featured WRITER

monstroooo

You know that feeling when the work of a deviantART writer you've long known and enjoyed reading appears in your inbox, via a new deviation or some sort of feature, and you're all, hey, neat-o, I wonder what their profile's like now, and one thing leads to another and the next thing you know you're featuring them for theWrittenRevolution?

No? That's a shame, because I do, and it's totally the best feeling. Anyway, so, I was made aware of the existence of monstroooo's writing a few days ago and now you, reader, are going to be made aware of it, and hopefully you'll be as glad about it as I am. monstroooo writes mostly prose, and it is really brilliant prose, with fantastically real, international and diverse characters, and an amazingly deft skill with world-building in particular. Also, he has four works on the topic of stationery and you have no idea how incredibly difficult it was for me to not make the following four deviations those ones.

The Ballad of Eiy'ra Haiz
Call him drunken Ira Hayes, he don't answer any more.
Not the whiskey drinking Indian, the marine who went to war.
A beaten up jukebox played old country songs in the corner of the bar. Outside, the mid-afternoon sun beat down on the cracked clay floor. The rocks surrounding the small mining town of Cripple Creek almost seemed to glow in the heat, and the horizon was half-hidden by haze. The township went about its business under the watchful eye of the local Dominion garrison.
But those in the Pink Moon sheltered from that world. The barman, Townes, was an old war veteran with only one arm. In place of the other was a crude robotic substitute. He served up drinks with little more than a vice, powered by a handful of servos which were connected to his arm just below the elbow. He was strangely proud of the device – he'd often joke that he'd never play piano again, but his sex-life had improved tremendously.
Old Ma Haggard sat at the other side of the bar, smoking. She, like alm

The Ballad of Eiy'ra Haiz.

Young zealots have a certain... rapport, Ira broadcast thoughtfully, uncertainly phrasing the alien social concepts. They often tease each other, have certain competitions.

"Yeah? Like what?"

They try to visualize the most bleak and terrible deaths for their comrades.

This is, I am almost 100% sure, the first story I ever read by monstroooo, and it's amazing. I know that because I left an incoherent comment about how amazing it was on the piece itself, in 2011. It is, actually, so amazing that I remembered it three years after I read it, so there. So you should really read it: the world-building is absolutely gorgeous, and the small, yet wonderful, instances of humour make the ending all the more tragic. It's all there and it's all utterly perfect.


Stationery Pt IStanley loved stationery.
He loved the way it smelled when you stripped away the crinkly cellophane wrapper. He loved the Spartan beauty of an unspoiled pad of paper (A4, plain, 80gsm). He loved the sound of a cap crisply clicking onto the top of a Biro. He loved the texture of a freshly-sharpened pencil and the flake of the finely-honed graphite point. He loved gazing over stacks and stacks of untouched Post-Its, each a perfect square of yellow, an army of ideas awaiting orders.
He loved everything about it. Stationery was neat. It was orderly. It was always needed, easily replaceable, and something that everyone can appreciate.
Stanley reckoned he had the best job in the world. Working in the post room of a three-storey insurance company, Greenlight Insurance, he was at the very nexus of stationery for the whole building. Letters would come in crumpled, dusty and worn from their journeys; and go out crisp, freshly franked and printed, ready for the adventure ahead. Deliveries of new

Stationery, pt. I.

"There's no point in being successful," he would sometimes say, slapping a hand on the desk enthusiastically, "if you don't feel successful. If a man doesn't end his years signing his name with a fine pen, what's he lived his life for?"

Earle had an awful lot of fine pens, so he must have felt a lot of success in his life.

Leaderboards.

A rocket clips the floor in front of me and I tumble through the air. Freefall. Hangtime.

And that’s when he makes the mistake. He leaps from a platform, Rocket Launcher primed for the killing blow. But I already know that I’ve won.

Infini-Fridge 9000.

At first, it was amazing. As a freshly-recruited maintenance engineer on the Luxury Star Cruiser The Astronut, Barry had found his new home and workplace full wonders. He walked through rooms so tall he couldn't see the sky; he swept up litter from artificial beaches which captured more beauty than the real thing; he watched the stars pass by like rain from the sweeping observation deck.

And, of course, he had his Infinity Fridge.

featured CRITIQUES

GoldenNocturna

on It Wouldn't Hurt by Antebelle.

"Slowly, Reymond removed his hand from covering half his face. One eye was timid, the other deadly. His lips were parted in fear, but the other side pulled a devilish smile." This isn't physically possible for a human being to achieve--unless you were going for a more supernatural angle, and this other being isn't just a figment of your narrator's imagination.

read the full critique here.

ActsofArt

on Search by k3igu.

Your characters are very convincing. I would have liked to know more about the woman, even if you are saving details for later, what Sophie felt for her: hatred? worry? love? and maybe just a little hint of why she's searching, or just what brought her to the alleyway. I guess I'm looking for more of the why to bring the story home.

read the full critique here.

featured RESOURCES

The Now What? Months

here, for those of you who participated in NaNoWriMo - there's a whole list of resources there for the editing process!

How to Make the Most out of Lit Groups

here, by our very own awesome TheMaidenInBlack, for resources that are a bit closer to home!

How to Make the Most out of Lit GroupsCommunity Week
..and stay active! Which we all know isn't always easy.
with a side of "submission rules, those tricksies"
Now, first of all: this article assumes a lot of stuff! 
you're interested in writing and/or reading.you're not joining thousands of groups just to submit your stuff all over the place to get exposure but give nothing back.
you're not simply following groups to stay up-to-date on their events and news, without really wanting to participate in their life.
And with that off of our systems, let's start the tour!
First of all, remember this: Lit groups take a lot more effort than any other. This is because, obviously, reading through deviations takes more time than viewing pictures and photographs.
So let's create a fictional situation.
I know there are people who are on deviantART multiple times a day, but let's suppose that you're an average user who logs in once a day, and has thirty minutes to an hour of free time to devote to dA. And when