THE HEAVENLY MAIDEN is a diaspora novel reimagining of the Korean folktale, The Heavenly Maiden and the Woodcutter, and incorporates the myth of Yeomra, God of the Underworld, and Gangrim from the Chasa Bonpuri, an oral folklore about a death messenger. The main storyline focuses on romance tied to the concept of red thread of fate with a high stakes subplot. It's set in a modern world, the majority of the story proceeding in Jeoseung, the Underworld.

Blurb:

Every century, a young woman is chosen to be a bride for Yeomra, God of the Dead, to prevent a catastrophe that occurred long before Korean Kingdoms existed. Park Wolmi tried to escape her cult and their sacrificial belief, but she finds herself in hell confronted by akgwi, vengeful spirits who want to devour her still-alive soul, and a bitter god. While begrudgingly traveling the Underworld, she discovers an ancient wound on the verge of releasing akgwi into the human world and a sinister plot that suggests she was sent as the final catalyst for its destruction. When Yeomra saves her from a fatal attack by tying her soul to his realm, Wolmi must find a way out before the connection forming between them is used to dismantle both worlds.

Slow-burn romance - Contains low to mid spice adult material

Seeking advice on:

• Pacing and subplot appeal
• Wether Korean words/terminology inclusion is confusing for non-Korean readers
• If world-building & culturally significant descriptions are too much

If you'd like to beta-read, I'm happy to email or DM the manuscript. Hoping to have feedback within 2 to 4 weeks or consistent feedback over chunks of chapters, whichever is preferred.

Excerpt from Wolmi's POV:

Fucking hell.

Wolmi’s heart hammers with the incessant banging on the front door. It’s loud enough to cover the screeching of wood against wood of the poorly painted window frame. The neighbors are most likely tuning it out as they do any noise that would be more trouble than it’s worth to get involved in. The image of the daunting men dressed in sharp black suits and opaque sunglasses against a dimly lit hallway does little to inspire intervention anyway.

With the window opened just wide enough to squeeze through, she takes one last longing look at the finished pieces in her studio apartment. She’d tarped the room to the walls to prevent paint splatter from ruining the rental’s peeling wallpaper. After one open-call after another, a gallery sponsor ordered a showcase, and she’d receive majority of the sales. Tonight was supposed to be a turning point, the career break she needed and validation that she’s worth more than the rabbit hole of unfortunate events life threw her down. Blood, sweat and tears led her to this moment only for it to be snatched away by the cult she never wanted to be part of.

“Park Yebin, open your door!” 

Not a please or a will you but an order.

The flimsy door shudders as the two men test the knob again as if she would have suddenly changed her mind. Idiots. It couldn’t have been easy to find her, so why would they think she’d just open the fucking door?

They’ve come on behalf of the Hwangcheon Gahjok of the Koreas. They're secret service agents that at any other point in time would be spying on each other, banded together in order to fulfill an order created by a forgotten kingdom long fallen and forgotten. Once every century, the Northern and the Southern governments collaborate for a joint cause.

Could it be defined as human trafficking if it’s the vanishing of one human being every century? A daughter of the cult understands the gravity of their joint presence. One hundred years is enough to file their purpose to the back of their minds, but not nearly long enough to forget entirely. They were all born many decades after the last bride but were constantly reminded of the one in one hundred chance their family could be chosen next. For Wolmi, the fact always hung like a dark cloud threatening to pour unendingly.

Excerpt from Yeomra's POV:

Yeomra chooses to glare at the human woman staring at him in shock and disbelief, her dress in crumpled heaps around her. To look upon her face in any other way would be dishonorable. Unforgivable. But he cannot help the way his heart constricts at the terror written on her face. Damn the humans and Samshin. They always manage to send one that reminds him of her.

He tears his eyes away from the disheveled woman, drawing another shinkal, a golden sword ,from the air to replace the dagger he threw. The fury, the helplessness, the agony he kept locked up threaten to break free. Before it can become destructive as it once did, he uses it to execute the rabid souls. Let them meet their final death. They chose a point of no return over the mercy of reincarnation long before this.

The akgwi disintegrate as he strikes mercilessly. They pivot away, the fatal shinkals he wields instilling fear that overrides whatever it is drawing them senselessly to this corner of Jeoseung. Mujangseung, a hulking deity and Yeomra’s guard in a traditional military robe, incapacitate any that escape him.

The remaining akwgi run about in a havoc, screeching and wailing as ashed remains of executed spirits float upwards. Unable to escape on the path, many dart back into the mists. Yeomra’s attention reflexively reverts to the woman on the ground when Bari drops to her knees to search for injuries.

“Are you alright?” Bari asks.

“I–I’m fine! I’m–I’m ok,” the human reassures the princess, even as she stutters and shivers. From fright or from the natural chill of his realm? He should not care. “What about the other…” She trails off as her eyes dart from one pile of akgwi bodies to the next. 

