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Review Requests: OFF
471 Public Reviews Given
488 Total Reviews Given
Review Style
If you're really desperate for a review, feel free to email me. Just don't expect a very quick turnaround. NB: I'm happy to review novels. I tend to review from the point of view of a reader rather than an editor. I 'nitpick' on anything that interrupts my reading flow. If you want me to go all out with nitpicking in general, ask me to do a line-by-line. Quite happy to do so - as a copied static or email.
I'm good at...
Getting into the story from the reader's perspective.
Favorite Genres
M/M, romance, horror, western
Public Reviews
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76
76
Review of Getting By  Open in new Window.
Review by Osirantinous Author IconMail Icon
In affiliation with The Rockin' Reviewers  Open in new Window.
Rated: 18+ | (4.5)

Hi Mara ♣ McBain Author Icon

Wow, your port is accomplished!!! I feel a tad underqualified to review, but I’m going to do it anyway *Smile*. This is a House Stark review of "Getting ByOpen in new Window. for "Game of ThronesOpen in new Window..


*Crown* Reader Impressions
Having seen that you’ve published several novels I’m totally not surprised that this story read like a dream. Complete characters, good action, strong emotion, and a gritty premise…

Everyone has had money problems at one time or other, and how they react certainly seems to give the measure of a person. Elle has more issues that most in that she also has a young daughter to look after and that young daughter has a birthday coming up. Children don’t understand that things don’t grow on trees and I’m not sure any explanation would suffice for not getting something on their birthday. I thought that you portrayed Elle’s feelings and attitude realistically – her pride, her stubbornness, her courage. And she also has an unwillingness to bend, hidden behind both a façade of needing to be independent and that pride. She thinks having Cat help her will be charity, I presume because Cat and her husband sound like they’ve money to burn. If there was sympathy or pity in Cat’s tone when she questions the non-acceptance of help, then I’d back Elle all the way. But Cat is frustrated – she isn’t offering charity – and I felt her frustration, but… I also understood Elle’s position. She’s come so far in her new life that it’s probably hard to really let others in to help.

My brow went up with the decidedly sexy male voice because it kind of came out of the blue but it was a nice little break from the earlier stressful situations. I momentarily thought that Elle was the ex-girlfriend but I presume she’d have recognised his voice, and he probably her number. And because of that I was puzzled over the caution moment Elle feels as she’s writing down the address. It didn’t quite seem to add up, bar she was obviously going to a place where money ran freely!

While the end of the conversation with Cat left me a little annoyed like Cat, this discussion between the two women did help reveal a bigger picture and cemented why Elle is so fiercely doing things for herself. And the final few paragraphs as Elle is watching Kennedy try out her new bike do the same thing, especially when we learn that she actually grew up in much the same situation as she is now – in a home without a lot of money, and a bunch of ruses to keep children from spouting awkward questions.

As for the prompt that you wrote to – highlighting strengths and weaknesses of a character in an uncomfortable situation – I think you did that quite perfectly. Elle seems to be on rather shaky ground but she is holding her own, thinking on her feet to keep herself and Kennedy afloat and to keep Kennedy mostly unaware that there are troubles. It does seem to me, though, that Elle is the type of character who will, in the end, snap. She’s trying so hard and not giving herself space to draw breath. And I sure as heck hope it doesn’t happen when she has the interview for the boutique that she’d never actually ever shop in! (I didn’t investigate your port to see if you’d ever written a sequel to this story but it would be an interesting read – has she surmounted her troubles or has she found another asshole man on a bike?)


*Crown* Suggestions
It looked like there were a few missing commas but since I’m not exactly a star with my own commas I’m not going to point them out.

I did spot one typo: Her and her brothers had only fell for that… – ‘fallen’ rather than ‘fell’.


*Crown* Closing Comments
Elle is a marvellously well-drawn character; I could see and feel her and I appreciated that. She’s no smoky, whispy thing I’m reading about. I care about her and the stress she’s under. It does help in part that I’ve been there with that financial burden too, and know how damn difficult it is to ask for help or to accept help. (Partly why I was so frustrated with her about not accepting Cat’s help.)

If I’d been judging What a Character, Elle would have ranked highly on my list of winners!


Cheers,
O


House Stark image for G.o.T.
77
77
Review by Osirantinous Author IconMail Icon
In affiliation with The Rockin' Reviewers  Open in new Window.
Rated: 13+ | (4.0)

Hi NeedingBeachDuf 🐠⛵🏝️ Author Icon

I've just read "Breaching the Containment DoorOpen in new Window., and this is a House Stark battle review for "Game of ThronesOpen in new Window..


*Crown* Reader Impressions
I love writing dialogue and I even like to think I’m pretty good at it, but there’s no way I could carry a story with just dialogue. So my hat’s off to you! And what a fascinating prompt; it definitely allowed for a good old argument. Though we couldn’t have any of the foot stomping, frowning, scowling, hand-on-hipping of such a thing, I think we could pretty much ‘see’ it through the words you used. A prime example are the two lines starting I can’t believe…

The anger and frustration of being cooped up is nicely clear, and I expect that both Bob and Susan have reached boiling point. Found it a tad odd they’re not counting their lucky stars for their survival, though that novelty may have worn off after being stuck together so closely.

Nice ending, by the way, reminding us that outside of the bunker the world is in a bit of a state. When Susan first mentions the friends who have come knocking I envisaged, truly, friends. You know, just normal folk. But, of course, that’s probably a tad unlikely and we rather get the message when Bob suddenly changes his tune about going outside. Thought it rather interesting that Susan doesn’t really question why; instead she just badgers him for a promise that it’s out of his system.

In any case, a story nicely told through dialogue alone – we have a plot, a setting (though not much is ‘said’ about it), and two characters who come across quite clearly from their manner of speaking and the words they say. (Out of sheer curiosity I’d love to see this story told with the usual action/dialogue tags etc. I wonder if you’d change any of the dialogue simply because you could turn it into action.)


*Crown* Suggestions
When you can’t have action or dialogue tags you pretty much have to stick with character 1, character 2, character 1 line-by-line so you and the reader keep updated with who’s saying what. I’m quite aware that there are several moments when Susan speaks two or more times in a row. In most cases, just the wording helped out with the identity but I also noted that you left off the ending ” whenever the very next line was the same speaker. The first time it cropped up I just thought you’d left it off! But of course once you’d done it a couple more times I understood, I just wondered if there was a clearer way of indicating a pause. Not that it’s something you need to chase up.

One typo… I just had to what was going on out there. – ‘know’ needed after ‘to’.

And I wondered about the quadruplicate out there in four of the last five lines. I know there’s not exactly many ways to indicate ‘out there’ but it was sort of jarring. Perhaps ‘outside’ for one or two of them?


*Crown* Closing Comments
Don’t sell this contest entry short – make use of the other two genre tags to draw in readers. Horror/scary could be one but also Relationship, since we definitely get a sense of that (an on the rocks one at the beginning!).

I think it takes tremendous skill to craft a story using on dialogue, and you did a great job of it!


Many cheers,
Os


House Stark image for G.o.T.
78
78
Review of What A NIGHT  Open in new Window.
Review by Osirantinous Author IconMail Icon
In affiliation with The Rockin' Reviewers  Open in new Window.
Rated: E | (3.0)

Hi Mary Ann MCPhedran Author Icon

I've just read "What A NIGHTOpen in new Window., and this is a House Stark battle review for "Game of ThronesOpen in new Window..


*Crown* Reader Impressions
If I was the person in this story, What a night! wouldn’t be my reaction. She’s a lot braver than me!! I’m very impressed that she kept her head and walked. I’d have been running, even if I couldn’t see the road properly. And no doubt I’d have spent the night in a ditch nursing broken bones *Blush*

Even if one is not afraid of the dark, being alone in it in an unfamiliar place can start the heart thudding in anyone. When you started having the cars go by with their lights shining momentarily I was thinking this was going to end with a whole lot of scare going on. It meant I was sort of prepared for the light shone on to a dark figure. My hairs would have been standing on end all over if I’d seen that, with nails running up and down my spine.

I’m not surprised the narrator didn’t want to pass the figure, but was also not surprised that the only way to her destination was to do so. At this moment I’d like to have seen more of the narrator’s inner thoughts. Is she trying to project courage, confidence? Is she sidling along as if she hopes she won’t be noticed?

I love what the figure turned out to be – scary in its own right but not a headless ghost aiming to pick up a juicy soul or something. I bet the narrator was giggling in her relief, amongst her chiding the farmer!

I get the feeling that at the end she felt rather childish over her fears, and annoyed too, but I suspect that when she finally got home she had a real laugh about it.


*Crown* Suggestions
My main suggestion is to update your formatting a bit so that the story takes up the whole page rather than half of it. The layout at the moment makes it oddly disconcerting to read (which, funnily enough, kind of ties in with the theme of the story!). This formatting also makings the cattle mooing sentence completely skewed around, cut in half onto two different lines. (Of course, you may have intended that!!)

Also, take another look at the genres for this. I don’t really see ‘Fantasy’ or ‘Family’ here. I definitely see ‘Horror/Scary’ and ‘Dark’. I think changing to those would get you more readers (ha, me included since I’m a ‘Horror/Scary’ fan).

I walked at a quick pace I could only… – full stop is needed after ‘pace’ or a joiner word (like ‘though’).

Because this does read as ‘Horror/Scary’ even if you didn’t intend it, you could play that up a bit. For example, don’t tell I could hear my heart… but show us it in a more active manner. Something like My heart thudded in time with my pounding steps. Basically, make the reader start to get as creeped out as the narrator. which gave me a shock is another example where you’ve sort of just told us. But frankly, if I saw a figure suddenly lit up out of nowhere I’d be doing some shrieking and freaking and generally trying to keep my heart from crawling out my throat.


*Crown* Closing Comments
I did wonder why the woman was out wandering the streets on her own in the dark, but that sort of faded as we got into the story. It’s a very simple story but has the right elements for a good horror – combined with humour – though I think you need to decide just what this story is about in terms of the genres. I admit I’m not that big a fan of scarecrows either!!

One final thing I'd suggest is creating some folders within your port, so you can house your items in order - poetry in a poetry folder, novels all together etc. That way readers will be able to find items of their interest much more easily.


Thanks for the opportunity to read and review your writing!

Best wishes,
Os


House Stark image for G.o.T.
79
79
Review of Termination  Open in new Window.
Review by Osirantinous Author IconMail Icon
In affiliation with The Rockin' Reviewers  Open in new Window.
Rated: E | (4.0)

Hi Chris24 Author Icon

I’m competing in the writing/reviewing contest "Game of ThronesOpen in new Window., and so I’ve been dipping into your port to find something to review. Lots of items there but "TerminationOpen in new Window. caught my eye the most, and so here’s the review.


*Crown* Reader Impressions
First up, I’ll admit that I don’t read a lot of science fiction, and I definitely don’t write it. I don’t know how to! But I know a good tale when I see one and this is a good tale, providing a lot of tension and conflict and a thwack of mystery right at the end, that popped my eyes open good and wide! I even felt momentarily sorry for CN-23 (yeah, soft touch here!)

Love how bounty hunters cross genres, and I appreciated that this one was somewhat cocky in his abilities (actually, aren’t they all?). He’s been hunting for a long time in this role and yet he has managed to be pretty unsuccessful in his attempt to get this one android. And actually he fails pretty spectacularly even when he’s finally cornered the rogue.

