The Pub Discussion Board

Your Cabal story is really good.  I do hope you finish it.  So many good stories on this site are left abandoned, please continue your adventure into life and beyond.

Chapter 2

I know that I said this about the first chapter, but it’s worth repeating — There is something very Cinematic about your writing. I feel like it could be like an XXX version of a film like ‘Big trouble in Little China”. I could practically see the dolly shot and the zoom-in of the 8 track tape Mark tosses into the road only to be crushed by the bus…very cool. You really set the scene and the vibe with your writing.

I love the details you write Like Mark holding the keys and his teeth to open the door while he’s holding Tricia, then drops them into his hand.

Tricia is still a total creep and Mark is still insane for being kinda into her lol ( then he has the nerve to blame it on his dong….No Mark you are an irredeemable deviant)

I love how you juxtapose Heather’s innocence,  cuteness and terminal illness with Mark’s hand wringing about the ‘cure’…it's such a fun dilemna to foist upon your MC.

There is a part of me that hopes the cure is a lie. and Z just wants to show Mark that he isn't the man he’s been
+ deluding himself to believe he is.

I hope the needle drops continue throughout the entire series, I think it’s a great device and I can see the possibilities in tying music/lyrics into the narrative themes.

Speaking of Music north Platte reminds me of a song lyric: ‘Stretched out on a tarmac /Six miles south of North Platte’ from the song ‘Nervous Tic Motion of The Head To The Left’

Demonic sphincter restoration—that is all I have to say about that

I cannot wait to meet the family, I'm praying that they freak the fuck out and that the good Christian mom/wife (Penelope?) tries to hire an exorcist or something. I mean until she becomes a full-on ‘whore of satan’

Either way, whether or not my hopes/predictions bear themselves out, I’m super excited for where you take it. But most importantly I trust that it will be both well-written and completely bonkers.

Don't worry I won't flood your thread with a post for every chapter, I think from here out, I'll probably do them periodically every 4 chapters.

Hi Abbadon,

I have recently found this pub, after searching for some authors initially found at asstr.org (RIP).

Thanks for the intriguing story. It sucked me up and made me binge-read it ...

abaddon.pale wrote:

I want to thank you for your kind words.   I had forgotten about Mark's Keys and what not.   Yes Trisha is a piece of work. And she will come back into the story later on ( though as of this comment ) she has not yet. Probably in about Chapter 25 or so.

Good to hear that the future is nigh... please by all means do continue until a worthy conclusion is found. This Story deserves nothing less than a more than decent finale without being dredged to pieces or deus-ex-machina(-tions). A tall challenge for every story and storyteller.

abaddon.pale wrote:

Cinematic Writing.... Dude! that is what I am going for. I am trying to paint a picture with words.  But its a balancing act, use enough Color-Text to bring the world alive, without so much that the reader gets board.  Also letting them know what is important to the story and what isn't.  It's tricky. but it's fun to try to work out.

Yes, I also agree. The imagery is  - IMHO - well balanced.
What does somewhat hinder the flow, however, are word-substitutions with phonetically similar words (scent<>sent, wails<>whales, ...). I have seen this frequently with Speech-To-Text systems or overeager spellcheckers, so proofing might drastically reduce this. (I could possibly provide for this to a certain extent.)
Getting used to convolutions of the flow by retelling events from another perspective/character is sometimes tedious but actually augments the storyline rather nicely.

abaddon.pale wrote:

Should you continue reading I think you will find plenty more twists and turns in the story.. I'm writing chapter 20 right now. and while overall the story has stayed true to my original outline, it has gone places I never would have imagined when I wrote the words "The headlights of Mark's 1962 Jeep Wagoneer illuminated the dusty gravel road....."

I eagerly await reading chapters 18 and 19, as soon as they become presentable.

abaddon.pale wrote:

In fact I started writing Bliss as a strange sort of for-shadowing for Cabal, but it got so fun to write that it has started feeding back into Cabal. e.g. some of the characters and content in the later chapters of Cabal Chapter 10 on.. are directly inspired by events happening in Bliss.
Abaddon

Which I will look into, as I somehow ran out of text to read ... 😉

Thanks again for this utterly fantastic, dirty, hedonistic, nightmarish, captivating, ..., and unrealistic story, which in light of the past and current events and developments actually appears possessing more and more credible aspects ... would somehow explain quite some of the weirder aspects of our history and current situation...


Thanks and regards!

Edited: Fixed formatting AND the errors _my_ overeager spell-checker introduced ...

Last edited by Sqinty_Jones (2025-02-12 01:24:31)