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23 Public Reviews Given
175 Total Reviews Given
Public Reviews
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Review of Birmingham  
Review by grim
Rated: 18+ | (4.0)
Weeellllllll, very nice, really enjoyed this one. i hope when you asked for a quality review you meant thorough as all getout.

I notice quite a few ellipses used when a dash would do. I find ellipses only prudent when representing omitted words.

This intro paragraph did some nice work, but some excessive work, too. I found the story much more engaging on a level of character development speaking for a larger cause (racism). Civil rights movement and Vietnam did not play a part in the story of George and Big B. Violence, sure, but otherwise, nope. I think an intro focused solely on establishing the character's voice would be perfect, because I like the way that happens as it is.

"He gave me a job. He cussed a red, white, and blue streak. And he also gave Big Broken a job…and for that…I am forever thankful."
* middle sentence seems to break the flow

"You would yank down on the crank, real hard, and sear flat a dozen or so sheets at a time. Starch jets would pelt the fabric, and the result was an almost razor-thin board of cotton that would sound like a sack of snakes if you peeled it apart."
* excellent detail, good for the character's voice, too

"Cecil didn’t mind..."
* ummm.... who the devil is Cecil?

"waterfalling sweat into in our food..."
* typo

"We ate in silence, mostly:"
* no need for a colon there i think

"I found out later that his real name was James Mayweather. However, I never called him such."
* since i'm reviewing as i'm going, i don't know if this is important, or just cursory. but, i'll mention it--if the narrator never calls him this, i'd rather not know it. there's already a lot of names floating around, i'd prefer to keep that number down to as few as necessary.

"...at my little shanty, on Griggs St, so exhausted..."
* commas unnecessary, breaks flow of sentence

"...I got the niggling feeling..."
* not sure about american fifties dialect, but i've noticed this word in more common use from the british english users on the site

"I walked tentatively towards the colored section... ...But if he was sitting down, sipping coffee, or whatever…well, I suppose that would fall under the classification of déjà vu in reverse: a pleasant ending for once."
* this scene's suspense was building up so nicely, and then this section caused it to fall a little flat. once i read "i walked" i took it to mean he was there. we'd already gone over the fact that there would be consequences if claude wasn't there, and then his hair stands on end, and then we hear there will be consequences again. "walked" is too perfective if the scene is continuing. then, the listed consequences in the following pargraph seem to be in reverse-- "nothing will happen, or something BIG will happen" is a lot better than "something BIG will happen, or, you know, nothing"

"...my spine sticking hard to the thin rail that ran along it."
* not quite clear to me

"His lower jaw set like the prow of an ocean liner."
* might not be as common in american english, either-- we say 'bow'. that, or i'm an idiot.

"...like the black and white of yin & yang."
* just wondering how appropriate this reference is to this character

"...and for God’s sake don’t believe in Santa Claus, or overtime."
* very very nice

"Nevertheless, the fact of the matter is, sometimes a feeling can come boiling up in a man so strong—so powerful and overbearing—that a thousand ships couldn’t pull him to shore. And that’s how I felt inside: big, angry, and maybe even a little broken."
* i like the last part of the paragraph, but the 'thousand ships' metaphor doesn't quite say 'broken' to me. maybe something a little different?

"...became more like three gnats trying to pull a boxcar to Memphis."
* now that's a simile. well done.

"I wanted to ask Thomas who James was, but I simply didn’t have the time."
* i think the ...James? is enough to convey this.

"...'her belly is about the size of Mount Saint Helen, George, and another—'"
* helen's didn't erupt til the eighties, and i'm not sure how common knowledge its existence in washington state would be to those in alabama before then

"(whom I had now figured out was James)"
* this would do fine. turns out the name is important, but i'd still take it out earlier. the way it's included now, it feels like you're saying hey! remember this name! it'll come back, you just wait! just thom knowing the name is enough for me.