Interestingly the final moments of this tiny story hint at why. Our bounty hunter is not what he seems! I get the feeling he’s been ‘fixed’ several times across the years but always ends up in this manner. Though he thinks like a human, acts like a human, there’s something in him somewhere (not actually displayed in this story) that doesn’t let him go the whole hog on the android termination tasks. (You may not have intended it, but ‘lamented’ does make it look like he doesn’t want a fight.) In the end I felt as sorry for him as I did for the android about to be terminated!!

Your triple I was a robot. is brilliant. I could feel his ‘what the?’ and I also understand that this revelation brought about his ‘end’ – almost like he’d failed a test. Kind of felt like it happened a lot!

The ending threw me completely out of sync, and I liked it. Turned what I knew totally on its head and made me re-read the story again to see if I’d missed anything. No, you just wrote a wonderfully intriguing and puzzling little piece! I almost feel like a sci-fi convert!


*Crown* Suggestions
Since you wrote this for a contest – and we could tell that from the bolded words even if you didn’t have Contest Entry as one of your genres – it would be handy to list that contest within the item. It helps us understand how/why you wrote, including what word limits you were up against. That latter at least stops us from going ‘you coulda made this longer by doing X, Y and Z’ when clearly you actually couldn’t at the time. And though readers and reviewers aren’t judging the contest, it’s still nice to be able to read a piece and consider it in relation to the contest prompts/elements.

… just enough for it to land solidly… – since the last object we meet is the hat, it felt like the ‘it’ here was that hat and I had to read the sentence twice to realise you really meant the android. I’d definitely recommend changing ‘it’ out.

… suffered in the rain, eager to survey… – ‘suffered’ and ‘eager’ seem completely opposite emotions here and I wasn’t sure they worked. I expect you mean he suffered from the injury but as it is written it sounds like he was more eager than suffering.

The entire last line puzzled me. I thought throughout the earlier part of the story the bounty hunter was feeling human (at least, nothing gave him away!) and he definitely has emotions, so He needs to feel human threw me. I thought he had. But also – if he’s to feel human he will need self-awareness. I presume the first part of the sentence is really saying he needs to be programmed not to notice that he is not human and then emphasises that he has to feel completely human. I just wonder if they both could be reworded a bit to clarify meaning here?

And one more thing about this final section – more a query from me out of curiosity – how is it that Dr Carlin knows what has happened? It almost felt like he was right there, but can’t have been, so I presume there’s some sort of visual tracker or something on the bounty hunter able to pinpoint where their ‘servants’ are and can enable/disable them at will? In a roundabout way I’m saying – it would be awesome if you made this short story longer!!! It’s really neat.


*Crown* Closing Comments
Really liked this tiny story, and the reader gets more than they bargained for as much as the bounty hunter does. Definitely think it could be made longer and I know I’d enjoy reading it.

One final thing, you have an extensive portfolio, but it’s a bit crazy scrolling through the list. I’d recommend you create a few folders to house your works – such as a folder for Sci-fi stories, one for contest entries (with or without the sci-fi). That just helps people find your items a little more easily.


Thanks for the opportunity to read and review your writing!

Best wishes,
Osirantinous


House Stark image for G.o.T.
80
80
Review by Osirantinous Author IconMail Icon
In affiliation with The Rockin' Reviewers  Open in new Window.
Rated: 13+ | (5.0)

Hi Brenpoet Author Icon

Being a romantic, I've just read "Guitar Strings And HeartstringsOpen in new Window., and this is a House Stark battle review for "Game of ThronesOpen in new Window..


*Crown* Reader Impressions
Sigh…. I love romance items, and those ones that relate to memories are extra special. A little heart-tugging in this case as we see remembrance of a long-ago love. And I always wonder how much of that memory is real and how much is what we think we remember (or what we’d prefer to remember).

Writing this poem in pairs of rhyming lines simply added to the musicality of the piece. In my reading rhythm I could almost hear the guitar being played and beyond that the hubbub of the bar, the castanets. I could even feel the warmth of the night, sense the dreams being woven at the time. And, of course, I can hear your longing to be back there. What this means is that even though this poem isn’t huge, it carries huge description and I can see the scenes in my head. Items like this are a pleasure to read.

I got the feeling that it wasn’t the music itself that initially took you back all those years, but rather the actual act of watching the guitar playing and having memories triggered by that. Though by the end of the poem you’re as mesmerised by the music as much as by the playing, and I understand that longing of wanting the memory to continue. I wonder if you ever had those memories come to you without the music or if they only ever come with the music, sort of like a magic occurrence.

However it happens doesn’t really matter, I guess, as long as the memories come back and envelope you in their warmth and comfort again. And, oh, for a time machine!


*Crown* Suggestions
I found the wording in the first line of the first stanza a little awkward initially. When I re-read with a pause between ‘heart’ and ‘are’ I managed to get into the rhyming mood but I still almost found that there was too much of a distance between ‘Strings’ and ‘are plucked by your guitar’.

Other than this comment (which probably has more to do with how I read poetry than anything), I’ve no further comments/suggestions to make. You use great rhyming and great description, and your title speaks of the different kind of strings in this poem in a perfect manner. Heart strings are definitely plucked as much as guitar strings!


*Crown* Closing Comments
I’m sure we have all been taken back to a time that seemed to be the most perfect time on the planet, simply by a sound or smell or vision. This lovely poem is full of warmth and desire, showing the power of a memory, and heartstrings twang as we get to the last line. I nodded and sighed, and wished you could go back as much as you probably did.

Enjoyed reading this one!

Best wishes,
Osirantinous


House Stark image for G.o.T.
81
81
Review by Osirantinous Author IconMail Icon
In affiliation with The Rockin' Reviewers  Open in new Window.
Rated: E | (4.5)

Hi Kenzie Author Icon

I found "Tumbled Towers, Humbled HeartsOpen in new Window., unsurprisingly, in your folder of awarded items, and was moved to read it. This review is on behalf of House Stark for "Game of ThronesOpen in new Window..


*Crown* Reader Impressions
I remember the day this happened, like I’m pretty sure everyone does, even though I’m not American and I’m half a world away. I remember turning on my radio as I got breakfast before work and hearing a comment about what if the two towers were hit. I didn’t hear much of the conversation but thought at the time it was simply a question. When I got to work someone mentioned it and we hurried to turn the TV on and I was like ‘holy heaven, it’s true’. For most of that day I don’t recall us doing a lot of work, but it seems slightly ironic that we worked in the War Pension unit.

Even now, almost fifteen years later, my brain struggles to comprehend those images we saw on TV, and I know that it must have been hundreds and thousands times worse for any American citizen. This line says it all: Lives changed in an instant. And that was for everyone, not just for those who were actually involved. Because it was, of course, not just the Two Towers affected that day.

I must admit that your second stanza really felt like it was putting to the sword the first one, those people chasing the American Dream as if they weren’t allowed it. However… the rest of the poem highlighted that the nation was rallying to the second stanza, and that was really nice. But isn’t it so tragic that it seems only tragedy can bring people together?

I was particularly taken with the fifth and sixth stanzas – how one has to look forward now and how one has to open one’s eyes. The world is a nasty place sometimes and to forget history is to repeat it. Sadly, in the fifteen years since I’m not sure a whole lot has changed. A world without war is a pipe dream that will never come, no matter what we do. And that includes war with ourselves. The past couple of months illustrate that. It is a pity that your final stanza can’t be screamed out over the world, a reminder that people can come together. That it’s happened once and can happen again, and that if and when it does, we might finally have a world we can be proud of, that we can live in without fear. And, you know, by song is something America does so well. Hearing the national anthem sung a capella is so powerful; it’s such a rallying cry!


*Crown* Suggestions
My token suggestion would be to highlight this in your port – and certainly as we get closer to the anniversary. It deserves to be read.


*Crown* Closing Comments
A deep poem, Kenzie, and one that is really as valid today as it was when you wrote it! I can still feel your grief, and pride. I’m glad to have found it.


Thanks for the opportunity to read and review your poetry.

Best wishes,
Osirantinous


House Stark image for G.o.T.
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82
Review of Just One Chance  Open in new Window.
Review by Osirantinous Author IconMail Icon
In affiliation with The Rockin' Reviewers  Open in new Window.
Rated: E | (4.0)

Hi Beyond the Cloud9 Author Icon

Hunting through your port for something to review for the latest House Stark review battle for "Game of ThronesOpen in new Window., I found "Just One ChanceOpen in new Window.. It caught my eye because only a few hours earlier I’d been working with academics to find a better timetable for one of their students who had tetraplegia, and I was intrigued how your story would deal with disability.


*Crown* Reader Impressions
This is one of those stories that reminds us all not to judge a book by its cover. And… if you don’t give someone or something a chance, how can you know what they’re capable of or not? It also makes us uncomfortable, seeing someone left out because of how they look or how they act. We humans haven’t changed much in our existence, still thinking that ‘perfect’ is the only way to be.

So I was pleased to see that you followed your description to a tee – Todd was given a chance. We had no way of knowing, however, whether he’d run with that chance or fail at it and so that made the story hook us all the way through; had to read to find out what happened.

I’m a bit of a baseball fan, which is tough since I live in New Zealand and we don’t really have it here! Rugby is our thing and that’s what kids will be doing down at the local park. Or cricket. In any case, what that means is that this story hooked me from the sport perspective too!

So, anyway, the story… as mentioned just above, the final outcome was not a given. We know that someone will give Todd a chance but we don’t know how it’ll end. I liked that it ended happily, of course, but even if Todd had ‘failed’ that wouldn’t have taken away from the story itself, because it’s not so much about ‘winning’ but about being included. The tiny speck of backstory that introduces Sammy was great, and it also made his slight rejection of Todd at the game more heartfelt. (Though, in all honesty, Sammy was stating fact – there’s only so many members one should have on the field!) Sammy’s reaction to Todd turning away was totally realistic – I’d probably have ‘seen’ him squinting at the sun as he considered what to do even without you saying it!

Classically, just because one person accepts someone it doesn’t mean everyone else does and once Todd’s in the outfield he goes back to ‘invisible’. Part of that might be the game itself – hard to be involved if the ball doesn’t actually come your way but I’m sure Todd felt it even more keenly – as if the others were deliberately not hitting his way. A bit of serendipity that his self-entertainment took him to the spot that would allow his full participation. I almost worried that counting dandelions would get him beaned by the ball!!

My heart was in my mouth in a ‘no, no, no, no’ moment when Todd stumbled. He was almost there! And then you carried on with his depressed thoughts so that we all but knew he’d failed in the catch attempt. It really let us feel what Todd was feeling here.

I appreciated that Sammy’s confidence had let him give Todd the chance, and I liked that he kept encouraging his friend, even after the momentous catch. It was, of course, nice that Todd acknowledged the help he’d received, but, you know, I’d love to have seen more of the responses of his team mates. I doubt they’d be about to say ‘Hey, I always knew you could do it’ but their responses – maybe even apologies? – would have been interesting.

Overall, I like the tone of this story – there’s doubt (always going to be present) but as I said earlier – how do you know what someone can do until you give them a chance. Ruling them out just because of how they look is simply sad. The other theme to this story is friendship, and I think you display the depth of a good friendship here quite nicely. Sammy’s got a fine line to walk between his friend and his teammates. He backs himself and Todd when he lets Todd play, and if the outcome had been different I felt that he’d still have backed Todd.

It seemed like forever before Todd escaped the boy’s giant shadow. – lovely description that manages to combine both the boy’s physical size and his ‘mental’ size/reputation. And of course when Todd makes the catch it’s just perfect that it’s this boy’s fly-ball.