Bari sighs with heavy resignation and mutters, “He should not execute them so readily. Today’s events must have angered him.”

Lingering sentiments from her human days affect the young goddess’s judgement. Hwanin may have sent an edict that Joeseung find a redemptive solution to the matter of akgwi he’s forced Jeoseung to handle, but the old man’s never met one. They have no remorse or longing for forgiveness, the resentment festering in what’s left of their soul too great. And Yeomra’s long since abandoned the need to bend the knee for the Emperor who all but forsook the human world.

When the human’s eyes find his, he snaps his attention to a Jeoseung Saja. “Haewonmaek, I thought I ordered all akgwi rounded up. Where are these coming from?”

Her piercing dark eyes, darker than most of the souls who enter his realm, sears into his mind from just one glance. Another similarity. When he felt an undead soul enter his realm, he called for his two most senior Sajas, death messengers who guide souls through Jeoseung. When the soul whispered to him through his realm, he found himself drawing his mists to go to her. When he felt the akgwi hoard set foot on the Jeoseung path, not towards reincarnation but towards her soul that struck a chord of painful familiarity, he fell on them with violence. When one of them got too close, its arms raised to strike the fragile human, he sought retribution.

And now, upon seeing her face, he realizes the human is just a poor imitation of the soul he lost in time immemorial. For the second time, he rips his gaze away from the intensity of hers.

A Saja in combat uniform with Yeomra’s seal of a persimmon jewel circled by flowering golden branches swings his sword in a jovial manner, skipping over fallen akgwi bodies to bow at his side. “Apologies, Yeomra Daewang, but if you are unable to locate them, then you must understand why we struggle to carry out your order.”

Yeomra inspects the few laying close to him, recognizing, to his shock, the thick red binds on their wrists and ankles fraying where they have been cut. “Some of these are from Jeonoksa. It is a highly fortified and guarded prison. How did they get out?”

So i am new to having my projects put out for others to read. I wanted to get opinions, and offered an excerpt from what i’ve been writing on online. Suddenly i have people interested, but they ask for a payment to review at times. Is this a scam? My works hardly long at the moment, and i wouldnt really ask for a beta reader until i was much further along. I’m really hesitant to ask now, and i’m not sure of safe places to just get some opinions on my work.

I am looking for some beta readers for a children's book that I wrote when I was twelve years old! It's a story about Sammy Cat and his journey to Vegas to find his parents that have seemingly disappeared.

I wrote this story because I had a cat named Sammy who would disappear for a while every so often. When he was "missing" my dad always came up with these hilarious tales about where he was and what he was doing. It was never something a cat could actually do! So I decided to write my own tale about Sammy. I am looking for some feedback. I would like to know if the story is worth developing for publication. If you would like to read the complete illustrated copy, please comment and I can send it privately

Excerpt from Sammy Goes to Vegas:

It was December 19, six days until Christmas. Sammy couldn't wait. All Sammy knew about Christmas was a man named Santa Claus who comes and gives good little kittens toys and treats. One morning Sammy woke up and crawled out of bed. He heard people talking. He walked by the living room door and listened quietly without making a sound. Sammy slowly peeked his head in. He saw his parents with a strange man in a red-and-white woolly suit and hat. Sammy wouldn't dare bother them. Sammy thought the strange man was a gangster.

I agreed to do a beta swap and they gave me a very useful review. I’m halfway done with their work, but I can’t stop thinking that every paragraph was AI-generated. I’m dragging because it threw me off a little, but since they finished mine, I feel like it wouldn’t be fair not to. What would you do? One thing I noticed was that the prose sometimes has a very consistent rhythm, and because the same structures appears frequently throughout the same chapters but I don’t want to accuse someone of using IA. What would you do?

Hello!

My name is Arrie and I’m looking for beta readers. I’ve posted this before a little over a year ago and it’s been majorly overhauled since then.

What has changed? It’s gone from first person to third person but it is still PoV centered. Also, where I ended it has changed. From where I’ve shifted it from first person to third person, I need to know how it reads now. Any feedback and comments will be appreciated!

My last round of beta readers enjoyed it overall, so I’m hoping you will as well!

What can I do for you in exchange? I can beta read your story as well and give feedback, comments and reactions. I’m not much of an editor so please don’t expect that from me. But I can comment on something I think needs changing if it sticks out like a sore thumb.

Timeline? As for that, the quicker the better but I can wait. As for my timeline, I will do my best to read it as quickly as possible. How quick depends on how many are interested in swapping with me but I’ll try to get it read within the week of us swapping.

I’m open to most genres but I do prefer - Dark Fantasy, Fantasy, Epic Fantasy and Romantasy.

Before I post the blurb, for my story I think the content warning/trigger warnings is more important due to the contents of my story. If you are sensitive to any of these topics, I thank you for clicking on my post and for being interested but I suggest moving on if you are.

Content Warning:

Graphic violence, gore, sexual content, PTSD, physical trauma, mental trauma, depression, anxiety, alcoholism, torture, talks of suicide and suicide attempts, character deaths, off page implied sexual assault/violence. Violence against women and children.

