamana,” I choke, pointing to the house next door. “Go to Tamana, now. I—I’ll be there in a minute.” Deen nods obediently and goes. The neighbor woman has been kind enough to watch him on nights when I’ve been out searching for Rami. She’ll do it again. I go back into our house and rush to the kitchen. I look out into the garden, afraid of what I’ll see. The Figure is halfway to the house, long arms dragging through the carrots and potatoes. You need to teach Rami a lesson, says The Whisper. His voice echoes through our home like it’s bleeding out of every wall. I’m petrified. My legs don’t want to move. I feel my mind and body losing their grip on one another. I swear I see The Figure’s fleshy limbs flopping and dangling at strange angles like there’re no bones inside but that can’t be, because it looks like a man—but no, it’s not a man, because it’s in my head and Deen couldn’t have seen it because it’s in my head and He COULDN’T HAVE seen it so he must have imagined it like me because I’ve just imagined it and— You need to show him the kind of pain he causes you. Make him feel it. Amazingly, The Whisper’s sharp voice is the thing that rips me out of the next wave of my panic attack. I could do it. I could make him hurt. I’ve almost got my legs to move. I’m so close! But my mind is a mud pit of bubbling emotions. My Emotiv must have failed—that’s the only explanation for why it’s gone silent when I can hardly think through the mess of panic, fear and anger. Laughter. High-pitched. The Whisper seems different tonight. Sharper. Harder. Angrier. I don’t know if it’s controlling The Figure or not—The Figure's mouth doesn't move when The Whisper talks—but I'm sure they have to be connected somehow. I yell, pressing the sides of my head in with my hands. I squint, hoping they’ll be gone when I open my eyes. “YOU’RE. IN. MY. HEAD!” No, no, no. You couldn’t create me. Your mind is small and weak. It doesn’t create. It just ruins. The Figure is two steps away from me. I feel hot liquid in my veins, the panic turning into pure adrenaline. Something snaps in my brain, and I finally summon enough strength to dash back to the front door. I burst out into the alley. I glance frantically at Tamana’s house. Deen will be safe inside, drawing or playing a game on a screen. For a split second I want to go in and just forget about The Whisper and Rami. That boy is trouble. He’ll never listen… never respect me. But I know I can’t do that. He’s my boy. Even if he hates me, I have to try to keep him safe. I know his favorite places to hide. I’ll check them one by one. I have to make sure The Figure doesn’t get to him before I do. Swallowing some courage, I turn and run down the street into the darkness. *** In the morning, Deen wakes up when he hears Miss Tamana open the front door. Stretching, he sits up and rubs his eyes. He can hear her talking to someone outside. Deep voices are telling her something and it sounds important. Hmmm, he thinks. That can’t be right. The voices sound like police bots, but Miss Tamana wouldn’t ever get in trouble. She’s too nice! Carefully, Deen climbs from the bed and tiptoes toward the doorway. When he peeks into the main room, Miss Tamana has her hands on her mouth like she’s upset. Through the doorway Deen sees metallic body panels. He listens as the bots ask her lots of questions about Daddy and Rami. They’re using big words like ‘tragedy’ and ‘investigation,’ and ‘guardianship,’ and it makes him confused. While he listens, he hears words he does recognize like ‘drowned’ and ‘eighteen citizens,’ but these words don’t make him feel very nice. When Miss Tamana starts crying, Deen feels like he’s heard something he shouldn’t have and scuttles back into the bedroom to snuggle under the sheets. A few minutes later, the front door closes, and Miss Tamana comes into the bedroom. “Deen?” she whispers. When he pokes his head out, her eyes are red and she’s crying. He knows something is very wrong. He wants to ask but he’s scared. More scared than he’s ever been. More scared than even last night, when Daddy and Rami had a really bad fight, and that creepy man was outside in the canal… Miss Tamana wipes tears from her eyes and sniffles. “I n—need to tell you something very sad, Deen. I’m so, so, sorry.” ***NOTE: This chapter acts as a prologue. The next chapter begins six years later and Deen (now sixteen) will be our protagonist for the rest of the book. It was important to flash back to the night his father died mysteriously because the tragedy will 1) act as the driving force behind Deen's emotional arc and 2) tie into the modern timeline in the novel in which the murderous being Deen's father called "The Whisper" reemerges and begins tormenting the city for a second time.***

