RE: Sarah, Returned--Chapter One
Yes! Loving it. For me, it really flowed and pulled me in. No jarring elements at all.
The only bit I didn't fully buy into was the last couple of sentences:
This forces Karen to break the staring contest and look away first. Excellent. I give myself a mental high-five. She played into that one perfectly. Do whatever you want now, Your Evil Majesty. You may not know it yet, but I just won this war. The question is, how long will it take for me to officially claim my victory?
My reaction to that was, hmm, all you won was one very minor skirmish. And that made me start to wonder if Sarah's perception of reality was accurate. Was that the reaction you want from the reader?
I'm a very fast reader and I love this length of chapter. But for most people, it would be too much for one day. So you might do better if you break each chapter up into maybe 3 posts. @michelle.gent's latest wolf story was split into 118 installments, for eg.
Adding one or two pictures breaks up the text and makes it easier to read as well.
Looking forward to the next installment.
Thanks, @kiwideb. I do indeed want people to wonder about Sarah's perception of reality. The things that happen to her later on in the book, I want the reader to question it, and wonder if Sarah really is crazy, until the end of the book.
The book itself is twenty chapters, plus an epilogue, and it comes in at over 104,000 words. I've already edited it twice, and am using this opportunity to edit it again as I post chapters. It gives me a fresh look at them. The chapters are longer than in my other books. If I'd included everything I wanted in this story, it would have been more than 200,000 words, so editing is my friend. :)
I never thought about adding pictures to a novel, but maybe that would work in an online format. And, your idea of shortening or breaking up the chapters for Steemit is a good idea. Thank you so much for your advice. I appreciate it. Thanks for reading, too. I hope you enjoy the rest of the story.