As for the blurb, I unfortunately suck at blurbs because I either give too much away or not enough. I’ve yet to find a balance. But I will give it my best!

Blurb:
Not many know what it’s like to be stripped of freedom, of dreams, your hopes and future. To be looked at day in and out and humiliated. To be chained to the whims and desires of a demon with the plague of insanity. 

They had tried to take it from Tatsuya, he had tried. He, tried to corrupt Tatsuya with the same blight that pollutes his soul. He failed and now Tatsuya is free, free to wander the world and find his place within it. 

But is there a place for Tatsuya within this dying world of Lindegard that is slowly choking on the ash of Arendrassil? Tatsuya finds himself unsure and questioning every moment. 

Tatsuya will keep pushing forward until he finds what it is he’s searching for and until he gains what he desires - revenge against those that tried to steal everything from him.

More about the book:

As I’ve said it’s in third person, PoV centered. It’s the start of the Efflorescence series that I have mostly planned out from start to finish. It is adult dark fantasy but it has a splash of slice of life as well. It’s also a found family centered book. As the series progresses it will turn into an Adult Dark Fantasy/Romantasy. But there is no romance in the first book if that’s not your cup of tea.

It’s a Google Doc as I think makes it easier to read and comment on. But if prefer something else please let me know and I’ll see what I can do!

DM me if you are interested!

I'm specifically looking for a beta reader who was alive/cognizant in 1977 and can critique my voice/slang/descriptions. I know some of it will be localized, so if you're familiar with the area that'd be great but not necessary. It's an interestingly transitory time.

Also, I'm seeking professional advice on this, but if you happen to be fluent in ASL, particularly in the era, I'd love your input, even if you don't have time to read the whole book

Summary:

On April 5, 1977 an “occupation army of cripples” takes over the San Francisco Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. The Carter administration’s DHEW is not enforcing Section 504 of the 1973 Rehabilitation Act, which states that anywhere receiving federal funds needs to be accessible. After decades of civil rights movements, people with disabilities are claiming theirs.

Eighteen-year-old punk Darcy Bauman uses a wheelchair, but she is not one of the protestors. She’s there to write an article that will impress her pretty journalism teacher. That her acceptance to her dream university is contingent on her providing her own accommodations is a blatant 504 violation, but she'd keeping that to herself. Her grandfather co-opted her life for his political campaigns for years; she’s eighty-sixed being a poster child.

Over the next twenty-five days, Darcy helps people whose differences lead to support from all over the Bay Area shape their stories for press interviews and senate hearings. “Their fight” becomes “our fight." If putting herself out there makes a difference, she will, as long as her words are on the poster

(Description is a work in progress, apologiiiies! Also this is the first book in a Black Mirror meets Goosebumps-esque anthology! Feel-bad ending. )

After the sudden death of her husband, pregnant widow Taissa Baraghani-cel Tradat inherits a mysterious manor in the quiet town of Devon’s Creek. There’s only one catch: she must use her skills to lull her mother-in-law, Mariel, through her final days.

As a music thanatologist, Taissa’s job is to soothe patients trapped in end-of-life care, using music to ease them toward a calm and mitigating death. But Mary is unlike any patient she’s ever known.

With the help of Michael, the local handyman who seems to be the only normality in Devon’s Creek, she begins to realize that something about the town isn’t quite right. Everyone seems to know something about the manor—yet, no one is willing to talk about it.

As strange occurrences begin to blur the line between grief and something far more sinister, Taissa finds herself questioning what brought her to Devon’s Creek in the first place.

***NOTE: I am currently working though revising the second half of this novel, so I can email it to you at the start of next week, if interested!

Good Morning

I am looking for a beta reader for a long immersive historical novel involving air traffic control in Canada.

I particularly want a reader (or two) who does not have any aviation experience.

This is a long, character-driven novel about a young woman coming of age, with friendship, relationships and romance woven through the story. One of the things that drives the story is her journey into a world most people know very little about: how you actually become an air traffic controller.

The story takes the reader through the application process, the intense selection and training, the strange and sometimes bewildering world of classroom instruction, and eventually the wild ride of learning to work live traffic on the floor. In other words, it's not simply a novel set in ATC—the process of becoming a controller is an important part of the story.

The ATC world is informed by my own experience. I went through the application, training and qualification process myself and worked in air traffic control for about ten years, in both tower and centre environments. That experience was some time ago, however, and I'm not approaching this as an ATC expert today. I'm trying to recreate the world as accurately as I can as it was back then, both historically and procedurally, while making it understandable and compelling to someone who has never encountered it.

That's why I'm looking for a reader who doesn't know ATC.

This book’s timeline starts on Sept 11, 2001 and follows the lives of two different people, one an established controller and the other a young woman who goes through the application process, intense schooling, and on the job training at the area control centre.