"That there is amniotic fluid;"
* can this get more colloquial and less medical? even if he is a medic, not too many babies born in the army, and his experience with them ought to make it something less authoritative

"“Here we go! Now push, George, push!(")"
* forgot a quotation mark

"His name was Benjamin."
* nice.


Overall, a good read. I think it takes up a bit more space than need be. The dream sequence is nice, good detail, but it could be cut down considerable. The narrator is loose-worded, if that makes sense. While a lot of it is good dialect, some sentences just make the piece longer and don't serve enough of a function. There were a lot of characters named, too, and early on in the story, when we should be getting to know the characters that will appear later. I didn't get to know Peter or Harry well enough in the beginning to warrant their large presence in the important Christmas scene.

Sorry the middle section is messy, I'm doing this at work. Good story, though, you're a natural.
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Review of geckos  
Review by grim
Rated: 13+ | (4.0)
very very excellent
i don't mean to sound condescending, but if you really are in high school you have astounding potential. your instincts for building drama are extremely good. i'm in college, a senior and focusing on creative fiction, and a lot of the people i am associated with in my program don't get some of the things you already do.

but i'll try to focus more on this story. your characters, except for the brother, all add to the drama and further the conflict. your dialogue here is perhaps the most impressive. it is very hard to teach people that important feelings, thoughts, and actions happen in between lines of dialogue, but you get this. you do need to make sure the reader knows who is talking, with just simply tags like 'Mr. Cartright said.' these don't take away from the flow, because readers just brush right over them save for the knowledge of who it was that said.

i'd like to know the age and sex of the narrator much earlier in the story. it helps to know that it's not a six year old boy loading the wood, but a fifteen year old girl. you put this in, but not until much later.

one of your best details is the sweaty feet sticking to the wood floor. these types of images put the reader right into the story, making it feel like an original experience. use more of these.

your theme of patriotism is compelling. i think a better opening scene would have been mr. cartright's speech about flag wavers. this would have put us right in the moment and set us up for the conflict with the father's reluctance to reveal detail. everything a writer puts into the story is there for one reason: because it has to be. collecting wood doesn't tell me anything really new, interesting, or necessary to what's going on in the narrator's head.

good luck in future writing.

grim
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Review by grim
Rated: 13+ | (4.0)
"...muttering Spanish in his ear in a soothing tone you associate with skittish horses." - excellent

“Maybe he was attacked, but by some wack-job out fantasy role-playing…”
Something about that comment felt wrong even as it came out. Manny stiffened and his eyes narrowed. “Oh, so he’s some kind of stupid superstitious Rube, huh? You frigging mainlanders think everybody with dark skin and an accent is an Idol-worshipping savage, don’t you? Maybe we should just forget it! I obviously came to the wrong man…” - this anger here doesn't seem justified. the men have gotten along absolutely perfectly up until now, and this comment does not seem offensive to anyone in any way that i can imagine...

"...this was a grown man with real responsibilities. A Priest. People depended on him. Could I say the same?" - is this a good idea to introduce another conflict, this late in the story? we have a fairly major conflict going already, and the narrator seems confident with his position in life up until now. why do we need to go here? it seems that this issue doesn't add to the plot, and if i were a betting man, i'd wager this issue will not come back into play again in the story. it feels out of place, is what i'm trying to say.

"They can't cross running water." - now this is one i have never heard before. you might want to add in some background info as to where this comes from. a stake through the heart doesn't need an explanation, but i think this does.

"He spent hours staring at that grave, waiting for his doom to appear. But it didn’t." - shifts into an omniscient narrator for a second. how would the narrator know this if he was asleep?

"...mixed revulsion and lust, like the spurt of urine in a wetsuit in cold, dark waters." - oooooo, now that's a good line! except maybe the lust, but only maybe...

"Something zipped by me – a whitish blur. It hummed past my ear and popped into the creatures’ maw. Then a whole lot of things happened at once." - this needs a hell of a lot more here. more explanation. more details. more of a sense of being in the moment, instead of having a story told to me. this is the point when they get over their fear and begin the physical battle with the demon, and it needs MORE.

