Anyone willing to read a short story I wrote?

First of the cover is pretty nice.

>Aaaahhh, his weakened satisfied exhale sounded to him similar to an elderly woman’s dying orgasm.

That`s too much bro. Try something else to describe his aaaaaah or leave it out completely.

I unironically like this. The prose is a bit choppy and awkwardly mechanical, but it actually fits the story and theme very well. It was a compelling enough story that I read all the way through; obviously the character is very interesting and drives the story. I'll be honest, if it was a regular human instead of a anthropomorphized dragon wearing a kimono, it wouldn't work half as well- but I think the strange humour of the situation makes it all fit together. Is there any specific critique you are looking for? All in all, I give it a 9/10.

Hey man, thanks for giving it a read, yeah i'm going for something kinda subversive and i'll probaly end up doing more illustrations for it. I'm about to read yours, I'll let you know what I think. Thanks.

I'm glad you like the cover art, took a bit of effort to do. Haha, I was going for dark comedy. That first paragraph i was kinda riffing, so stuff like "He swam through the room like an injured fish" i was intending to be funny and kinda silly. And i suppose when he's not trying emulate someone else his mind is riddled with all sorts of weird self-conscious stuff.
Thanks for reading it.

I actually liked this shit. Wouldn;t pay a rat's ass for it but I liked.

>being this autistic

Thanks a lot for reading. I'm really glad that you enjoyed it unironically. You're right about the prose being awkward and mechanical. I suppose its partly to suit the story, the awkwardness of the character and all that, but i tend to write with an emphasis on imagery so sometimes the flow of what i write gets messed up a bit. I think I'll end up doing some some more illustrations for it, and turn it into the literary equivalent of a "graphic novel" if you can call it that. Hard to find a market for this kind of stuff but its still a developing thing. Cheers.

Haha! Well thanks for reading it. Would you be more inclined to pay for something like this was in a book with like 3 more stories and a lot more (actually decent) illustrations? I'm trying to figure out how this thing could become something marketable.

Thanks my dude!

Also, more illustrations would be awesome. How many are you thinking for a story about this length?

>
It was time to commit to tasting the fruits of five years of my labour, and whether they were bitter, or rotten, or sweet and glorious, I would just have to find out first hand. - I like this.

The dialogue is really strong in chapter 4. The whole of it reads really well, and has locked me into reading more.

Nice,pretty descriptive prose in chapter 5. I'm assuming you're going for a tone of the time period, of the protagonist's "olden-era" perspective.

little obvious foreshadowing, perhaps you could work them in a bit more subtly, "wife's hand on belly" ( okay now after finishing the story, the payoff for this might be even better if it was constructed a little more delicately, because it makes the ending even more tragic, but at the same time, it works because we are aware that she is pregnant, but the son and the father are ignorant of it - so im not sure) and " the guest rooms left waiting for your arrival" for example.

"But she had already swung open the door and rushed out, into the dark." - this whole chapter was great. you're dialogue is really good, and written nicely to fit the time period.

Okay I read it. It's cool, I liked it. The only thing which glaringly stood out was some of the sentences in the first two chapters were a bit long and would read better if shortened and broken up. The mystery of the story could be enhanced with a bit more subtly in the storytelling as well. Good stuff man.

Good question, something I'm still trying to figure out. I might have to see how many "book" pages the writing takes up and go from there. I could go comic-ey with it, and have multiple panels in a page of illustrations, or
single page illustrations, or a mixture of both. As for number, for this story, maybe 5 "book" pages of illustrations

Thanks a lot for reading and the commentary user. I didn't know where k was going with it when I began and wrote the whole thing in a flurry, so I jammed some of those foreshadowing things in at the end, evidently a little ham-fistedly.

I agree I get a little carried away with sentence length sometimes. I'm happy to hear though that, from what you said, the writing got clearer as I got clearer about what I wanted to write about.

All that said, were any of the "twists" (I.e. That he actually had gone back in time, that he was related to the girl with the blue eyes, the big one at the end) satisfactorily surprising, or were they totally expected?

I think this is a great idea, and really fits with the kind of story you're telling. I see you've done a number of stories with the same character. Are they interrelated at all--like, sequentially? I think like, four or five episodes, the first one being KD's kind of origin story, two or three being his training, coming of age, and saving the day from a minor villain who is a minion for an even greater evil, or those gangsters being a part of a larger, organized group bent on injustice, and finally one where he confronts the great evil/mob boss, would be magnificent. With your visual art that would obviously be a big project, but I think it would be cool as fuck.

Have you seen Xavier: Renegade Angel? KD reminds me of a more good-natured Xavier.

the twists were nice. what really built the suspense for me was the chapter when he lands and first speaks to Adam. That got me intrigued. and i think the payoff got diluted a bit with the obvious remark "as if the room had been built for you".if you had kind of kept the reader/and the timetraveler in the dark a little bit longer the payoff may have been better. But the twist was nice, and i liked how adam thinks his mom wasn't pregnant yet. a little more work and the twists will work better.

well the first one is kind of rubbish and i just wrote it without planning anything so i wouldnt include it in the first series. I think the stories wouldnt necessarily be in order, and i havent thought about an overarching arc, but almost like a series, each story being an episode, through which more of his character is revealed, why he is the way he is, his origin. I wouldn't want to explain his origin immediately though, rather slowly reveal it as how it contributes to the character. Thanks for the advice about the illustrations, looks like i'll go ahead with it.

if you're interested, heres the specific scene from Out For Justice that this story draws upon, and directly references. The Kimono Dragon's strange dialogue to the gangsters is all lines from the scene he's trying to recreate.: youtube.com/watch?v=4Zu1YIukylw