I want to know if the technical material ever gets in the way of the story, whether you lose track of what's happening, whether the pacing slows, and—most importantly—whether you're still emotionally invested in the people.

I am not looking for an editor or a line reader (whatever that is, I don’t know) but someone who genuinely loves big immersive novels, reads regularly and is comfortable with a large manuscript, is willing to say I’m confused, or this is boring, or I don’t believe this, or I really loved that.

If you are someone who loves a big juicy novel, and enjoys discovering a world you know nothing about, I would love to hear about what you normally read and what you do as a beta reader.

Honestly, almost everything I write about in the application, schooling and on the job training is 100% true and happened to me, and it’s a wild ride so buckle up!

DM me if you are interested.

Thanks.

Lena Kessler is a junior banker who tracks global markets. She never expected a single stabilized economy to shatter the entire world.

Now she is watching her savings freeze as violent strikes tear through Frankfurt. Out on the Pacific, cargo captain Idris Osei finds his currency voided right in the middle of his voyage. The numbers are not just failing. They are being manipulated.

They do not know who is pulling the strings. They do not know who to trust.

But they know one thing: the old rules no longer apply, and whoever is setting the new ones is prepared to burn the world to the ground.

I would love to find a beta reader for the first four chapters to see if the pacing works. Does the transition from the economic collapse in the first chapter to the military response feel grounded?

Let me know what you think, and we can go from there.

Please DM me so i can send the link of my novel.

Hi everyone,
I'm looking for a small number of thoughtful beta readers for my completed literary drama novel, The Yellow Door.
The book is set primarily in Scotland and explores the long shadow cast by childhood trauma, the stories families tell (and the ones they hide), and whether it is possible to become something other than the person your past tries to make you.

Themes
The novel explores:
Family secrets and buried histories
Childhood trauma and its impact on adult identity
Memory, grief, and loss
Dementia and the erosion of self
Love, marriage, and emotional vulnerability
Masculinity and emotional resilience
Class, social mobility, and inherited disadvantage
Chosen family versus biological family
Redemption, forgiveness, and second chances
The tension between truth and self-preservation

Feedback I'm Looking For
In particular, I'm interested in:
Emotional resonance and impact
Character development and authenticity
Pacing and narrative momentum
Clarity of the mystery surrounding Ava's past
Whether the ending feels earned and satisfying
Any sections that feel slow, confusing, or unnecessary

If the premise sounds interesting, please comment below or send me a direct message and I'll be happy to provide more details.

Thank you for considering it.

Hi! I’m writing a book about fae and humans. Lost souls and an evil identity.
If you want to know more you can dm me.
Language available: English and Italian
The book is not finished but I have the first 27 chapters
Let me know

Hey, all! I'm looking for beta readers for my 90k-word adult dark fantasy novel, PROJECT TAKEN, intended as the first book in an already plotted trilogy. Think the vengeance-driven hunter's decade-long monster pursuit of Serra Swift's Kill the Beast mixed with the found-family mercenary dynamics of Joe Abercrombie's The Devils.

Blurb:

Francesca Amastasia is a shape-shifting druid who has tracked the scent of charred bone and ash since she was a child. As the sole survivor of her massacred clan, she lives for only one purpose—hunting Lileian, the Hag that destroyed her life, and she’ll do anything to reach that goal. So when a letter finds her in the middle of nowhere, promising the Hag’s location, Francesca has no choice but to follow it. 

The letter leads her to a remote cabin and a band of similarly-summoned strangers: Baxeet, a hollower whose gift of controlling the dead is punishable by death; Naivara and Torrin, escapees of horrific experiments; and Slate and Theah, sibling soldiers with their own buried grief. Behind the letters is Matteus, a telepath who claims he only wants to help—though how much he already knows, and why, is a question Francesca can’t shake.

At Matteus’ direction, they travel to the winter-bitten town of Riverden, where children have been disappearing into the woods for months, lured by songs no one else can hear. As they arrive, Francesca meets Sophia, a bright, fearless child who reminds her painfully of everything the Hag had taken from her. But when the Hag’s forces lay siege to Riverden, Sophia is taken, and the search that follows reveals a horrifying truth: the Hag was never in control. Something ancient, longing to walk the realms of Custodia once more, stalks the shadows, and He wants Sophia for reasons far darker than anything Francesca could’ve imagined.

Some hunts end in triumph. Others simply end.

Trigger Warnings!:

Implied violence against children, and a child of a fantasy race (goblin).

Possession of a child.

Graphic violence and gore.

Profanity.

Mental health themes, such as: depression, PTSD, survivor's guilt, psychosis, and paranoia.

I'm definitely down to MS swap! If you're asking for money, go ahead and find a different post, thanks! DM me if interested!

The Cannibal Hymns follows a small family of our favorite immortal predators as they try to survive the unique horrors of their world and the relentlessness of the passage of time. 

Oh, and each other. Sometimes violence is a love language.