"Manny later swore I started to cry, but I dispute that." - i don't like this type of post-script speech. it lets the reader know they get out of it okay.


well after all that... i kept getting images of salem's lot through the reading of this one. you attempt to tackle a lot of the same issues, which i don't think your story needs. you have a terrific premise, with the santero and the puerto ricans and such, but sometimes you get distracted and think the story wants to go somewhere else. i think your premise is fine as it is. i don't think we need the subtle subplots, like the self confidence issue, or the vampiric hypnotizing right at the end. that type of theme needs a novel to explain and believe truthfully, and king's already covered that angle anyway. you do have a good feeling for horror, though. your words are well thought out, and you speak with authority. this is one of the better vampire stories i have come across on the site. nice job.
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Review by grim
Rated: ASR | (3.5)
beautiful beautiful capturing of emotions wonderful inner dialogue and feeling, lots of sadness...
not enough other emotions here. i don't think i felt the clarity spoken of in the title. a few of the passages are a little bit difficult to understand, as well as the character's motivation. most of the descriptions ring true, but what's missing is the trip to the emergency room that about 100% of people would take almost immediately after discovering they had a problem. i hate to sound critical here, just trying to be honest, because you right beautifully and this is a great idea, and the story is about to get over that ledge... and then it stops. the last few paragraphs just deal with exposition that i didn't care to hear. i mean, being blind for a day can change your life, but that sentence i just wrote right there was about as interesting as the way you chose to end it. don't kill the beautiful set up with an ending like this! it's unjustified, its outrageous, it makes dead authors turn in their graves! take your included details and extend them further. why did you choose law school? what's the deal with him and the girl? how did they come to care so much about each other, and most importantly, what decisions is he making about his future, esp. with her, now that he thinks he's never going to see again? don't leave me hanging!

so i get carried away easily. sorry. but i think i have a point. whatever you do, keep up the writing through honesty and sincerity of emotion, it's genuinely exciting.

grim
5
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Review of Tuesday's Storm  
Review by grim
Rated: 13+ | (5.0)
absolutely terrific. you hit dead on to all the emotions i would have thought necessary to be there. i felt the whole thing, the whole way through. wonderful job. needs a few periods that you decided not to include, namely the one for the last sentence. but great great fantastic and outstanding, all around. this is what i was talking about with the perspective! keep it up.