*Crown* Suggestions
Just a few things to consider fixing or updating. Nothing of the show-stopper nature though.

obvious birth defect, – remove the comma here as it’s not required.

seemed none of them wanted him there. Todd knew their opinions. – nothing grammatically wrong here but this felt a bit odd. If he knows their opinions, then why does it only seem that none of them wanted him. That, to me, should have been a known too.

… team,” a sandy-haired boy scowled. – ‘scowled’ isn’t really a dialogue tag so I think this needs to have a full stop after team. (Yeah, nitpicking!)

… slapping his hand in his glove, “Fine!...” – use a full stop rather than the comma after ‘glove’.

The heat of the sun was as hot as his embarrassment. – my reason for mentioning this sentence is I think you’ve got it the wrong way around. I think his embarrassment should be as hot as the sun, because that qualifies how severe the embarrassment is.


*Crown* Closing Comments
It’s really only just come to me that, aside from the opening part of the story, you don’t really focus on the disability itself. It comes and goes, and we have an idea of what it is but we sort of forget about it a bit. I liked that – you don’t gloss over it but nor do you make it such a horrendous thing that the reader simply can’t look passed. This story is about Todd and baseball and his friends. The disability drives the plot but by the end it’s all about a friend helping out a friend, and who cares if he has a disability. It’s kind of that ‘don’t stare’ mentality we try to instil in people. Whoa, sorry, kind of a babble there. Nice story, nice theme, and above all yay for a happy ending.


Thanks for the opportunity to read and review your writing!

Best wishes,
Os


House Stark image for G.o.T.
83
83
Review by Osirantinous Author IconMail Icon
In affiliation with The Rockin' Reviewers  Open in new Window.
Rated: ASR | N/A (Review only item.)

Hi Princess Megan Rose Author Icon

I was working my way through your impressive port when "Day 60 Give It A 100 Home Is Where Your Teddy Bear IsOpen in new Window. (from your book "A Journal With EverythingOpen in new Window.) caught my eye. I’m rather partial to teddy bears and so I had a read, and now I’m reviewing it on behalf of House Stark for "Game of ThronesOpen in new Window..


*Crown* Reader Impressions
I’m a girl after your own heart, I love my teddy bears too! ‘Home is where your teddy bear is’ is a wonderful motto. How many secrets do our teddy bears hold? How many tears have they been washed with? Kids invest a lot of emotion in teddy bears (or another toy) and it’s quite amazing to see so many images of animals cuddling up to a teddy bear! I loved this story of the orphaned monkey and I think he would have been secure with it even it if didn’t have the beating heart. Just something soft and warm and solid to hang onto brings pleasure and comfort.

I’m 41 and I still have a teddy bear that was given to me when I was about three. In truth, he no longer sits on my bed but that’s more because he’s kind of falling apart from being loved so much as a child. He’s only little -a black and white panda – and his body is in perfect condition (still with fur) because he wears clothes. His paws and face are something of a travesty though and stuffing is falling out. I could get him fixed up, I know, but then he wouldn’t be my bear. I don’t know that I really told him a lot of secrets – didn’t have anything to hide much! – but I know he’s dealt with emotion. I named him Beatle – but not after The Beatles. Nope, named him after our cat, who was white with black ears. I’ve got many more soft toys around my house – I can’t seem to stop buying them – but they don’t hold my feelings as much as Beatle does. I really should get him out of the closet where he has been safely sitting, but even though he’s mostly hidden from view he’s always there and, like yours, he is in my room and my room is special to me.

Anyway… I agree with you – home is where the teddy bear is. I used to take mine on travels with me, for much that same reason, but he’s too fragile now and at least he stays safe.

I loved the stories behind your three bears, and I presume it’s Prince who is in the photo in the entry? He is super duper cute! We adults tend to be less sentimental these days it feels so it’s nice to find I’m not the only one who has attachments to inanimate objects!


*Crown* Suggestions
The only thing I’d really suggest is adding the link to the video, if you had it.


*Crown* Closing Comments
A tiny little entry but heart-warming – with the monkey and your own tale! It made me think about my own teddy bear and how much I’ve loved him over the years. Even if he became just a body (his head is a little less attached now!) I’d still keep him. Some things you should never throw out.


Thanks for the opportunity to read and review your writing!

Kindest regards,
Osirantinous


House Stark image for G.o.T.
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Review by Osirantinous Author IconMail Icon
In affiliation with The Rockin' Reviewers  Open in new Window.
Rated: 18+ | (4.0)

Hi Arakun the twisted raccoon Author Icon

I've just read "The Witch's Diary Part IOpen in new Window., and this is a House of Stark review for "Game of ThronesOpen in new Window..


*Crown* Reader Impressions
I’ve a thing for the supernatural ghosty type of stories these days, which is a bit odd since I can really freak myself out with them. Your title drew me in and I liked the fact you had more than one chapter going on (I will be back at some point to keep reading/reviewing).

A diary of a witch sounds like an interesting read and I enjoyed how the story started out all reasonably straight forward, apart from being out in a storm. I did feel that it took a bit of time to get to the diary, but you were right in setting the scene – how Melissa had trouble with the storm and then the car kind of did some weird things. Some readers might have been thinking it was a bit clichéd – storm, corn, stuck car – so I liked how you brought real fiction into your fiction, having Melissa muse about Children of the Corn (I feel grateful to have not seen that movie). I really enjoy when writing does that – makes what’s being read more real!

Descriptions of the house were nicely done, and Melissa is a darn sight braver than I am! I’d not have gone near the place though she seems to be sort of tugged there, and maybe later we’ll find out if she has a connection of sorts to the house. (What is it that makes a broken swings so blinken eerie????)

A dirty mouse-chewed carpet... – such simple words but very visual, and I’m sure Melissa was glad to have kept her shoes!

I’m impressed that Melissa’s first thoughts upon seeing the ghost are to apologise! I expect that’s because she doesn’t quite realise what she is facing. Still, I thought the good manners were nicely done here. Melissa is a strong, polite girl, and one that you’d expect to be getting along with people.

The ghost doesn’t have a very long part, but her presence is vital as she provides the diary of the title (therefore presuming she is also the witch!), but also adds to the suspense. She knows the house is dangerous (though one can’t help but wonder if she is what makes it so). And what she says is the pivot in the story, because the second half of the story is when Melissa hears a bit of the background, and a little bit about her. Having been at the house already, hearing the tale of it afterward is a bit chilling. And I can sympathise with Mrs Miller. There’s a particular old house on a hill in the region where I live that is the spookiest thing ever. It’s an empty house but it’s just… Here’s a link and let’s just say I understand what Mrs Miller is saying!!! http://www.library.mstn.govt.nz/Ahiaruhe.php (this one doesn’t make it look too horrible, but I just couldn’t bare to look for a ‘better’ shot).

We’ve already seen that Melissa isn’t the kind of girl to back down from something so it’s no surprise she doesn’t drop the diary somewhere. Of course… if she did then you’d have no book but I do wonder what is in store for her, and what is in the diary. Your last lines provide the perfect hook to keep a reader reading.


*Crown* Suggestions
Very minimal stuff here! I’d be inclined to suggest putting the thoughts into italics, mostly because they’re currently speech-marked and I read them all as speech until I got to the dialogue tag. Though the thoughts do give insight into how Melissa is feeling, they felt kind of stilted… no, formal. I just thought that in italics you don’t need the dialogue tag and you could be less formal, instead be more colloquial as thoughts tend to be. Tiny example: If I was in my own horror novel I’d so regret this. (taking out the heroine because what else would she be?)

I noticed a couple of punctuation errors around the dialogue – a missing comma, space between word and “ for example but it’s just cosmetic stuff.


*Crown* Closing Comments
I liked this opening chapter, Arakun. It introduces two main characters (since I presume we’ll be meeting Rebecca again, even if not in body) and a good amount of setting. We’ve got something of a double plot going on - the present with Melissa and the past with Rebecca (which isn’t really that far from the present – 60 years or so?) – so I look forward to seeing how they tie in, and how Melissa was seemingly chosen to help reveal this ‘secret’.


Thanks for the opportunity to read and review your writing!

Best wishes,
Osirantinous


House Stark image for G.o.T.
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Review by Osirantinous Author IconMail Icon
In affiliation with The Rockin' Reviewers  Open in new Window.
Rated: E | (5.0)

Hi CheerFairy Dutchessbarbie. Author Icon

Hunting in your port for items to review on behalf of House Stark for "Game of ThronesOpen in new Window., I came across your poetry folder. I’m not a great poet at all but I do love reading it so I delved in, and found "ENCOURAGEMENT POEMOpen in new Window..


*Crown* Reader Impressions
This little acrostic poem is almost six years old now, but the message it imparts still stands strong. Will forever stand strong! We writers seem to have huge self-doubt issues, and a poem like this would be a lovely thing for everyone to have – at least to read every day for inspiration as well as encouragement.

I like that it wasn’t all about general encouragement, but gave ideas for things that might encourage you to write: Contests and Activities being two of these things. If we’re in a rut, entering a new contest or taking part in an activity can help us out of that rut.

I was amused that you listed Nano as only once a year. That in itself is an encouragement – there’s only one month when you have to go totally bonkers on word count. You can rest for the other eleven. I attempted Nano once, back in… hmm, long time ago. For me the thing is only once a decade and I can just about manage that *Smile*

Two of the encouragements really stand out to me:

Original – all around us we’re influenced by trends and fads and people’s opinions, so many of us try to fit in. We shouldn’t be trying to do that at all. We shouldn’t be trying to write like X or Y, because we’re not X or Y. We need to be okay with who we are and what we write and how we write. And, this encouragement has a second piece to it – understanding that others are original too and accepting that fact. After all, if we all wrote the same wouldn’t that be boring?

Understanding – aside from writing for a contest (*Smile*) we can’t expect that our first scribbles are going to be perfect. Heck, third and fourth edits and I’m still unhappy with some of my stuff. And it’s okay to be non-perfect. Just as we have self-doubt, we’re also our own worst critic. This encouragement leads us to enjoy the act of writing and getting to know the characters etc. We can make it grammatically perfect another day.

Finally, you’re right – we’re not alone. How many of us are there on this site? And we’re all (well, maybe some of us aren’t) going through the same doubts and conflicts. I love the reminder that we’re not alone, just gotta keep remembering it!


*Crown* Suggestions
One teensy weensy punctuation error – you have a double comma after Editing,, being able…. It doesn’t stop reading flow but it was oddly distracting.


*Crown* Closing Comments
A very nice acrostic with such positive comments and thoughts. It’s the kind of item we should all print out and have somewhere close by to read when we’re feeling down!


I’m glad I found it!

Best wishes,
Osirantinous


House Stark image for G.o.T.
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Review of Treat or Trick?  Open in new Window.
Review by Osirantinous Author IconMail Icon
In affiliation with The Rockin' Reviewers  Open in new Window.
Rated: 13+ | (4.5)

Hi Mumsy Author Icon

I've just read "Treat or Trick?Open in new Window., and this is a House of Stark review for "Game of ThronesOpen in new Window..


*Crown* Reader Impressions
This was a great read! A totally new way of telling a vampire conversion and I loved that you started off the story quite un-horror like. In fact, I first though the whole cookie thing related to some diet Lisa was forcing herself on!

Moving back and forth between the present | dream | memories |present was really well done, and you added a nice little kick with the memories. Lisa faints at the sight of blood and now she has to deal with it rather a lot more often than desired! That must be tough for a vampire. I also appreciated how you wove the ‘normal’ in – fears, Chester, hiding in a pantry (well, maybe that’s not quite normal, but still quite believable); I think it heightened the conflict within the character (though interestingly she doesn’t seem to have any vampiric urges).