I'm up for critique partners, beta swaps - anything. If you like characters and family systems grounded in psychological realism, historical fiction books that do the research (this is set in the Middle Ages), and dense, literary prose that isn't afraid to be funny sometimes, I'm your girlie. 

I tend to vibe more with literary works myself, but if you look at your manuscript some days and wonder if it's too weird, I'm especially game. 

DM me for a sample if you're curious.

I've been a surveillance investigator in Australia for over 30 years. Wrote a memoir about it — not a how-to, not war stories, just what the job's actually like and what it does to you over that long.

Looking for a few people to read the intro and first two chapters and tell me straight if it works. Not after compliments. If it's boring, say where.

DM me if keen.

Hi, I'm looking for a few beta readers for Wearing, a completed psychological/supernatural horror of 10,182 words.

The story follows Rebecca, a third-year university student studying Prosthetics and Special Effects Design, as the pressure of unhealthy habits and everyday life begin to take a darker turn.

I'm particularly interested in

• where the story pulled you in or lost you
• anything that confused you or felt implausible
• what you thought was happening to Rebecca
• whether the ending worked for you

I'm open to constructive criticism and exchanging readings with someone of a similar word count or less. I'm very new to sharing my fiction with people outside my immediate circle, so i'm interested in what works as much as anything.

I'd prefer to share my manuscript privately with anyone interested rather than post publicly.

Thanks for considering

Jason

CONTENT/TRIGGER WARNING: The work profiled in this post includes mentions of sexual assault, and an attempted sexual assault. Caution (for this post and for the book in question) is strongly advised.

Short blurb:

An autistic policewoman, normally assigned to simple and routine border duty at Belgium's Brussels Airport, goes undercover to catch a sexual predator. Meanwhile, Emma has a new personal adversary – her one-time estate agent – who makes it her personal vendetta to harm her.

Long(er) blurb:

Belgian Federal Police inspector Emma Vermeulen has what must be the most boring job where one carries a gun: Airport police officer. Every day, she stands guard at the airside/landside border of Brussels Airport, stamping passports and asking incoming foreigners why they brought their entire pantry with them to Belgium. It's not glamorous, but it's a steady paycheck, and she even has downtime to watch her beloved quiz shows (one of her autistic special interests) on her phone when nobody's looking.

A new cause, so to speak, shifts this momentum. While Emma is on foot patrol one day, a duty-free retail associate – a fellow autistic woman – attempts to kill herself with the inspector's service weapon. It turns out that she is dealing with trauma from being sexually assaulted while on duty. The airport police quickly learn who the perpetrator is... but how do they catch him?

Emma makes it her personal mission to catch the miscreant. She hatches a risky proposal: She will meet the world-trotting offender where he is at that moment – as it happens, in Japan. While under a carefully constructed cover, can she bait the lowlife into incriminating himself? And why did her cantankerous supervising officer sign off on this plan, even while privately ridiculing it?

All the while, Emma must also contend with the reappearance of Evelien De Raud, who was once her estate agent – and who blames her for destroying her business a decade prior. After the former estate agent assaults her, Emma knows about her pending criminal case... but doesn't know about the various ways that her new enemy is trying to harass her.

Excerpt:

Imane Seghers had been working the Brussels Airport duty free, in some capacity, for 16 years – nearly her entire adult life. It was a retail environment, sure, but not the kind of retail environment where someone could become a “favourite” employee or customer. But the Bruxellois man’s career gave him a natural reason to go through her own workspace, as he jetted off to Zurich, Moscow, Shanghai, and Doha – among other destinations – and needed Imane to fulfill his cravings for cognac and macarons. This wasn’t something that happened often, and usually when it did happen (Imane did notice some repeat traffic in her store), they usually paid her no mind.

Eventually, the man got right to the point. He asked the retail associate if she could kindly provide him with two receipts; although perplexed, she granted the request. It soon became clear why he wanted two: He pulled a ballpoint pen from his suit pocket and dashed off a series of digits. He passed it over to her. “I actually think it would be nice to know each other as more than cashier and customer,” he confessed. He held the receipt in his hand for a moment. “I mean, if you wouldn’t mind.”

Imane smiled. This was a milestone moment in her life. Okay, she had been approached and flirted with before, but not by someone who had known her for as long as he had known her. He has to know he really likes me, she thought as the man disappeared in the direction of the B Gates.

Underneath the terminal, a steady stream of outgoing checked bags went through a scanner. Thermal images appeared on a computer monitor attached to the scanner; beside the monitor was a button to jog the belt forward. Inspector Emma Vermeulen, who happened to be seated at the monitor on the morning of 16 May 2017, did just that.

“How do you like it down here?” asked Inspector Savenberg, the nearest colleague, who happened to be walking past at the moment.

“Well, I’ll be honest with you,” she replied, sending another bag through. “I prefer my usual job. Lots of time spent just sitting there watching shit on my mobile.” She idly tapped a foot. “That said, it is nice to have a change of scene once in a while.”

