[Heartsong]

Hi,
I've only been here for a few days. The first night I went reading on this forum, there was a writer who had a link to the first part of a book they'd written and asked for feedback.

Unfortunately, there was a glitch in the webpage, and when I went to post a reply to their request, it said I wasn't logged in and I lost the person's thread.

I had taken the liberty (and some time) to edit the first several paragraphs which I am copying here:

" During the dark days following the assassination of Earth’s first president of color, the first true superhero appeared. Unlike those to follow, he did not come from twisted mutation of the flesh or some inner longings of a mind driven mad by voices they did not know. Nor was he birthed from a womb destroyed by his exiting - a birth of flesh and blood that would later haunt the dreams of every operating nurse and doctor who witnessed it.

His arrival was heralded by a single sonic boom and a blazing light illuminating a star-studded night in the high country of Maine. A mass of charred, limp flesh, his body slammed into an open glen, the resulting heat and shock wave devastating the terrain for miles around, destroying all life, flattening the landscape. On the outer fringe, ancient oaks that spread their limbs wide when Columbus stumbled upon the shores were uprooted and flung about as easily as a child might swipe his arm over a table, scattering his toys. Alarmed animals, sensing the impending danger, bolted to escape the searing heat while many others met their doom in the outer rings of the concussive blast.

The earth moaned in response, trembling at the site of the impact, sandy mounds fused into glass. It appeared as though someone had dropped a pebble into the center of a perfectly still pond, ripples radiating out and, at the leading edge of the ripples, heat ignited a vicious wind, drawing debris in an upward plume high into the atmosphere.

In the center of it all he lay motionless and, for the first time in his existence, unconscious. The sensory part of his mind awoke and his body began to adapt, to heal. Lungs, collapsed and solid in the void of space, began to inflate. Arteries secreted away in his heart, designed to survive the vacuum of space, began to reach out from their hiding place and down strangely humanoid-looking limbs. He drew a breath, activating chemical receptors deep within his brain that analyzed the atmosphere, allowing his internal organs to adapt.

Horribly charred skin began to heal, taking on its natural bronze hue. His skeletal structure had not been damaged by the impact with the Earth’s surface, but he had suffered muscle and tissue damage. Were they caused by the impact or events that had come before? No matter. His body had healed.

He opened his eyes as the protective sheaths that had covered them in space, allowing him to see and retain fluid around his orbs, retreated. They were dim, but soon enough would be a mystical brilliant blue sapphire color, each a solid orb with no pupil or iris, in a face that glowed and pulsed in harmony with his biorhythms.

Still not totally attuned to the world around him, he lay there, looking up into the heavens. There was a time when he could discern the spectral analysis of stars and entire solar systems with little effort. But his mind was still acclimating itself to new surroundings. Instead, he simply gazed at the stars, not recognizing them for what they were.

He could feel something solid beneath his flesh, but did not move. He listened, but there was nothing to hear. Everything was quiet...deafeningly quiet. He was as if new born, a blank slate that needed to be imprinted. His brain, capable of processing information at rates incomprehensible to humans, could formulate but a single thought, “Who am I”?"

If you read your original words, while this is way far from where it needs to be, please see the necessity for an editor. A person writing a story or book has very little time to draw the reader's emotions and thoughts so that they continue to read.

Thanks!