You played quite nicely into how vampires seem to be perceived – handsome, melodic, magnetic – so although Lisa does have some alarm bells starting to ring, she’s pretty much hooked. Really liked how you made his magnetism fade once she was also a vampire. It was intriguing, and I found myself wondering if Kate would have this reaction to her when she visited. This magnetism also raised the question – why isn’t Kate hooked? Or is she, and she’s just managing to hide it? I think she could slide either way here.

Of course, Kate’s reaction on the phone makes us all then decide she’s an innocent pawn in this game, and Lisa’s little freak-out at the end makes us hope that Kate will be able to help her, support her at least.

And then you hit us with the most perfect ending ever!! Lisa is a vampire, we know exactly what’s on her mind with her question! It was a great about-change to the previous decision that she would warn Kate!


*Crown* Suggestions
I was puzzled over two things:

It was at that moment that I discovered…. – I wasn’t sure how she’d discovered what triggered this Hunger of hers. Partly because I was still in the cookie/diet frame of mind. I presume it’s the rising anger and frustration that is actually the trigger? If so, I’d recommend making that a little bit clearer if possible.

The puncture marks on my neck… – this is the only mention of puncture marks. Earlier, Lisa has drunk a glass of blood and perhaps Kyle bit her while she was passed out. But if that’s so, then you need to make that part of the reaction in the dream because the wounds stick out here with a ‘where did they come from’ sort of thought.

Tiny typo – …It wasn’t…“ the room begins to spin… – capital letter for The and the closing speechmark’s oriented the wrong way.


*Crown* Closing Comments
I do love vampire stories (mine tend to come over as romances!) and I really enjoyed this one. It’s not often I’ve read of the ‘conversion’ of a vampire so that was interesting, and I liked how the tale was told with a combination of present and dream/memory. It enabled you to give lots of detail without a classic info dumping. And putting the dream/memories into present tense made them stand out extra clear from the main part of the story.


Thanks for the opportunity to read and review your writing!

Best wishes,
Osirantinous


House Stark image for G.o.T.
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Review of Ezzie  Open in new Window.
Review by Osirantinous Author IconMail Icon
In affiliation with The Rockin' Reviewers  Open in new Window.
Rated: 18+ | (5.0)

Hi two of four Author Icon

I've just read "EzzieOpen in new Window., and this is a House of Stark review for "Game of ThronesOpen in new Window..


*Crown* Reader Impressions
This is an amazing story, and with a twist. Ezzie’s frustrated with her life, the fact she’s never left her hometown and there seems to be no spark anywhere. Day in, day out everything is same-old, same-old. I can understand her having a freak-out about this sort of thing, but it’s not until the final third of the story that we get the real reason for the freak-out. The reason adds a whole new layer to her freak-out and her reaction – the shouting, the sobbing… just perfect. So real. She let her angst out, spilled everything that had been eating at her, and released all her tension. She has a good man and no real reason to hate him, even if she’s trying to.

I absolutely loved the thought responses Ezzie gave in the conversation with her husband, and how her verbal responses came out so different. Isn’t that just what we do when we’ve got our back up against a wall and can’t respond how we really, really want to? It is no wonder the blurt comes out later.

Even though you don’t give a lot of description of the setting, you let Ezzie’s thoughts and her blurt tell us about where she lives and the type of place that she lives in. That was really nice, no info dumping, but letting the characters tell the story.

In the very beginning I wondered if her husband was violent, but he’s not at all. Maybe a little slow on the uptake but he seems like the kind of man to be there when you needed him. Maybe he has no career goal but he’s stable. And he’s also romantic, well that’s how I read his picking Ezzie up and carrying her to the car. He also has the best line: You damn well better believe it. All the while Ezzie seems like she’s been trying to rile him and it looks quite sure that she didn’t expect this response; or that she was in fact secretly hoping for it. She calls him an ass but it comes across quite like an endearment. In any case, his response is immediate and undeniable and those attempted feelings of hate of hers are disappearing quick.

Ezzie and her husband (any reason why he’s never named?) fit like a hand and glove, and I really can’t see anything splitting them. Their quips and arguments aren’t really that vicious and they come across as very comfortable around each other – the last comments about the dinner are testament to that. Of course the romantic in me smiled at Ezzie’s I love you too. “You’re still an ass.” I think the spoken words reveal the thought here.


*Crown* Nit-picking
A number of times you have a question without a question mark. Still reads like a question, of course, but you still need the punctuation. Example: Then what, Ezzie. And you’ve got a wayward comma here: A brief consideration of the sky, showed the brighter stars popping out. And that’s about it!

One other thing niggled, and that was to do with Ezzie herself. Her day off is her day off, why doesn’t she do something? Why is she blaming her husband for this? She doesn’t sound like she’s much of a go-getter either! (Later of course the pregnancy sort of reveals her emotional upheaval but she did still come across as not accepting any blame for her life.)


*Crown* Closing Comments
This a really nice, down-to-earth, real romance, with a good dose of drama and emotion just as the three genres suggest. Its character driven and your characters are so well represented I could see and hear them easily in my head as I read (even without the husband having a name). Wonderful storytelling.


Thanks for the opportunity to read and review your writing!

Best wishes,
Os


House Stark image for G.o.T.
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Review of Accused  Open in new Window.
Review by Osirantinous Author IconMail Icon
In affiliation with The Rockin' Reviewers  Open in new Window.
Rated: 13+ | (4.5)

Hi Write-fully Loti Author Icon

I've just read "AccusedOpen in new Window., and this is a House of Stark review for "Game of ThronesOpen in new Window..


*Crown* Reader Impressions
You might have in fact forgotten you even had this gem in your port since it was written over ten years ago, but, sadly, the story it tells is not something that ever passes from our society. Every day we hear about random violence on innocent people, usually at the hands of gangs (or gang prospects).

I’m not sure that anyone who reads this could not feel some sympathy for Tomas. We instantly get that he’s on a deep road of regret and pain. I started off wondering, actually, if he’d been accused wrongfully and when I read ‘innocent man’ I had an immediate thought it was Tomas himself before I completed the reading of that sentence. And yet when I knew for sure he’d been involved I was still feeling sympathy for him, because of his regret and his feelings of sickness at his actions. That doesn’t condone what he did, of course, but it allows a certain amount of empathy for him. That, and the fact that he was caught up in the mob mentality – he had to do what his leader said but also if others around you are beating up on someone you’re likely to join in on reflex. Horrible horrible situation.

The allusion to being in a fog is great – thick, clammy, finding no exit. Life is going on outside of Tomas but he’s not really taking part in it. He can’t break free from his memories, can’t really even seen the future. In the latter part of the story the fog gives way to an allusion of a sleeping volcano waiting for the moment to wake. It’s just as powerful. People keep quiet about all sorts of things, needing a trigger to act upon them before they can speak. For Tomas it’s a mother. It seems only when he sees her grief and anger and applies it to his own mother, how she might react to the same situation, that he can let loose his feelings. The way you describe his emotions churning and blowing that vent open is wonderful. I could imagine the burn in his throat as he screamed his apologies, the flood of relief as he did so, and probably a flood of grief.

And because of this venting the fog’s lifting. I doubt he’s forgiven by a long shot and he’s probably off to jail, but Tomas appears to have made some sort of peace with himself. And that allows him to start again, as he says at the end.

Using a first person narrator and present tense heightens the emotions of this story, really puts the reader right there with Tomas in his fog. Good choice!


*Crown* Suggestions
Only a couple of exceedingly minor suggestions here, with the first being to remove the indenting. Because most of the story lives in the indent, the few lines that don’t look a bit odd. It didn’t really throw my reading off line but it was still a little distracting.

The jail guards bring… – I’d recommend this go on its own line to make it stand apart from the dialogue that precedes it. Not vital that you do, just feels like it would make both bits more powerful on their own. If you don’t move it, then at least put a space between the dialogue and this sentence.

laying – I expected to read ‘lying’ here so this stopped me. And then I had to look it up because I’m pretty sure ‘laying’ isn’t the right word but I had to know why! Yay for Google revealing something I probably should know anyway. It’s all about whether something is the subject of the word or the direct object of it. Since you’ve got ‘my body’ here it seems to me that you could use either word! Anyway, I looked up this article: http://www.writersdigest.com/online-editor/lay-vs-...


*Crown* Closing Comments
How does one say they love a story that involves violence? It always sounds weird, but I did very much like this. The story exposes the dark side of life but also gives hope that there is a brighter end. It’s emotional and tender, and still very current in 2016 as it was back in 2003. I would love to see the next stage in Tomas’ life, whether he was able to cope with the fog lifting.


In any case, glad I found this little gem!

Best wishes,
Osirantinous


House Stark image for G.o.T.
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for entry "A fallen AngelOpen in new Window.
Review by Osirantinous Author IconMail Icon
In affiliation with The Rockin' Reviewers  Open in new Window.
Rated: 18+ | (3.5)

Hi Lonewolf Author Icon

I’ve been looking at your book of Image Prompt Stories, and you’ve got some wonderful catchy titles there. Being something of a lover of angel/devil sort of stories "A fallen AngelOpen in new Window. intrigued me. So here I am to review it for House Stark for the crazy "Game of ThronesOpen in new Window..


*Crown* Reader Thoughts
Firstly, I so appreciate that you’ve included the image that prompted the story! Though I’m not judging a contest story when I’m reviewing, knowing that something was written for a contest but not knowing what the prompt was is annoying. I like to understand why the story was written etc. So, thank you! The image of the angel with wings on fire fits with your image of Zadkiel’s wings on fire as he falls (though the angel in the image seems a little more in control of the situation).

We don’t know why Zadkiel has fallen from Heaven and it seems almost like he doesn’t know either, or hasn’t realised yet that’s what’s happened. Or perhaps he asks his Father’s help simply out of reflex. For me that was a little ironic, and then a bit sad that the place he fell became a tourist attraction.

No matter the reason for Zadkiel’s fall, I felt sorry for him. He’s totally disoriented and vulnerable, catching snatches of beauty and then losing them. Even when he realises he’s become one of the demons he previously hunted I still felt for him (and I liked that he didn’t quite dwell on it; he just got up and moving). And bless him for thinking 34 is ‘incredibly young’. Gotta love that!

Though it seems odd to find a man in the woods with a silver bowl it kind of fits in with the fantastical nature of this story, and for the moment he really could be just someone out prospecting or collecting something or other for his family. Except… this man seems overly eager to get Zadkiel to drink so we should be suspicious about that. Zadkiel isn’t. Someone’s helping him, which he needs, and he doesn’t question it. It’s not until he feels the beautiful water working down his throat that a spec of ??? comes to him.

Loved the final two paragraphs because, to me anyway, they can be read two ways – a chance to go back (ie if he doesn’t drink) and a complete shutting off of one life and beginning of another (if he does drink). Of course, when you’re thirsty, you’re thirsty and it’s simply typical to remember the most important bit of information a tad too late! Though the water chases away the cold Zadkiel feels I’m not convinced this ending is in his best interests – though I would hope it means he’s not going to be a demon hated and hunted like he earlier feared.

Can you write a sequel some time? I want to know how he copes with his new life. And I so want someone to call him Zad and see how he reacts!


*Crown* Suggestions
There were a few things that niggled at me. Have listed them here with hopefully decent enough explanations for why I’ve done so.

that the sound could have been heard… – this ‘could have been’ doesn’t make it clear that it was heard, yet the following sentence agrees that it was. So I’d suggest ‘could be heard’ or ‘was heard’ replaces the current wording to make it fact.

half stumbling half crawling – great visual words for how poor Zadkiel is moving, but they feel awkward at the end of the sentence, almost like they’re an afterthought. Make them more active by replacing ‘wandering’ with them – so like Zadkiel half stumbled, half crawled through the forest area.