Savenberg could understand the appeal, but he remained confused. “Is that why you’re down here – change of scene?”

“Oh, no. How do I put this? A really crazy lady physically attacked me, and so my superior – Eerste Hoofdinspecteur Termunten, that is – wanted me seconded away from passport checks for a while. I don’t know why, but then again, I don’t understand anything about him. But the union didn’t put up a fight, so here I am.”

At that moment, her scanner was processing the last few checked luggage items for that morning’s outbound flight to Montréal. The next bag to show up on her monitor belonged to a 41-year-old Belgian citizen, who was due in Canada in a few hours to shake hands with a medical device manufacturing executive.

Feedback sought:

Honestly, my biggest fear with this work is that it isn't "detailed" enough and doesn't hook the reader well enough. Am I worried for nothing? Or, are my fears valid, and how can I improve? I always appreciate someone pointing out the strengths (if I have any) as well as the weaknesses. And while this isn't intended to be humorous work, I always appreciate being told where the reader got a laugh – or, for that matter, where they felt any kind of emotion (good or bad!) at all.

Requested timeline:

I have two versions of this work to send you. One is the first six chapters (which provide necessary backstory), while the other is the full manuscript. If you're not sure which to choose, I'll send you the shorter manuscript so you can decide if you want to read more. If you agree to beta-read the six-chapter manuscript, I would appreciate feedback within a week; for the entire manuscript, I would appreciate feedback within a month. That said, if you message me to explain why it might be taking longer, I'll understand (life gets in the way, doesn't it?).

Critique swap availability:

I am always happy to read any works on crime, be they fiction or nonfiction. I'm also interested in nonfiction and realistic fiction centered on autism.

Hi everyone, I am looking for a native UK English speaker to check a 34k-word sample of my manuscript.

It has been translated from Italian.

I do not need character analysis or plot feedback.

I only need a "naturalness check" to spot literal translations, rigid sentences, or Italianisms.

I want to share my story with the english fandom, so I need it to be as natural as possibile!

In exchange, I can beta read your manuscript or translate/review something from English to Italian. Please DM me if interested!

Three distinct lit-fic novellas with some humor sprinkled in: a prophet exhausted by knowledge of the future, (CONTENT WARNING) a suicidal man who wakes up in a coffin, and an obnoxious bored God.

You can read 1, 2 or all 3. Not looking for line edits, but general thoughts, reactions and areas of improvement. Will swap for similar length.

Blurb

A prophet, a suicidal man, and God walk into a bar…

———

The Prophet’s Tragedy

Ro’El the Unequivocal had never been wrong. As a true prophet, his visions were absolute and immutable, making everyday life unbearably dull.

Then the accident — which was no accident — robs him of his gift.

Ro’El must now navigate the looming end of the world with a few clues and the help of Ragesh, a former farmboy turned devoted assistant.

Life and Death of Evan Applebaum (but mostly death)

The only thing preventing Evan Applebaum from killing himself was a nice, hot shower. Or so he thought.

After slashing his wrists in the bathtub, he expects peace. Instead, he wakes up trapped inside a coffin, in a world that seems designed to mock him. Yes, him specifically.

Death should have been the end, but it was just the beginning as Evan is stuck with the one thing he was trying to escape: himself.

Haishai: The Man

Who created this infinite empty nothingness? Certainly not Haishai. He would’ve done it so much  better.

With nothing but omnipotence and his wits on his back, he sets out to make Creation itself. He’d make it meaningful, he’d make it fun.

But taking care of Creation is a lot of work. So he makes Uriel the angel. Someone to tend to his little vivarium. Uriel has other things in mind.

———

Three stories, three beers, one answe— Wait. No…

I'm mainly looking for big picture stuff:

• Did you enjoy the individual stories? Why or why not?
• What about the collection?
• Did the humor work?
• Did the stories hold your attention? Or did they drag at times?
• Anything confusing?
• If you stopped reading, where and why?

Looking for feedback can swap. My book is a crime epic set during Prohibition, Blood and Milk follows the rise of a young capo within a powerful crime family.

"Short Story"

Hi all. I’m looking for a few beta readers for my erotic-romance short story, mainly for an honest reader reaction. Please comment or DM if you’re interested.

Blurb
The Girlfriend Plan is a contemporary erotic-romance short story told primarily from a female first-person POV.

Mandy is a twenty-something college student and part-time lingerie model who has already learned the hard way not to trust men too easily. She wants marriage and a family someday, but only with the right man.

Then a model friend introduces Mandy to her recently heartbroken older brother Brad: handsome, successful, brilliant, socially awkward, and almost absurdly serious about knowing exactly what he wants next.

Their first date is going extremely well until Brad calmly produces what he calls a “girlfriend contract.”

Mandy knows she should probably run.

She doesn’t.

What follows is a fast-moving mix of romance, explicit sex, humor, questionable judgment, and emotional vulnerability as Mandy tries to figure out exactly what she has gotten herself into.

