Blogfest: I'll Scratch Your Back, You Scratch Mine
Welcome to the ISYB,YSM blogfest (don't you love acronyms? With such a long title, I thought I'd shorten it, LOL!)! Check the other participants at the blogfest link – I'll be sure to visit them until the 13th, in the meantime, here's me.
I write adult fantasy as Barbara G.Tarn and I'm currently looking for betas for Chronicles of the Varian Empire – The Left-Handed warrior (from which you'll have an extra excerpt on Sunday, so come back if you like what you read here).
The first draft is complete and ready to go out to betas and editors. It's 40.000words (like CVE1 – The Spell).
I'm looking for overall thoughts on plot and pacing, and if the readers gets confused or lost or bored. I'll have an editor or two to check grammar and typos, but feel free to point them if you see them. I need to know if the story was compelling enough or you had to trudge to it, bored to death! 
I need a reader's input, so if you're a writer, take off your writer/editor hat, thank you!
The blurb:
The struggle between Humans and Genn gets nasty.
Orphaned by Human bandits, adopted by Genn, seeking revenge and becoming a warrior under a not-so-accomodating Emperor. Especially if you refuse to serve him to side with the Genn.
The first 500 w0rds:
1. GLADIUS
The caravan of colored wagons meandered like a snake across the bare plain, moving at a slow pace. Some were light and open, others were closed either with wood or heavy curtains to protect their noble occupants from the harshness of the unpaved road. Knights in chain mail and weirdly shaped helmets rode along, protecting the wagons and checking everything was going smoothly. The atmosphere was cheerful, and calls and laughter went from one vehicle to the next.
Some wagons belonged to strange ephebic beings with long blond hair and pointed ears: the Genn, one of the four Magical Races, who were free citizens of the Empire. They were all tall, slender, keeping their hair long even in old age as they never went bald, and had blue or green eyes. They were a minority in the long train, but they were striking with their golden hair gleaming in the sun.
It wasn't the first time they left the Capital, where they had been living for the past seven years, but Kurt and Blondsun were quite excited by this trip. The Emperor had decided to hold some games at Gladius, where it never rained, to celebrate fifteen years of reign and peace. Curled up at the back of Blondsun's father's open cart, they often glanced at the Emperor's closed wagon behind them which was the center of the procession, surrounded by the Imperial Guard. The wooden wagon was painted with the colors of the Empire, its four windows closed by heavy curtains, its occupant invisible and well protected both from the heat and from assassins.
"Do you think I could participate in the Games?" Kurt asked, hopeful, to his almost-twin, as he liked to call Blondsun. A dark-haired teenage Human in a cart full of Genn, he was the odd one in this particular lot.
"You're not a warrior yet," Blondsun flashed his dazzling Genn smile at him. "You're good, but not good enough yet. You could win the archery contest, but the rest?"
Kurt frowned. He was fifteen, not much for a Genn, but a lot for a Human like him. People were made emperors and inherited lands and titles at sixteen in the Human world! He was better than Silverstar, Blondsun's older brother, and his own sword-teacher was very proud of him, saying he could take advantage of being left-handed. He was sort of slim and didn't have a horse to joust, but still…
"You're envious because I might actually make it," he grumbled.
"Envious?" Blondsun stared at him in wonder. "And tell me, Kurt, what can a Genn apprentice magic user envy about a training Human warrior?"
Kurt smiled against his will. Blondsun was right. He was still a grown-up child, but he wasn't stupid. Besides, everybody knew Genn were superior to Humans, and not only because they belonged to a powerful Magical Race.