1. ACT OF STORY STATEMENT A teenager and his friends must save their city from an ancient creature and win a futuristic sports tournament at the same time. 2. ANTAGONIST (IDENTITY, GOALS, HOW IT OPPOSES THE PROTAG) Who it is and how they oppose the protagonist’s goals: A mysterious, almost supernatural being who haunts the far-future mediterranean city where the protagonist lives, disturbing the events of the Seagarden Cup, which in turn threatens the protagonist’s goal of 1) winning honor and status for his poor family (protag. goals) and 2) winning the resources needed to uncover an explanation as to why his father drowned himself six years ago along with seventeen other citizens (protag. secondary goals). How the antagonist drives the plot: At first, the being’s origin and goals are unknown (in fact, these are at the center of the mystery subplot of the book). In early chapters, the only evidence that points to the being even existing is the above-mentioned unsolved mass drowning event. But as the novel progresses, sparce sightings of strange creatures gradually become blatant attacks in the open by hideous humanoid monsters and before long, the city’s famous sports tournament is in jeopardy of being canceled (stakes). Frustrated at the authorities’ ineptitude in stopping the attacks, the protagonist and his friends take matters into their own hands and begin to use their animal avatars to investigate. 3. BREAKOUT TITLE MY SAVAGE CELLS Alternates: JUNGLE MIND HOLLOW HEADS 4. COMPS The Triwizard Tournament (from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire) meets Animorphs, with a healthy dose of Stranger Things-like horror energy. 5. LOGLINE A star-gazing orphan boy determined to make something of himself uploads his mind into his late father's junky old gorilla avatar and enters his island's famous sports tournament just as hideous humanoid monsters begin terrorizing the games. 6. CORE WOUND/SECONDARY CONFLICTS Deen, our protagonist, is a poor boy from a poor neighborhood. Deen’s father died poor, believing he’d never done anything of import in his life. Deen believes (whether he’ll admit it to himself or not) that as long as he is poor, he is worthless. He wishes to join the elites and make a name for his family that his dad would have been proud of. He plans to do this by achieving the dream he and his father shared—the dream of becoming a world-class Redknuckle player and taking his dad's old, beat-up gorilla avatar to The Seagarden Cup, an action-packed sports tournament that has made his techy island city famous. (protag. primary goals) An added layer to this is that Deen has been unable to find closure and explanation for why his father—along with seventeen other people—mysteriously drowned himself one night during the tournament six years ago. The authorities couldn't solve the strange suicides and Deen feels that the exorbitant prize money and status that come with winning the tourney will allow him to finally uncover what happened that night. And what's worse, it starts looking like the very creature/being who is doing the attacks is present day might just be connected to the tragedy of that night. In other words, the evil that took Deen's father from him all those years ago is back for more. Social conflict between the protag and other main characters: Deen’s hated rich people his whole life. But when he ends up on a team run by a pair of rich sisters from a mansion at the crown of the island, his eyes are opened to the fact that demons prey on the powerful and powerless alike. 7. SETTING THE CITY OF THALADIQA Thaladiqa is an idyllic, techy, arts-focused city on a small island in former Greece in the year 2150. Roughly 100,000 inhabit the small island, scaling endless stairways and traversing the winding cobblestone footpaths every day. Behind them trail hover platforms that carry their “jackets,” animal avatars that can either be robotic or made of lab-grown flesh. Jackets are used for work and for playing sports both, and jacket technology is at the center of everything in the city. The type of jacket a person owns can signal anything from status to the line of work the person is in. There are even two major classes built around jackets. The poorer Organic class is named for the organic, flesh and bone jackets owned by its members. From magpies to house cats to orangutans, Organic jackets are simply animal bodies that were grown in a machine and only come to life when controlled by a human mind. Organic class people typically have a job somewhere in the city that requires use of their jacket. For example, many farmers upload their minds into a blue jay or magpie jacket to harvest berries and nuts in a nimbler, airborne body that can complete the task quicker and more efficiently. Deen, our protagonist, works in the trainyard warehouses. He uploads into his gorilla jacket