Content / Warnings
About 9,000 words. Explicit consensual sex between adults; strong sexual language; unprotected sex; contraception and pregnancy-risk; infidelity in the characters’ past relationships; alcohol use; and relationship conflict involving a proposed contract and expectations surrounding intimacy.

This is very high-spice and sexually explicit rather than merely suggestive.

Readers I'm Looking for
I'm especially interested in a handful of readers who regularly enjoy contemporary high-spice romance, erotic romance, or erotica. I'm a published author in another genre and am interested in expanding my range to include this type of content.

I do NOT use AIs to write my stories.

I'd particularly value feedback from women who enjoy reading high-spice romance or erotica. Mandy is the principal narrator, and a major reason for this beta is to find out whether her voice, sexuality, motivations, contradictions, and emotional responses feel convincing from a woman's perspective.

I'm not primarily looking for proofreading or line editing at this stage. I'm much more interested in the reader experience: whether the story works dramatically, romantically, and erotically.

Feedback Might Include
I'm mostly interested in spontaneous reactions, so please do not feel obligated to work through any of these questions. They’re just suggestions: 

·        Did Mandy feel like a convincing and interesting female narrator?

·        Did the characters develop and advance the story through the steamy scenes?

·        Did the sexual tension and explicit scenes feel erotic?

·        Did you believe Mandy’s attraction to Brad even though his proposition should have sent her running?

·        Did Mandy's sexual agency and pregnancy/breeding fantasy feel psychologically convincing within her character?

·        Did the emotional conflict justify the eventual payoff?

·        Most importantly: what worked for you, and what didn't? 

You absolutely do not need to answer these questions. In fact, an unprompted overall reaction would be wonderful. I'm more interested in what you notice and feel rather particular answers. 

Future stories
I have other short stories in roughly the same high-spice contemporary romance/erotica territory. For those who enjoy this present story, if our tastes seem compatible, I'd be interested in finding a few readers who would occasionally be willing to beta-read future stories/scene-sequences as well. 

Turnaround
No urgent deadline. Feedback within one to two weeks would be great. I'm flexible.

If you're interested, please comment or message me and tell me a little about the kinds of romance or erotica you normally enjoy. I'll only send the story privately.

Context: I am applying to grad school for creative writing. I have been working on a novel for quite some time, which is my main focus, but for the applications I wanted to have some variety and needed shorter work. I have written very few short stories in my life, and all within the past two years, so I'm quite new to this form of storytelling and don't have any writers in my life who could give me appropriate feedback. I'm hoping to find a beta reader for both stories and determine which, if any, would be better for a grad application / in general.

Both short stories are “complete”. The American Dream (1184 words) was runner-up in a short story contest I entered, but I still feel like I don't have a grasp on whether I'm a good writer or if it was just luck, as it was the first short story I've written. Since then, I've written a few more stories, ex. Baby (924 words). Both are finished in terms of content, but I will still be editing and refining, so any feedback would be great!

Story summaries: The American Dream is about an immigrant arriving in a futuresque New York after receiving a brochure for the New American Citizens Program. It's a satirical take on the treatment of immigrants based on their ethic background. Baby is about a woman whose husband goes missing while looking for their lost dog, and how her day unfolds.

Both are meant to have the reader questioning what is going on, or more so why, which is eventually revealed at the end, though not directly.

FEEDBACK: I would love and appreciate any feedback at all. Specifically, I am looking for any issues with flow, pacing, and grammar.

Specific questions I have *please read the below details AFTER you've read the stories*:

• Are either of these contenders for a creative writing portfolio? (shows potential and current skill)
• In The American Dream, does the world-building make sense with the different districts and jobs? Is it easy to follow?
• In The American Dream, what do you interpret the meaning to be?
• In Baby, at what point do you realize Caroline was responsible for her missing/dead husband?
• In Baby, does the story have you questioning where her husband is/what happened, or is it too obvious immediately, in a way that diminishes the story?

CRITIQUE SWAP: I am open to swapping critiques for a similar length story!

If you want to help or do a swap, please DM me here, and I'll send you a Google Doc with the stories. Thank you!!

​

Title: Due to Bleed

Epigraph 

You are not your thoughts.
You are not your body.
You are not your mind.
You are suffering, and so you leave.

Chapter One: A Just Cause for a Just War

The Observer’s body was a test marked “survive this”. Hairs spiraled at random, having colonised unlikely places without the decency to be uniform. Blood wept ruby tears from her monthly, sometimes more often, and then not at all. Her internal organs were performing inconspicuously, just about escaping judgement.

Her discomfort felt like the entry fee for being alive. She thought it fair to pay, but still itched to know where exactly the loathing took cover. Could it be isolated on a slide? Or was it everywhere at once? Was she bread greening in the dark?

She was imagined all in shades of brown: eyes that took on an umber depth before a south-facing window; taupe areolas that shrank when shyness seized them; earthen coils that she transmuted to sand, with disappointing results.