…almost like’ no it was. – random speech mark here. Perhaps swap it out for … ? And a few sentences after this you can take the apostrophe out of ‘eye’s’ because it’s not needed.

I noticed a bit of inconsistency with the man’s speech. He starts off with ‘you’ (four instances) and then at the end falls into ‘ya’ (twice). Maybe he became less couth, I don’t know, but it was disrupting for me.

…centuries ago he stood at the edge… – I think you need ‘had’ here between ‘he’ and ‘stood’ just to emphasise the distance between now and then.

…began to slid down his throat. – ‘slide’ rather than ‘slid’.


*Crown* Closing Comments
Yep, I’m a sucker for angel and demon stories. For some reason I find them romantic even if they’re all dark and bloody. This little story is dark – or at least has a lot of ‘darkness’ hiding in it – and not exactly any romance at all but that doesn’t have to be explicit. An angel standing just there does it for me. This tiny story seems just the perfect prologue to something larger and awesome because, though it is complete in its own right, it has so many onwards possibilities. It’s so amazing to be enthralled by something so little and to be left wanting more. Nicely done!!!


Thanks for the opportunity to read and review your writing!

Best wishes,
Os


House Stark image for G.o.T.
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Review of Punchdown  Open in new Window.
Review by Osirantinous Author IconMail Icon
In affiliation with The Rockin' Reviewers  Open in new Window.
Rated: 18+ | (4.5)
Hi Fivesixer Author Icon

Back again with another House Stark anniversary review for "Game of ThronesOpen in new Window.. This time for "PunchdownOpen in new Window.. I must presume, since this item hasn’t had a review, that you’ve had it private all the time it’s been around? Shame, because it’s a good read!


*Crown* Reader Impressions
You’ve labelled a lot of your items as ‘personal’ and these lyrics are no different. I often wonder if ‘personal’ also means ‘real’, but even if it doesn’t this item feels that way and so the emotional side came across very strong.

Feels like it’s all about a betrayal that spirals into something worse – or the something worse has always been around and comes to the fore because of the betrayal. I don’t say ‘heartbreak’ here because even though the narrator’s girl has rather cut ties with him, his reaction seems beyond that. Really like turning around to hear my heart stop – it’s audio and visual in one and I liked how the reaction rather belonged to the heart (if that makes sense). The narrator’s anger/rage is apparent too and it seems like he’s somewhat stuck in a cage himself, like he has all these emotions but can’t fight his way out of the walls blocking him in and so they just get worse but he’s totally impotent to do anything about it. (I thought the two final lines were telling. Or at least from my own reading – as if he knows how he’s going to react and doesn’t want to, but has to just to get passed stuff. Like he wants to break free but can’t, he’s stuck in a vicious circle.)

With lyrics, I started out expecting to hear a chorus/refrain early on and often and so I was – at first- startled that this didn’t come out so strongly (guess I haven’t been listening to ‘real’ music lately!) However, you do have a chorus of sorts (sorry that’s probably the wrong term), and it grows each time it appears so it became a strong element of the lyrics and told a little story in its own right. I equated ‘general store’ with the narrator’s own mind – as if he’s got a battle going on in there and, quite rightly, wants to quit. The last refrain of this ‘chorus’ openly shows the deterioration in the narrator, the inability for others to understand him, the loss at which he finds himself. Changing ‘think’ to ‘know’ in this final refrain is a great way of showing the growth (or perhaps the acceptance of his situation).


*Crown* Suggestions
Poetry, lyrics – it always feels somewhat wrong when offering a suggestion because, to me at least, these items are so personal and can be written in any which way possible. However, there were a few things that stopped my flow a bit so I mention them here. May just have been the way I was reading so ignore at your will *Smile*.

wondering not too innocently or quietly | cheapened falsified the self-induced proprietary – You don’t use punctuation and that’s all fine but I found ‘cheapened falsified’ puzzling and couldn’t figure out if they should be read together (in which case it felt like one of the words was wrong) or if they should be split (ie ‘cheapened’ belonging to ‘quietly’ in the line prior). Seems like they can be read either way (which I actually like about your items – the multiple ‘views’ you give us) and on my second reading I easily attached ‘cheapened’ to ‘quietly’ because I also read the previous lines as hearing woes wondering not too innocently rather than starting a fresh line with ‘wondering’. Sorry, quite a babble there!

overcompensating with thought my day | no way what to say nothing’s in the way – it’s the ‘what to say’ bit that I stumbled on here, or rather ‘what’. I decided to read using ‘how’ and that flows bit better though, of course, probably changes what you actually mean. I also read it without ‘what’ which kind of worked but it made the double ‘way’ in that line really stand out. So, I was just puzzled how to read this particular line.

still noone knew what I meant by what I said – when reading this slowly it’s fully understandable what you mean here but the ‘what I meant by what I’ was another bit of a stumble first up and I had to do over a couple of times before I got the flow right. Not saying you should change it but just pointing out a reader stumble.

One typo *Smile*to scary for even myself… – ‘too’ rather than ‘to’.


*Crown* Closing Comments
I’m really glad I found this item of yours. It’s a great read and definitely deserves more views. It’s a powerful piece of writing – in the writing itself (so descriptive) and the emotion. I have a question to close out – when you write lyrics, do you have music in mind? Or do you ever put music to the lyrics afterward?

Once again, happy anniversary!

Best wishes,
Os


House Stark image for G.o.T.


*Gold* My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Get CASH!Open in new Window..
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Review of Picnic Memories  Open in new Window.
Review by Osirantinous Author IconMail Icon
In affiliation with The Rockin' Reviewers  Open in new Window.
Rated: 13+ | (3.0)

Hi Schnujo NEEDS to do homework Author Icon

Thank you for participating in the recent round of "A Romance Contest - winners announcedOpen in new Window.. I'm reviewing your entry, "Picnic MemoriesOpen in new Window., in my role as one of the judges.


The Prompt
I thought the romance aspect of this story fitted the prompt beautifully – happy and sad, and the happy was something as simple as finding formations in the clouds. I loved that David and Mary both got into it. The spring part I must admit I struggled to find. It may be that the coronet of dandelion flowers speaks of spring to you, but it doesn’t to me – at least not without it being spelled out. (The gesture did help with the romance though!) And the new growth of the grass could also simply be new growth after a mowing. You do mention the mating calls of birds but I didn’t feel that it was enough to convince anyone this story was set in spring.

When you have David gazing back across time, that’s when you could say something like to a spring long ago with a field of grass and dandelions… just to set the scene.


The Plot
A happy yet sad plot, where David is actually sitting at his dying wife’s side, remembering the day he’d fallen in love. We know most of the story is a memory but we don’t actually know what’s happening in the present – or how serious it is – until his reverie is broken by the nurse and her somewhat callous final comment (at least, in my opinion). We know, at least, that he and Mary had a decently long life together and it was really nice to see the beginning as well as a little part of the end. It’s always an interesting thing to see what people start remembering when they’re faced with the coming loss of their loved one. As a cloud watcher myself I loved their funny little date and how they interacted with each other. Mary may not have admitted she loved David right then but I think it was pretty clear in her words and actions.

I really, really liked She made him want to be corny. Ah, love…..


The Characters
I’d like to have seen more of Mary. David goes through a very odd way of describing her beauty and I’d like to have known the shape of her face, the colour of her eyes etc to see what he’s seeing. Right down to what she is wearing – she seems the type of girl to be wearing a lovely bright dress. He’s fixated on her – show it.

Since David is very close to a first person narrator in this story, I don’t expect to ‘see’ him so well, but a little heads’ up on how he fitted with Mary would have been good. He almost seems like he was not really the type to be going on picnics and sky-gazing, so some thoughts on his part about it would have given us a clearer view of him, allowed us to get into the groove with him as he fell in love. (I love those stories where the characters are considered to be too opposite but fall in love any way.)


Some Technical Things
Just some nitpicking things, really.

…rhinoceros,” then she turned – you should really have a full stop after then animal, with ‘then she’ beginning a new sentence. And at the end of this sentence, after ‘sky’ no speech mark is needed as it’s not speech. You combine speech and action together often without splitting them into two distinct sentences (David’s Big Bird and pointing is a further example). It’s readable but I probably won’t be the first to mention that it’s incorrect punctuation.

It might just be me but I felt mildly insulted on Mary’s behalf when David’s thoughts ramble about her beauty. well, maybe not beautiful at first glance, though she wasn’t homely by any means… – this sounds like a man putting his foot in it, and then shoving it deeper as he’s tried to dig it out! I think the romance would work a whole lot better if he just mentioned how she got more and more beautiful as he gazed at her (and, presumably, as he got to know her better).

David gave her a look… – make this active. What’s the ‘look’ look like? How does she know she’s in trouble (at least before he tells her she is).

The other part? He was picky. – I’m not sure you need this part. It sounds a bit snobby in fact and made me not like David so much as I did prior!

She won’t be here much longer. – this is the nurse’s final comment and I thought it was frigid. Coming after the ‘we’ve enjoyed having her’ and ‘I’m very sorry’ it sounds really, really cold. I do wonder, though, if it was supposed to be attached to the ‘I’m very sorry’? If not, then I wonder if you could just remove it? What she says first is enough that David can nod his head in understanding at the situation.


Overall Impressions
A lovely yet heart-breaking story, Schnujo. Very simple premise – remembering a good time while waiting for the bad time. The final words are very evocative and I read them with a long sigh. Aside from there not being much spring that I could see, I did love the romance involved (well, almost forget the requirement of spring!). This is a story that you could tell in the other seasons too for this contest – a chance for readers to see how David and Mary got together and made their lives combine.


Thank you so much for entering "A Romance Contest - winners announcedOpen in new Window., and we hope you come back again! And - if you have any queries about anything above, don't hesitate to get in touch.

Kind regards,
Osirantinous

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Review of Mexican Standoff  Open in new Window.
Review by Osirantinous Author IconMail Icon
In affiliation with The Rockin' Reviewers  Open in new Window.
Rated: ASR | (3.0)
Hi Santa Author Icon

I found "Mexican StandoffOpen in new Window. on the "Please ReviewOpen in new Window. page, so here I am with a review.


Reader Impressions

With your genre Thriller/Suspense and the opening line At this moment Paca was not free I knew I was going to be in for something spine-tingling, definitely something suspenseful. And you kept that suspense all the way through – giving me a tiny insight into two lives that had struggled with hardships and finally found each other in a ‘meant to be’ manner, then worrying me that all hell was about to break loose. I felt a speck of ‘oh no’ when I learned of the ring, and shared Paca’s fear that she and Alejandro were going to be forced to fight each other in some barbaric contest to the death. Scythes and hoes are not really what you want to be eying when you’re tied up!

Even though you never actually describe the noise until the last minute, when Alejandro thinks/notes The noise. I sort of heard it. Nothing specific but rather a roar that just made any other noise inaudible. I think the short, choppy sentences helped make this particular scene frenetic, and helped give noise to the noise, and an atmosphere of ‘scary/unknown’ to the story. (If that makes sense!)

Introducing Paca’s parents did not lessen the suspense. Sacrifice often has family involved – willingly or otherwise, and so I was still in the whole ‘fight to the death’ panic that Paca herself didn’t seem to have released either. The crowd picking up the farming tools and crowding around her and Alejandro so they were cramped up with no escape simply fed that suspense/panic. And then…… I’m not going to give the ending away but suffice to say it was unexpected and gave me a ‘What? Oh…. Oh’ moment, which I really enjoyed.


