Some quick Day-Old Thoughts on Flightback:
I'll echo others saying that the prose and trance are well-done. Warmth and relaxation, unsurprisingly, suffuse the reading experience.
Thanks for that. Nice word, "suffuse", too. I'll add it to the list I'll try and fit into some later thing.
I found my suspension of disbelief rather strained, though. What are the odds of an EMCSA writer meeting an EMCSA reader by chance in the wild? And that reader being a fawning fan of that writer specifically? And of that fan being a hypnotist? And of that hypnotist having a profoundly ethical philosophy, which I suspect mirrors the author's own exactly? And that author falling into a deep trance quickly on his first try with little or no previous trance experience? I'm no mathematician, but I think the Venn diagram there is pretty small.
But then again, I like stories about magic spells, psychic powers, superheroes, and aliens too. Maybe I shouldn't poke too much fun at a premise that's trying to be a bit more grounded. I'm finding the grounded ones more and more appealing the more mature I get. Besides, if people didn't submit their blatant self-insert gratification fantasies here, the archive would be empty.
Yeh, in an archive filled with stories where the MC comes via a quicky flash of light or magic or technology or drugs or costumed superhero superpowers, the idea of a "realistic" induction seems a little stretchy sometimes. I guess.
Fwiw, much of what I described in chapter 1 happened to me in real life earlier this year, and I can easily imagine that the flight attendant in question, who really did have one of the most beautiful smiles I've ever seen and really did move me exactly as described, was a reader of exactly this sort of thing. They live a difficult existence, away from home sometimes for days at a time, which can make it difficult to fit in a personal life, and are often treated shabbily, indeed like, as Paul Westerberg so colorfully (and disdainfully, and unpleasantly) put it, a "Waitress In The Sky". Yet we all have needs, and desires, and hopes for something better, and find it where and when and how we can. And as I know from talking to my psychotherapist friends, and from my partner who majored in psychology, hypnosis is a thing, and like other things in college, it gets explored, sometimes rather expertly, even by amateurs.
For me, the "how" of the MC state is an entirely different issue than what happens before, during, or after. I shy away from the easy way in favor of something that is often ... sexier, at least for me, sometimes in combination with other methods, as in some of my other writing. Others feel differently, I know.