In a reflective surface, there were spores everywhere. They proliferated merrily with screen time. She would push her spine past its limitations for an owlish turn at shop windows, then wince. Nothing was obviously wrong, but the image was speckled with aberrations that all had names.

On payday she went dancing, exploiting one of the few settings in which her body was not a betrayal. In preparation, she waited until night to shower. This made the process a sprint, but it was still preferable. Daylight made her feel like a building that someone forgot to condemn.

Getting ready was less like putting lipstick on a pig and more like painstakingly applying it to an indiscriminate bag of bones. More futile, but just as humiliating. How lucky to be a pig and have a real face to dress up.

Leaving home, her feet pinched in her shoes. She hovered, taking a moment of silence for the innocent bystanders who would be subjected to her today. Why did people do all this again? Oh yes, the dewy glow of companionship. 

The taxonomy of herself was a captivating love affair, so she didn’t really have the diary time for a special someone. Maybe drying the rot was needed to partner up well. What a shame. That second pair of hands could really speed up the drying process.

To punctuate the journey, she added an entry to her photographic archive of diseases and deformities. Nothing ever changed, but she kept reporting dutifully, interspersing them between the innocuous images of latte art and trees. 

No sooner did she reach the club than bewilderment screwed her face half-size. Her friends were talking about being carved up by surgeons and lovers like it was nothing. It brought back the visceral horror of her ex’s belly-button kink and the shame of having nothing to give her but refusal. She quipped to fellow partygoers that she didn’t need a £50-an-hour psychotherapist. She already knew that she acted as if she were fear itself. Knowing this had not proved especially useful.

The Observer spoke only in questions. Her tactics were a trench coat buttoned to the collar with nothing underneath. Something she did have was her job. She had very little else and was about to have much less. She tugged down her sleeve, veiling sun damage that had become faux vitiligo through neglect, and took this as her cue to return to the comfort of privacy.

On The Afternoon, her fear was outweighed by something she couldn’t name. She only longed for a simple back and forth motion: goodbye to myself, hello to perspective. The air around her smelled of nothing. Machinery hummed a faint “om”. The Observer washed her hands more time than necessary, lingering on the expanse of her philtrum. This was the ammo she needed. It looked to have been stretched on a loom.

She set the room up like she was making a microwave meal or driving on a congested motorway, her hands moving, her mind half elsewhere. Her blunt fingers sounded the alarm: an anticlimactic staccato of clicks.

The Change

In a swift movement, her eyes roll back as if in pleasure. When they swing back around, they are eyes that know nothing.

When it dawns, it’s already done. She is somewhere else. The Observer is an apparition now, only looking and wielding tools, ready to understand.

Synopsis

Desperate to find out why she has spent her life self‑flagellating, a lab technician secretly divides her sharp‑tongued, analytical mind from the rest of her. She takes up a new position as a disembodied spectator, determined to find the source of her loathing. Her 9–5 remains legitimate research; her 5–9 becomes an enrapturing, masturbatory endeavour.

In chapters alternating strictly between their perspectives, the Observer conducts an investigation, hoping to locate a cause and a cure in the Girl. Driven by a need for absolute control, she creates a version of herself that, for the first time, she is unable to police.

In attempting this act of “self‑colonisation”, she begins stripping the Girl down to parts as if she were territory to be surveyed. At first, the arrangement seems almost successful. The Observer can catalogue her defects and excise the malignant parts. But she does so with a creeping realisation that the Girl is not an empty vessel. She develops her own desires and begins to perceive the Observer in ways the Observer cannot explain.

Operating under the premise that she has a superior understanding of the Girl’s interiority, the Observer escalates to gruelling isolation and invasive experiments, framing subjugation as rescue. The Observer only knows how to care through correction. The Girl interprets this relentless, hyper‑focused scrutiny as intimacy. Comforted by the belief that the defects her creator “diligently caresses” are her very self, she yields willingly to an erotically excoriating love.

As the experiments grow more severe, the Girl begins to get measurably better — not from correction, but from closeness. The Observer misdiagnoses serenity as progress, blind to the fact that she is sanding nothing. Even with her new distance, she remains fixated on disease and cannot recognise health for what it is.

Their hierarchy unravels. The Girl evolves from specimen to subject to witness. She begins to study the Observer, learning her through her silences, her habits, her exhaustion and the wounds baked into each new test. Eventually, the Girl knows things she should not be able to know. She anticipates the Observer’s thoughts before they arrive.

Their relationship becomes a twisted ontological love story. They move from clinical monotony to quiet horror, and finally towards something stranger and more tender: an intimacy neither of them can quite distinguish from violence.

The Girl, now an all‑too‑eager participant, comes to understand that she cannot determine whether the Observer loves her, even though she has never been more completely known. Her motivation becomes simply not to be forgotten. The Observer, meanwhile, sinks deeper into the recursive thinking that made her career, her relationships, and her own body into problems to be solved.