to move crates around using the animal’s brute strength. The wealthier Bot class is named for the expensive robotic jackets that its members own. Robot jackets are more durable than flesh and bone jackets and last longer. Plus, their movements are precise and powerful, and they can be modified in a million ways. They are, however, expensive. Bot jackets have been gaining popularity in Spectrum Sports in recent years. They win a lot due to the aforementioned power, precision, durability and modifiable nature. Many teams have switched to using all bots. This has effectively priced out a large portion of the population from playing in the main sports, including Deen who comes from a poor organic class family. TECHNOLOGIES --The Mentac, a machine that enables a human mind to jump into a "jacket" (an avatar, or a second body) and control it while the human body rests. --Regrow. Technology that involves printing living cells onto a body to heal wounds, change muscular structure, or even make cosmetic adjustments. One group of people in this society "change their faces like they change their clothing," as one character puts it. --Glints and the Spectrum field they render in. Anywhere in the city, indoors and outdoors, holographic light can be summoned with the flick of a finger. Screens with video feeds, text messages from a loved one, a page for surfing the net, these all can be displayed in bright colors in the air and interacted with by touch in the same way you've seen portrayed in various other sci fi stories. The twist here is the glints, little balls of colorful light that hover around in the air like fairies. No one knows who created glints or when—they’ve been floating around in the city’s air as long as anyone can remember. And no one knows exactly what they were designed for, either. Some think them a simple glitch or anomaly of the holographic field. Regardless, early citizens of Thaladiqa soon found a use for them: as the scoring mechanism in Spectrum sports. SPORTS Spectrum sports are a kind of sport that can be played only in the city of Thaladiqa. There are three individual sports: Redknuckle, a boxing/martial arts-style competition for great ape jackets. Gust Racing, an airborne obstacle course for bird jackets, and Crossbound, a parkour-style, city-wide treasure hunt played by big cat jackets. Glints are used as the scoring mechanism in all three sports: absorb too many red glints into your jacket's holographic suit of light and you lose. Deen, the protagonist, plays Redknuckle with his organic silverback gorilla jacket which he named “Kigo.” Apart from a robotic left arm that Deen built himself, Kigo looks and feels like a wild African gorilla. However, he’s not a real living animal—not in the natural way. Kigo is made of muscle and bone, yes, but he was grown in a lab cell by cell to be used in Spectrum sports. He has no intelligent mind in his brain until Deen uses his Mentac to upload his own. The state of the sports favor the wealthy Modern Spectrum sports are dominated by expensive robotic jackets owned exclusively by the robotic class. These jackets are faster and hit harder than the organic flesh-and-bone jackets like Deen's gorilla. HORROR OF TECHNOLOGY Like the sports do, the horror mystery of the book (and the horror villain himself) revolve around the in-world technologies. People are attacked by hideous creatures grown by the same Regrow machines that grow their organic animal jackets... A disgusting flesh-eating disease can befall someone who has changed their face one too many times... And the Mentac technology designed for transferring a mind into another body appears to have become a tool for torturing weak humans in a way that brings new meaning to the term "intrusive thoughts." ALL IN ALL, A SOLARPUNK WORLD The setting in my book can be described as “Solarpunk,” which is a newer subgenre of Science Fiction. Where Steampunk typically features architecture, tech and fashion from Victorian, steam-powered England, Solarpunk takes its visual inspiration from the Art Nouveau movement and imagines a clean energy society that has evolved beyond pollution and has (mostly) solved poverty. Where Cyberpunk portrays a heavily digital future in grungy, gritty mega cities, Solarpunk portrays peaceful cities of artistic people gardening alongside robots and attending colorful festivals in the evening. Solarpunk is utopian. It imagines a technologically advanced society in harmony with nature. Motifs are: plants/flowers/animals, organic shapes (picture curving ironwork and stained glass murals), flowing dresses and floral patterns. Afro-futurist art/imagery/fashion is often featured. One (imperfect) example of Solarpunk you’re probably familiar with: The nation of Wakanda in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.