[Peter Graham]

Hi Culhwch,

I think your writing is excellent - clear, fluid and well-paced. I agree with Pyan that this is definitely of publishable quality. It seems to be almost unfashionable nowadays to be able to put a coherent sentence together ("Creativity is soooo much more important than Boring Rules" and all that tosh), but you show how a story can come alive and really draw in the reader when it is well-written.

A couple of (very) minor observations, if I may. In the first piece, the last paragraph seemed to be a shift in narrative voice that verged on being a mini-info dump. You'd previously avoided that in the way you had teased out character information through dialogue, but be careful not to repeat yourself too much - you flagged up the fact that our heroes were all related perhaps once too often for my liking.

Secondly, you repeated "whipped" a bit too much as a means of describing the effects of the high wind.

To nit-pick further on section 2:-

They had mounted a gentle rise and come onto a cliff that overlooked a calm bay.

Keep the tense consistent with what has come before - "they mounted...." is fine.

The road dropped to the shoreline, skirting the bay before disappearing amongst some grassy dunes on the far side. Laurie reined in,

No comma necessary here

and the others followed suit. A group of riders was emerging from between the dunes. ‘Is that them, do you think?’ he asked.

Nothing wrong per se, but I think you could find a better word than "emerging". It doesn't really convey much. How about - "a line of riders was threading its way between the dunes..." or something like that?

‘Escorting a king?’

‘Of course not,’ she said, looking to the approaching riders. ‘We’ve a different task altogether. We’re here to insult a king.’

Ever so slightly, this dips out of credible dialogue and starts looking a bit like explanatory dialogue. How about:-

"Escorting a king?"

"Insulting one, more like," snorted Selyne.

He was flanked by two well-built, dark-featured youths. As they neared

Comma?

‘At least he didn’t wear that god-awful cloak,’ Selyne answered, a smile playing at her lips

on?

Laurie gave his sister a look and spurred forward to meet the king’s party as it mounted the rise

Again, "mounted" doesn't sound quite right - crested?

‘Then you’re my escort?’ Aidan said, voice gruff.

Either "in a gruff voice" or "gruffly" (is that a real word? Sounds like it might be...)

It's all minor stuff. You can write and write well. That's really all that matters, at the end of the day!

Regards,

Peter