The Contest

Well, I actually don’t know what contest you were writing this for but I presume the challenge related to telling a story from two different POVs? Hard to tell, so one thing I’d recommend is to include a link to the contest within the item (usually at the end). Readers (well, me) like to know why a story was written and what constraints it had (length, prompt, genre etc etc) – that way we can tailor a review appropriately. For example, if this contest had a word limit, then I could read the story and consider how well it was constructed within that word limit, and I wouldn’t complain about the length (ie ‘this could have been longer’) because I know you couldn’t go passed a certain boundary.

Also – a link to contests helps other people learn about those contests and perhaps enter themselves.

Anyway, I’m going to pretend you were writing from two POVs and comment on that. I myself usually write from a first person POV, so just one POV. However, these days I like to put in a mix – main first person narrator with a chapter or two from a third POV, so I don’t have any trouble reading multiple POVs in a story. In this little one of yours, you kept the POVs clear by using ****** to delineate them. That works perfectly fine for me, though with POVs of different sexes that also helped keeping the voices separate. We had two Paca-told sections and one ‘narrated’ by Alejandro. I actually liked that the first two sections were something of a mirror image of each other. We got a quick background on Paca, with certain knowledge of her love/attraction for Alejandro, and then the same from the young man himself. I enjoyed the little bit where he’s thinking how very hard it had been to win Paca’s affection and how many suitors he’d had to beat off – which is a little different to how Paca saw it; that she had in fact encouraged his efforts (and I suspect that any other suitors were never going to get a look-in *Smile*).

One thing I would mention with regards to the sections is to use the characters names a little more. Paca is introduced in the first sentence. Since we already know that ‘he’ is Alejandro, I think naming him in his first sentence would have worked better than four sentences in. We’re not going to mix the pair up at all but ‘he/she’ get a little repetitive after a while.

The third and final section returned to Paca for narration, which was perfect since she started the story off. She is the one who has always been fighting for freedom, so if any fight was to go on at the end it was right that she would be the one through whom the reader witnessed it.


Things that Niggled

I’m a nit-picky reviewer over odd stuff so you’re free to do what you like with these suggestions. And I make them full well knowing that you probably had a word limit you were working to!

At this moment Paca was not free. – this is actually quite a snazzy opening sentence, and there’s nothing wrong with it on its own. The bit I found a bit odd comes next, where you mention that she’s been fighting for freedom since she was a child. It makes the ‘at this moment’ seem off, since it sounds like at most moments of her life she hasn’t been free. I thought this opening sentence could actually come before *green*She stared across at him now…, because that would give us a ‘she has fought all her life, has found freedom but – boom- she’s suddenly lost it’ kind of moment. (The other thing is – why had Paca been fighting for freedom? It’s a tiny prick of intrigue to the reader and you never explain it, never let us know why she’s so desperate for freedom – so it’s something I’d want to see included should you ever expand the story).

bound like she was – at no point do you actually explain how either of the pair is bound – hands and feet? Just hands? Behind back? Again, a tight word limit might prevent this but the binding is an important part in this story, especially when Paca’s continually fighting her bonds. Knowing how she is tied, what she is tied with – these things give the reader more to ‘see’ and ‘feel’.

Across the arena! She was there, restrained. – I found these two sentences a little jarring, and the first one a little ‘what?’ because it’s like a blurt but nothing is really said (and it doesn’t go with Alejandro not knowing where he was – he’s obviously in an arena). I wonder if you could combine the two? Something like She was across the arena, restrained! but of course better than that.

He saw a terrified look on her face. – which he no doubt did, but what did it look like? I’d rather see this piece turned into a ‘show’ of the terror rather than just stating he could see it.

He met her when she was… – I’d suggest using ‘Paca’ here instead of ‘her’ because nowhere else in Alejandro’s section do we get her name. There are other places it would work, but definitely here because this starts a new paragraph/action.

… struck her eye. – I know what you mean here but when I first read this I read it literally, that she was being struck with the hoe. I think ‘caught’ might be better word to use.

Mama’s and Papa’s – no apostrophes required because you’re not abbreviating anything and you’re not showing possession.


Closing Comments

I liked this story, it ended so differently from how I thought it would. The suspense kept me engaged right to the very end. I had some niggles over parts, but I am a nit-picker reviewer. Mostly I’d like to see this expanded because I think there’s a huge back-story to Paca, and I want to see more sights and smells from her and Alejandro’s confinement in the arena. Giving more in-depth attention to their arena moment will heighten the suspense even more!

In any case, I’m chuffed I went looking on the Please Review page today and found this little item. Hope you can find some helpful things in this review, but don’t hesitate to contact me if anything needs clarification.

Best wishes,
Osirantinous


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Review of Dark Cloud  Open in new Window.
Review by Osirantinous Author IconMail Icon
In affiliation with The Rockin' Reviewers  Open in new Window.
Rated: 13+ | N/A (Review only item.)
Hi Jimminycritic Author Icon

As a fellow "Invalid ItemOpen in new Window. contestant, I’m pleased to offer a review on your entry "Dark CloudOpen in new Window..


Reader Impressions
This is one of those stories that does my head in. At first sight a heck of a ramble without plan and I think ‘no, no, no, not a story’ but then I step back and look at the subject – a cloud. And the ramble, jumble, ‘no idea what’s going on here’ aspect makes a lot of sense!

At the end of the story I kind of felt like I’d been in the cloud’s storm, tumbled about and left upside down but also feeling somewhat enlightened. How can you not love a story that leaves you like that? And what’s more is that it’s a story told perfectly to character. I’m sure a grammarian would have a heart attack over some of the writing structure, but it fits perfectly to the nature of a cloud.


Prompt
Your story personifies a dark cloud and you’ve gone for the emotion angle – among other things… loneliness, possessiveness and rage, which tends to go hand-in-hand with the first two. I did like that the cloud’s rage also went physical. He has no arms/legs but the storm let loose, the crushing of trees makes me imagine he is pushing trees over with an invisible set of hands.

He also embodies the absolute randomness of a cloud – wispy, drifting, thoughts here there and everywhere, growing, shrinking, ranting. I was a bit confused over the ‘experiment’ side of things that he talks about but if you don’t read much into it it all just comes across as that randomness. The way you’ve written these thoughts and actions all jumbled up are a manifestation of no logic whatsoever. It’s rather well done, even if you didn’t intend to have it look like that!


Things that puzzled me
Actually there’s only two.

The first relates to the second paragraph where the cloud is trying to excuse what he says or has done. But that’s a bit odd because he is a dark cloud, and being dark is what he does/is. It felt out of character for him, if that makes sense so I’d actually suggest that paragraph could go (especially since the third paragraph mentions that there are no excuses for his being).

The second is just about the tenses. I felt this cloud’s tale swapped between present and past and I couldn’t always tell where the story was. It’s not until half way through the third paragraph that we hear there’s going to be a story within a story but even then it was a bit hard to note which was story-past and which was story-present. This did, of course, make Here I am scatter-winded. one of the most apt lines there ever was!! Definitely embodies the randomness of a cloud but it did confuse this reader a bit.


Closing Comments
A story that is actually hard to describe!! I spend a lot of time watching clouds, and next time I see them meld together in the sky I’m sure this story will come to mind and I’ll think of something akin to love and war taking place.

Best of luck for the contest!


Thanks for giving me the opportunity to read and review your writing! Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you need any clarification regarding my comments.

Best wishes,
Os

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Review of When we align  Open in new Window.
Review by Osirantinous Author IconMail Icon
In affiliation with The Rockin' Reviewers  Open in new Window.
Rated: E | (4.5)
Hi Jimminycritic Author Icon

As a fellow "Invalid ItemOpen in new Window. contestant, I’m pleased to offer a review on your entry "When we alignOpen in new Window..


Prompt
You took on the wonderful same-but-different feelings Love and Hate for your story, with Hate being the primary POV. His opening line of Whatever. was wonderful!!! I thought it totally set the tone all the way through. I also liked how you put all of their personalities into the conversation – and that we could clearly not expect a physical personification. I liked it; I don’t think we need ‘physical’ to be able to take on a particular POV.


Reader Impressions
I really liked this little story, and I think it shows quite cleverly how very close Love and Hate are to each other. For me the mention of the blade of grass helps indicate that – Hate hates being stuck in the soil, Love pretty much loves it for the same reason. You know, it’s a lose-lose (or win-win) situation. And as I mentioned briefly above, it was nice to have this story told completely from conversation. We had enough personification here, I thought, not to worry about putting a physical something around both characters.

I especially enjoyed how you turned the story around so that the final part came from Love’s point of view – and that Love seemed to have a little bit of “I’m sick of this” going on (when thinking wiggling out to a better atmosphere on the other side). All couched in ‘love’, of course! And, of course, Don’t you hate being stuck here? is an interesting thing directed at Hate. Presumably Hate doesn’t – Hate actually ‘loves’ being here so we get that whole ‘everything is same-but-different’ feeling and that the two emotions are not really very much removed from each other.

I must admit I feel a bit sorry for Hate. As Hate he must ‘hate’ things, but many of the comments he makes are quite emotional – he hates when he’s dominating the conversation, but he’d also hate it if Love went away. These are two things you really can read as ‘hate’ rather than using ‘hate’ (as in most of the story) as a form of ‘love’. Yes, I’m going to stop here before I get in a tangle!


Things that Niggled
Not much niggled at all! I liked the way this was written, with the rambling rants – this is how conversations run. I did find one thing though….

Mine! – this felt kind of out of the blue, and I couldn’t figure out where it fitted. Mine what?


Closing Comments
Very clever, Jimminy, and an enjoyable read. I liked that we moved from Hate’s POV to Love’s, but that the ending was a question directed back at Hate and felt quite ambiguous. We expect that Hate would say that, yes, he does hate being here (but rather more in a form of ‘I love being here’). You could really tangle yourself up with this story (well, the reader could) but you kept lovely control of the telling and should we say that Love triumphs over Hate here?


Best of luck for the contest!

Best wishes,
Os

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Review of The Body  Open in new Window.
Review by Osirantinous Author IconMail Icon
In affiliation with The Rockin' Reviewers  Open in new Window.
Rated: 13+ | (4.0)
Hi Sum1 Author Icon

As a fellow "Invalid ItemOpen in new Window. contestant, I’m pleased to offer a review on your entry "The BodyOpen in new Window..


Prompt
Boy, did you have me thrown! I was all about ‘OMG he’s broken the no-human-speech rule straight off’ in those opening lines, and I was in a panic because that’s so unlike you. But, no, no broken rules; you were just being extra sneaky and clever!

You chose the body (dead or alive) prompt and you managed to use alive, mostly dead, and completely fake all in one story. And then right at the end you gave us a truly alive Ken ‘body’. An ambitious undertaking, but really nicely done.


Reader Impressions
I would agree with Ken’s observation; this is a self-centred man and when I was reading this story with Ken being real I wasn’t overly bothered by him falling off the cliff. Ooops. But when you twisted that plot oh so well to point out that the reader has been duped, it all came very clear. Ken is a doll (I imagined him as THE Ken) and he is at once very perfect and very screwed. He is put into situations beyond his control (as any doll might be) and I loved the fact that we were able to see the scene twice, once we knew what it was about.

Here we have someone climbing a mountain and falling, and then kind of waiting to die/be eaten. The large black bird wasn’t massively out of whack with the story – condors, vultures, etc; all ready and waiting for a quick snack. The bear, too, isn’t out of place and I started to feel just a little bit sorry for Ken. Everything is turned on its head when we move to the ‘real’ scene – a young girl is playing with her dolls. The reader has to pull back from Ken lying there with his legs all bent and broken to understand that Ken is actually a doll, puppet to a child’s imagination, lying around with his limbs bent at odd angles.