grim
6
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Review of Imprints  
Review by grim
Rated: 13+ | (3.0)
not a bad one here...
my first suggestion was going to be that you really ought to change the name of either dan or ann, as rhyming names bother me. pet peev. but once i realized they are essentially one and the same character, it didn't bother me so much. i say this because their speech patterns, sense of humor, and nearly all relevant observations that occur in these characters, or should i say this character, make no difference who the dialogue is coming from. my second suggestion was going to be make the seperate characters have significant vocal patterns that will make it less confusing who is speaking, like having one character using the word 'damn' a lot, or having one stutter, or speak with several exclamation points. something so you don't have to resort to names and pronouns every other word to keep it straight ('what, ann?' 'i don't know, dan!'). i was going to suggest this, and this is still one way to go, but now i think, why bother? i know this story got its award and all, but the concept is intriguing and we have a terrific base of a story here. i say, dump dan. leave cole in there. he's more of an antithesis to ann, and the conflicts between them will make the murder case more interesting. i get the feeling you felt he was a strong character that deserved a part in the story (hence the weak child molestor tie-in) but you didn't feel you could like this guy much. so he was never given a chance. dan is entirely boring, nothing more so than a woman (ann) trapped in a man's body. cole does't have to be an angel for the reader, and more so the writer, to feel for him. people love guys with problems, i.e. anger management issues, that are showing an inner importance and beauty on the inside, much more so than a flawless hero.
ann is strong, and she grows in the story as well, making her presence memorable and impactful. dan is the opposite of this, merely serving as a voice for ann when she can't talk for herself. he doesn't change the entire time. even his one personal conflict, his over aggresive superior, is solved in the first hundred words.
finally i know this piece was written with dialogue in mind, but i think your concept and your characters have all the potential your story needs. i think the story at least deserves a chance to be written in straight prose, with he saids and she saids and a bit of exposition, not too much, but a bit. and if it ain't workin, no skin off your ass, stick to what's working now. your most innovative use of dialogue, when these haunts are speaking for through ann, dan serves as nothing more than expostion anyways. another reason he's no good, and another reason to give the story a shot without sticking to the strict dialogue format.
last thing and i'll leave you alone. the plot is still a little weak. if the police are used to these imprints (cept the rookie) it seems to me they need to keep it a secret from the outside world. to do this, not only would they have to watch what they say, but they'd need to have more solid evidence of the crime to fall back on. right now, this part's a little short of what it could be. put a little more thought into this one's plot, and a little more time into the character concept and the storytelling, and this will be a terrifically entertaining story.
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Review by grim
Rated: ASR | (4.0)
funny story!
i think the scene of rob's mad dash to the car was the most effective, but it was set up well by the other scenes. i got a good feel of each of the human characters, but i could have used a little more of the cow's part in the story. not really a perspective of the bovine variety, but more description of them and what the characters think the cows are plotting.
the perspective change worked well at the beginning and fell flat at the end. this technique works best when it is used to reveal characteristics of the non-speaking character that he/she can't see themselves, and to reveal things about the speaker that they do or do not intend. you do this well in the beginning, but the closer to the end we get it becomes more distracting to the actual story than the technique is worth. especially the last section, i found myself wondering who was talking now instead of caring about any resolution to the subplot of getting to the wedding.
you do get bonus points for writing about cows and about alabama without making one fecal reference. nice story, and i'd like to see another draft of it, if you find the time.

grim
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Review of Arthur Galey  
Review by grim
Rated: 18+ | (5.0)
beautiful, well done, outrageously good. there are a few things, as always...
i got a good clear picture of jeremy, but not art. i'd like to be able to see the face of the man who conquered telekinesis.
you ever read any stephen king? he does that italicized, away from everything else, self referencing thing too. and you did it just as well. superman. brilliant picture.
my only plot problem... it seems art, the magnificently perceptive, doesn't realize what's happening for too long, and then suddenly knows everything. even the window he closed and didn't notice closing. it seems the event unseen with brian might have been big enough to make him notice, and maybe you're trying to say only something as small as pushing a button on the phone would make it believable to himself. but the transition is a bit fuzzy. that scene with the phone button needs some clarifying, which is to say, if it is the big moment of realization it needs, NEEDS, more attention. BEGGING for it. there are several subtle clues as to how much he understands at different times. but i don't think its enough. i guess i'm saying that not only the actual moment of realization needs clarification, much the preparation for this moment needs some more volume too. but damn, nicely done, all around.

grim
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Review of Vanishing  
Review by grim
Rated: ASR | (3.5)
welll... interesting, we could say. or totally and completely depressing without a moral or reason or motive for the continuous drowning in self-pity. and yes if that little paragraph at the end did mean a suicide, by water in a lake or something, it still failed to make me feel anything. it wasn't completely explained to the point of mattering to the story either.
first two paragraphs are promising. last four read like an obituary. and nobody really likes reading obituaries. you have a good way with words (which actually hurts the believability of the piece, how could someone who speaks so well have no one to talk to - irony's a bitch, eh?) so if you can write this way, why not expand the plot to encompass a little more than just the state of things. every teenager out there had felt like this at least once, and most of them go through high school like this. even the popular people, i've found out, are very lonely. so if this story is true, then take what i'm saying to heart: there are people out there, go and find them, you can't expect others to do the work for you. and if this story is not true, take it somewhere else, somewhere besides the same angst-ridden poem i've read a million and one times before. i know you can do it. it just involves deciding on a way to make it interesting (maybe the narrator IS a fish) and then using the skills you have to make it work.

so anyways, keep writing. you do it well.

grim
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