This story reminds me so much of when I was a child, coming up with all sorts of stories for my dolls (I had Daisy dolls, as well as Barbie, but never Ken). I never once thought about a sort of ‘reality’ for the doll – ie what they were thinking. It is almost a scary thought, like some weird horror story. And that brings me to the final sentence of the story – when a new family moves in next door and the child’s name is Ken. I couldn’t help feeling he was going to be in trouble one day, sort of like he was going to take on the personality/adventures of the doll, and I worried for him. It was a little extra twist that made this story feel quite devious. I liked it a lot, and I liked this story; it’s very clever.


Things that Niggled
Apart from the fact I was caught out by a sneaky twist?? *Smile*

Couple of punctuation issues (listed below) but nothing major. Parts of the story were quite wordy where I might expect a more colloquial telling (such as in Ken’s second speech) but I do realise that it also fits in with what a doll might say/think/do (sort of awkward and long-winded).

He didn’t notice, or remember the vine snaked across his path. – either remove the comma or put another one after ‘remember’.

I’m going to beat every record there is in mountain climbing’. – extraneous speech mark here.


Closing Comments
Well I finished reading this story wishing there was more – more Ken adventures and more story regarding the ‘real’ Ken. I would love to know if they entwine more – life imitating art imitating life etc

Good luck for the contest.

Best wishes,
Os

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Review of Found Treasure  Open in new Window.
Review by Osirantinous Author IconMail Icon
In affiliation with The Rockin' Reviewers  Open in new Window.
Rated: E | (4.0)
Hi Lynda Miller Author Icon

This review of the poem "Found TreasureOpen in new Window. is the second of three reviews from the PDG’s Package 10 which you won in "Save Disability Group membership!Open in new Window..

Just a short reminder... writing poetry isn’t my strong point and therefore my reviews of poetry tend to come more from the reader than the writer! Hopefully you’ll still find something valuable though!


*FlowerR* Reader Impressions
This is a lovely poem of gratitude and found confidence, of friendship and perseverance. I think all writers hunger for a champion (outside their parents!!), and the confidence we get from them cannot ever be understated. You’ve titled this poem Found Treasure, and I think you’re absolutely right. A person who encourages us, who has faith in us, and who gives us confidence is a treasure – even if they don’t see that themselves. This poem is a really nice way of acknowledging what your treasure has done for you.


*FlowerR* Emotional Impact
This is a heartfelt poem that I think anyone can relate to. We writers are our own worst critics, which you’ve made clear here. And you’ve also brought up that other ‘thing’ we do – linking the fact that we ‘can’t’ write with the fact that must mean we shouldn’t offer advice to others. Which is not true, but we often need a push to be reminded of this. Your worry and hesitation is clear in the opening stanzas, and the sense of burgeoning confidence (laced with ‘is she telling the truth?’) comes out through the middle. But then you caught that bug called ‘confidence’ and went with the flow. I can sense the relief and pleasure and pride in the line And now it’s done.

I liked how you didn’t use flowery words in this poem. Being a poem of inspiration and thanks, you could have but simple words are often more heartfelt and honest (in my humble opinion). Whomever reads this will know how you felt throughout your journey, and anyone who has found a champion (or might still be looking for one) will understand your feelings.

You champion might not feel that what they did was really all that amazing, but the things that change our lives aren’t necessarily huge and are not always noticeable straight away. That you even wrote this lovely poem shows how much impact your champion’s friendship and encouragement had, and it’s a very fine way of displaying your gratitude. Question – does your champion know about this poem??


*FlowerR* Rhyme, Form and Flow
Well, you’ve got stanzas of four lines each, apart from your opening quote of two lines and your final line. Mostly there’s no rhyme, so it’s a free-form poem but I actually liked the rhyme in: I took the challenge | and read and read. | I did the editing | as the words filled my head. The rhyme and metre made this a very easy stanza to read and I realised I’d quite like to see more of this poem written in a rhyming format. I think this is mostly because I’ve read a lot of “gratitude” poems in rhyming format!!

The reading flow was alright but there are some repetitive words that made things a bit jarring. I’ve mentioned them below


*FlowerR* Suggestions
Poetry’s from the heart, and I do loathe to point things out because of that but I felt some wording choices were quite clunky (and some were very repetitive). I’m listing the examples below as I think that might be more clear than just me talking about them. This will look horribly long, but it’s mostly me giving my reasons, so please don’t freak out! And, of course, you’re free to ignore everything.

I had my head full | on writing a novel. – firstly, ‘on’ needs to be ‘of’ because your head is ‘full of’ something, not ‘full on’ something. But also, I think you could remove ‘writing’. You use write, writing, wrote a lot in this poem, and here I think it’s not needed. That your head is full of a novel implies the ‘writing’, but the main reason I suggest removing it is the line that comes after this – Yet, I would write. The verb here is enough (and I would actually like to see ‘and write’ tacked on, mostly because when I read these last two lines, the metre seems to flow a little more smoothly with the extra ‘and write’. But that might just be me!!).

I didn’t feel – this starts the second stanza. This stanza is really quite poetic (though I did wonder if ‘placed’ needed a ‘where’ attached to it. You feel like you haven’t placed the description or the dialogue where?) But my main reason for mentioning this line is that you’ve got ‘didn’t feel’ in the last line of the stanza above and so it’s quite repetitive. Perhaps you could turn this stanza around just a little to start with placing the words and ending with how they didn’t feel rightly placed?

and ask for help – just needs to be ‘asked’ here. And in the last line of this third stanza I’d recommend swapping ‘book’ for ‘story’. That’s for two reasons. You use ‘book’ a lot and for some reason I always hear ‘children’s story’ rather than ‘children’s book’.

but you said; I’ve known – use another dialogue tag here otherwise you have two ‘saids’ close together and they stand out. Also, I think you need “ around the dialogue to make it true dialogue (since I presume that’s what you’ve got here).

I sent your novel | back to you – I felt these two lines of the sixth stanza were quite jarring, especially the second line when read on its own. It feels too ‘tell’ or almost too ‘common’. The suggestion I’ve got doesn’t fit with your four-lines-to-a-stanza form but hopefully you can see how you could turn this around a little bit (and get rid of another ‘wrote’): I sent back your novel | and you told me | how I did a great editing job. The fourth line could, perhaps, give an explanation of ‘great’ – ie what was something that you did that your friend found ‘great’?

I couldn’t believe it. – I understand what you mean here but this is a really negative line, and when read on its own it’s even more negative. You don’t have to remove it, just change it around a little: Though I couldn’t believe it or I dared hardly believe it. In any case, I think it also needs to be attached more to the first line so put a comma after ‘pride’ rather than a full stop. At the end of this stanza you have ‘own’. Because we’re reading the poem we know ‘own’ means your own novel, but reading the stanza as a single piece makes ‘own’ non-understandable. (The stanza coming directly after makes it understandable again but I think each stanza should make its own sense.)

I wrote my book and And now it’s done. – I found ‘book’ and ‘done’ jarring, and both all the more jarring because you use them again in the last stanza. I think ‘novel’ could replace ‘book’ here and even something like ‘complete’ could replace ‘done’. ‘Complete’ feels much more expressive.

See what you’ve done? – ‘done’ definitely works better here but it almost feels accusatory in this sentence. Maybe ‘achieved’ could be used? Less accusatory, more encouraging. Also, put a full stop after ‘book’ in the third line.


*FlowerR* Closing Comments
Poetry’s just the right format for expressing gratitude, and you’ve done a fine job here of doing that and explaining why you’re doing it. You had a wonderful triple win – confidence to review, confidence to write and a champion who helped remind you that you can review and write. Sure, I’ve nit-picked at some of your wording but that doesn’t stop me loving the emotions in this poem or loving the poem!! And it reminds me I need to do more thanking too!


Thanks for giving me the opportunity to read and review your poetry. Please don’t hesitate to contact me if something doesn’t make sense.

Best wishes,
Os

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Review of My Beloved  Open in new Window.
Review by Osirantinous Author IconMail Icon
In affiliation with The Rockin' Reviewers  Open in new Window.
Rated: E | (4.5)
Hi Lynda Miller Author Icon

Congratulations on winning Package 10 from "Save Disability Group membership!Open in new Window. which was, among other things, three reviews. This review is for your sneaky little poem "My BelovedOpen in new Window..

Just a short pre-amble... Though I like to read poetry, writing it isn’t my strong point and therefore my reviews of poetry tend to come more from the reader than the writer! Hopefully you’ll still find something valuable though!


*FlowerR* Reader Impressions
‘Sneaky?’ I hear you ask. Yep, because here I was thinking I’d be reading a love poem, all romantically written with a quill no less, and then, boom, we have a cheater in the middle of the poem and a murder at the end of it! I do love twists in what I read and I liked how I didn’t really see this one coming. In fact, at the third stanza I thought the narrator was writing a letter to say he was leaving his wife (even if she stays through thick and thin).

Cheating, adultery, mistresses – everyone has their opinion about these things. Love is not easy and you can’t always choose who your love goes to. Sometimes we even manage to love two people! Your narrator doesn’t, or at least doesn’t now. He says he’ll leave his mistress but he won’t, and he knows his wife understands this. And yet he also seems to think that having the two women with him is okay. She is the mother of his children, as he says; clearly that’s a link that can’t be broken and I got the feeling that for him actually loving her wasn’t much a part of the equation now. Oddly, I was kind of reminded of the ‘pina colada’ song (Escape by Rupert Holmes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5_EIikdFr8) – couples who are tired of each other looking for something else.

Your narrator does come across also as a bit arrogant/naïve (yes, the two together). Here he is with a mistress, lying to his wife and not feeling really guilty about it, and when she pulls a gun he’s like ‘she won’t hurt me, we’ve never had any problem’. As if he doesn’t consider the cheating to be a problem. On the other hand, this also says something about the wife. She knows what has been going on but has obviously not mentioned the issues prior, pretending almost as if there isn’t an issue. You know, sometimes the blame for the war is not on the person who started it but on the one who could have stopped it but didn’t… It’s another way to view the man’s shocked reaction, at least.

As for the wife, one immediately is on her side because she’s got a cheating husband. She loves her man, she’s a good wife (well, that’s not explicit and maybe she is only in her own eyes), and she’s a mother. Yet her man is off with some other woman. She’s at her wit’s end and has gone passed the ‘we can work something out’ stage to the ‘you give me no other choice’ stage. It’s in our nature to sympathise a little with the one who is seen to be the ‘victim’. However… the latter half of the poem doesn’t show us a victim at all. It’s murder, fair and square; and, for me, the wife turns into the more hard-hearted of the pair. The final lines of this poem bear this out. She’s not running away, freaking about what she’s just done. She’s knelt herself down to watch her husband’s blood run out of him. I certainly didn’t get any sense of her being concerned but rather a ‘I just need to make sure you die’ kind of moment. One may feel a sense of religious fanaticism within her, with the fifth stanza ‘rant’ and also a passive aggressive nature. It almost sounds like, while she hasn’t been overtly railing against the mistress, she’s been dropping hints and warnings and so uses the lack of acknowledgement of them as a further excuse for murder. He was warned, after all.

Oh my god, I’m way waffling here? I’m sorry if I am but the more I think about this poem I see many more levels in it! Such as….. what if the wife was a slightly crazy woman in the first place and that’s why he found a mistress?



*FlowerR* Tone and Mood
As odd as it probably sounds, the use of a quill and ink is what starts this poem out in a romantic mood. It conjures up visions of the romantic poets doing their thing way back in the day! The mood and tone, of course, darken as we get further into the poem and words like ‘leave, tears, lies, repent’ edge us toward foreboding.


*FlowerR* Rhyme, Form and Flow
I didn’t recognise any particular form of poetry here, just that you kept to a tidy five lines per stanza. There is some rhyming but I couldn’t discern any pattern.

I loved the ‘wife | strife’ rhyming because it heightened, for me, that things had gone wrong. A good relationship would never rhyme these. But… I think you could make it even stronger but swapping the line order just a tad: But… the mother of my children | my wife | we never had any strife (I put ‘but…’ here without the ‘this’ because it feels a little more active and also helps to show the ‘but how is this happening?’ feeling. Just a suggestion of course.

As free-form as this seems to be I thought the flow was okay in that I didn’t struggle to read the poem and didn’t need to re-read certain sections. I think it could be made more powerful than it already is if there was more rhyming to it (but that’s just me).


*FlowerR* Punctuation and Grammar
Normally I don’t pick on punctuation in poetry because it feels like poetry can do whatever it likes. However, since most of your words are in a sentence format I did feel there was some missing punctuation and excess of capital letters starting a line. I’ll give a couple of examples.

Here I sit, | Quill in hand. – I think Quill could be lowercase, because it’s not starting a new sentence.

I see the tears flow from her eyes | And know she sees my lies – I’d like to see a comma after ‘eyes' and the ‘And’ uncapitalised. But also, a full stop after ‘lies’. I think And yet she gives me a smile. would stand best fully as its own sentence.

I dip it – on a line of its own the ending ‘it’ kind of jars. I’d suggest replacing it with ‘the nib’ (or something like that).

I hear the sound – just wondered if you might consider actually putting a sound here rather than the narrator reporting he hears it? Something like A crack snaps the silence, | I feel the pressure Even in poetry it’s best to try to ‘show’ rather than ‘tell’.

One thing I’ll suggest above all is removing the Young Adult genre. Emotional would be a good genre to pick and maybe Dark, but Young Adult seems out of place.


*FlowerR* Closing Comments
This poem starts off romantic and then descends into darkness—adultery, lying, fanaticism, murder—and it happens so smoothly we’re there (and start backing the woman) before we expect it. Even at the end, when the woman is quite cold-blooded, I expect readers will still be feeling like they’re on her side and not quite getting the real tenor of those closing lines. The narrator is complex, guilty and yet also a victim and I must admit I ended feeling just a little bit sorry for him!


Congrats again on winning the auction package. And... don't hesitate to contact me if something doesn't make sense.

Best wishes,
Osirantinous

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Rated: E | (4.5)
Hi Erik Woods Author Icon

I found "ANZAC Lest We ForgetOpen in new Window. under the Read a Newbie section on the Hub page, and being a New Zealander the title piqued my interest straight off.


Reader Impressions
I think any member of WDC who is Australian or a New Zealander will cleave this tribute to their hearts, especially this year. It is that classic tale of soldiers who went (some cheerfully, some forced) to fight so far away from home in someone else's war, and didn't let anyone down. And how a nation remembers those heroes year upon year.

It’s an emotional poem to read, and easy to read due to the rhyming form. I also thought the first two lines were spot on. It does feel as if it’s just a day off to people, and I think in past years (New Zealand anyway) that’s often how it has been seen by a certain demographic. With this year being the 100th anniversary of Gallipoli, that sense has changed. I’m sure there was drinking but the day itself wasn’t about drinking; it was about remembering huge sacrifices, heroes, and honouring those who fell and those who came back. This year, we are exactly as your final lines depict – remembering and doing so with respect. And we always will. I think the next few years will be tough on both countries as we hit the centenary anniversaries of other huge WWI battles. Well, at least I hope the country remembers those with as much pomp and respect as Gallipoli.


Tone, Mood, Emotional Impact
Your tone and mood are both sombre, as most poems on this subject are. ANZAC readers will be feeling this even just reading the title and we’ll be adding our own emotions and memories to yours. ANZAC Day is, however, as much a celebration as it is remembering the harsh theatres of war. We’re celebrating nationhood, camaraderie, loyalty and probably straight out ballsyness so there is always a sliver of joy. In this poem it’s stated in the lines:

If it's a fight that they want, then let me just say,
we'll give 'em a fight, the Australian way.


Your Diggers didn’t admit defeat, they got on with their job and made their country proud.

As odd as it may sound, I really think that the rhyming in the stanzas adds to the emotional impact of the poem. I suspect the rhyming gets the reader into a lyrical flow and when that it combined with this massive history you’re presenting it acts as a double whammy for getting under the reader’s skin.


Rhyme, Form and Flow
I’m not going to begin to pretend I know if you’ve used a known poetry form. All I know is that with the poem in four-line stanzas, with each pair of sequential lines rhyming, the words flow very easily and there’s no hiccup (for me, anyway) in the reading.

Apart from one line, that is:

It's for all these reasons, as sure as the sun will set, – I’m not sure if it’s the ‘all’ or the ‘will’ but this line doesn’t seem to flow as smoothly as the others. I was going to suggest amending the latter clause to something like as sure as the sun sets but that fiddles with your rhyming. I think you could remove ‘all’ as it wouldn’t prevent the reader know that ‘all’ is implied.


Punctuation and Grammar
I only noticed two things that stood out.

Family’s needs to be ‘families’, as you’re not talking in the possessive sense here.

I’m not sure about using the comma to separate each line. Most of the lines work as full sentences and look odd with the comma there. That forces a reading break and some lines just don’t need it. For example At times it seemed, that there was no way out,; when you read this using the comma as a break it actually stops making a lot of sense and if anything stopped my reading flow the comma did. I would presume it’s part of the poetry form you used??? If it’s not, then I’d recommend going through again and seeing if you can remove some of the commas.


Final Comments
A heartfelt and nicely descriptive poem. It should tug hearts, even if the reader is unfamiliar with ANZAC history.

Please don’t hesitate to contact me if something doesn’t make sense.


Best wishes,
Os

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Review of Late to School  Open in new Window.
Review by Osirantinous Author IconMail Icon
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Rated: E | (4.0)
Hi Andrew Author Icon

I’m back with another House Stark ‘raid’ review for "King's Landing updating Open in new Window., this time for "Late to SchoolOpen in new Window..


*Crown* Reader Impressions
What a comedy of errors, and so typical of a teenager. I’m not sexist so I won’t say ‘teenage BOY’ *Smile*

It all starts with the difficulty of getting out of bed, and having that annoying parent all but force you. It seems typical too that they then disappear off somewhere, leaving you to your own devices which generally means you’re going to fail the test. I was a little bit surprised that John did get himself out of bed, but having the covers torn completely off the bed may have been the key. He’s out of bed – it’s less effort to get dressed than to rearrange the bed and get back into it. And there’s always that horrible thing that happens – as soon as you’re up, you’re wide awake. No point in going back to bed!

Except that John has a few minutes up his sleeve, and that knowledge that he can relax for a moment allows Sleep to come for another round. Your description of the tiredness seeping into his limbs, the eyelids being pushed down, brain… is really very clear. As we read we can imagine John starting to sag, and we can almost feel that heaviness in our own limbs.

After that, hell breaks loose. In a very short timeframe John has to get to school. One can’t help but laugh as he’s sprayed by the car (I’m sure drivers swerve through puddles just to do this) after his heroic attempt to avoid the puddle, but also feel impressed that he soldiers on. I expect once a teacher sees him he’ll get sent home to change but I’m glad he’s shown some school spirit.

Loved the final punchline. If John had just picked up the phone, he’d have saved himself all this grief. Fine line – does he make himself even more late by answering the phone? He chose not to (probably most of us would have done the same) and hence he shows up to school very bedraggled. But – just perfectly and ironically – he’s on time!


*Crown* Suggestions
I’m one of those readers who keeps a very keen eye on dates and times. I think it’s part of my Capricorn brain that requires total control over stuff and perfect organisation. Mostly, you’re fine but there is one piece of time information that I think could be removed: only minutes before school started. I suggest this one because it’s ten minutes after John went to sleep. When he went to sleep the school bus was only five minutes from his door. That means that in terms of timing school is only five minutes of that sleep plus ‘only minutes’ AWAY. It didn’t seem the right timing, in that it felt as if the school was actually only just around the block. What’s the point of a bus?

I know that time (and especially running out of it!) is a major focus of this story so one expects to see references to it but ‘minute/s’ showed up six times and it weirdly felt too much. I wonder if some of the instances could become ‘moments’ or ‘seconds’ just to change it up a bit.

John was running up to his school. – the previous sentence mentions that there’s only a few minutes before school starts, so I’m not sure you need to mention ‘school’ again here. Perhaps something like John slipped through the gates.


*Crown* Closing Comments
A funny little story, Andrew, and I’m sure there are a lot of people who could fully relate to John and his adventure!


Thanks for the opportunity to read and review your writing!

Best wishes,
Osirantinous


Os - Master Dungeon Keeper - House Stark
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Review by Osirantinous Author IconMail Icon
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Rated: E | (4.5)
Hi Nixie 🦊 out sick Author Icon

The awesome "King's Landing updating Open in new Window. is in full swing and you’ve been chosen as a recipient of a review raid. This review of "Dr. Zhivago and the CheesecakeOpen in new Window. comes from fabulous House Stark.


*Crown* Reader Impressions
This story caught my eye because of its title. I know of the movie, and it’s one of my mum’s favourites too. I loved how the kitten got the name but resembled nothing like the original suave doctor. How often do we mis-name our pets??

This story is a comedy of errors, all helped along by one little kitten (though the cheesecake probably would have cracked anyway!). It’s amazing how one little tiny thing can cause so much destruction, and you describe his actions so perfectly that I can only presume you’ve had the pleasure of witnessing kitten power. The funny thing is, I think humans are partly to blame. When we react, that just seems to make a kitten even more excitable; well adult cats too! My seven-year-old cat still climbs the curtains and seems to enjoy it more when I start to cackle over it. Dr. Zhivago’s ‘thoughts’ at the end are totally apt – we make a big deal but a kitten’s so laid back and probably also thinking ‘thanks for the fun’.

I loved how this story was told by Cassandra but run by Dr. Zhivago. Though there is a plot outside of the kitten (preparations for Cassandra’s dad’s birthday party), once the cheesecake is cooling every action moment that follows has a four-legged instigator. It’s all very plausible too, even the chaos of people falling over in the lounge. Really, it’s no surprise that Cassandra’s mum fainted. Given the chaos, it was a rather a natural reaction. I found it really quite impressive that you managed to characterise not only Cassandra and the kitten but also several other characters so that we could see them quite clearly in their actions and reactions, even if they don’t have big roles. I think it’s quite a masterful telling!


*Crown* Suggestions
My only ‘suggestion’ is rather an ‘observation’. There’s not a huge time-frame between Cassandra sending her dad off for toilet rolls and then going outside to see if the hot boy was about (perfect ‘aside’ in the plot, by the way). She’s barely outside when she sees her dad with the twelve-pack. I didn’t think enough ‘time’ had passed even if the drugstore was just around the corner.


*Crown* Closing Comments
Loved this story, Nixie. Very funny and totally believable. Anyone who has lived with a kitten will be reminiscing and nodding away as they read. The human characters were wonderfully drawn too *Wink*, and perfect entertainment-providers to Dr. Zhivago.


Thanks for the opportunity to read and review your writing!

Best wishes,
Osirantinous


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