Hi Lee,

My favorite line:
“There is a special hush that seems to require reverence. Whether it’s required or not, it certainly has mine.”

That really nailed hiking through the woods for me. Beautifully written.

The first part / letter was damn good. You had my attention the whole way through and I like the way you used the letter to frame the scene and lead me towards the next part of the story. I wanted to know why he read the letter, why he cried afterwards. I also think its great stylistic choice to intertwine the letters with the plot. It was fresh for me. I haven’t seen it used that often in my reading.

The next two scenes were a little rough for me. They left me asking more questions than were answered.

You referenced the urn very briefly in the first part…so briefly that I almost missed it and the urn is really a centerpiece in the scene. Someone died. It’s Betty and William, her husband presumably, is upset. He loved her very much to be reading old letters and raising a glass to the ol’ gal. That’s what I thought after reading the first scene which is what I think you want me to be thinking as a reader. But the story has a twist.

When you move on to the next scene, the water gets muddy for me to the end. As a reader, I spent time trying to figure out the plot instead of reading it as it unfolded in front of me. I think there were actually two affairs between two couples right? That was the twist.

There is definitely a good story there and an engaging style choice to tell the story. I know that because you had me in the first part. I wanted to read on. It’s your story and I am no expert, for me, I think the next steps with this piece if you want to revise it would be to strengthen the middle and last scene so its clear there were two affairs and an opportunity for two people who loved each other but were bound by other marriages, can now be together.

I hope my comments are helpful. Thanks for sharing this. I’d love to see another draft after all the feedback you receive. I think you’ve got the makings of a great story here!

Regards,
Brian

Great post Susan. Made me laugh out loud litterly 😉

I’m blown away by your post Lee. You are an inspiration. God bless you.

Hats off to everyone’s work so far. Thank you all.

A few comments from me:
– I think Google Groups have a capacity limit of 100mb which might be prohibitive for the project. There are alternatives. For example I think Windows Live Groups have a 5GB capacity.

– Thank you Margie for the education. Seeing the project laid out like that is eye opening. I have never published a book so I will leave it to the veteran wisdom of the group for timelines.

– In terms of length, I agree with Margie that we probably want to stick with word counts. I’ve seen short story word count limits of anywhere from 1000 words for flash fiction to 30,000 words or less. The SFWA Nebula Awards considers 7500 words or less a short story as a further guide.

– I like the idea of reading and critiquing each other’s work. For me, getting 30 readers for my material will be difficult as I am just starting to build, however with the help of fellow Cartelists I could get there.

– In general for the project I think we should keep it simple in the beginning and focus on the writing and not get too bogged down in the technology. I think we should get something basic and workable up and running quickly so we can get the project off the ground while we have a lot of excitement and momentum. As long as we make smart decisions, we can always update formats / forums / website / etc later.

My day job has heated up, but I expect it to cool down again in August. Until then I’m afraid I won’t be able to lend much help other than some comments here. Apologies for that. Thanks again to all those who are driving this. Great progress so far.

Regards,
Brian

Hi James,

Brilliant idea! I’ve been out of touch for a bit (job related) and just came upon this post as I am finishing up Rule two today.

If there is room for one more on the ship, I’d love to be a part of this project in any way possible.

Regards,
Brian

brian.rella@gmail.com

Hi Brenda,

Huge fan of Dr. Peale. The Power of Positive Thinking as well as Thought Conditioners helped me through very tough times in my life. I still go back to them whenever I hit a wall.

Great choice.

Best Regards,
Brian

Hi Katie,

What struck me right away was the ominous tone you established before the end of the first sentence. I knew something bad was going to happen right away which is pretty amazing when you think about it – to convey that sense of doom with barely a sentence.

You kept me guessing the whole time though, until you revealed the accident. Initially I thought her old friend had died so the car accident was a small surprise. It made the story more interesting for me to not have been able to predict what was going to happen despite knowing the “something” was going to be bad.

The second person POV threw me off a bit. I had to reread a couple of paragraphs especially the paragraph about the school trip / photo and the following paragraph about the market. The second time through I understood you were talking about where the photo was taken while the market was a case of mistaken identity. I enjoyed it enough to read it through twice to make sure I understood correctly because I cared about the story. If I hadn’t cared I would have just let it go and moved on.

I think this was one of the more interesting pieces I’ve read on the Cartel so far – for the story itself and the for the style it was written. Awesome job. Thanks for sharing.

Regards,
Brian

Hi Stephanie,

Happy to help if I can. I’m just getting familiar with WordPress as well so maybe we can figure it out together.

Let me know what you need. You can email me at brian.rella@gmail.com.

Regards,
Brian

Awesome, thanks James!

I’m on the east coast and evenings work best for me. I can join collaboration sessions M – F from 8:00PM EST onwards on a regular basis (and earlier with notice). I’m also an early riser and I get up around 5AM M – F if that works for anyone.

In terms of skills, I’m tech savvy. I’m a project manager by trade and I’ve done some light website development (working on my site now). Anything I can do to help please let me know.

When I joined this course this is exactly what I hoped would happen. Thank you for pulling this together James. I can’t wait to start working with you and everyone else on this project.

Best,
Brian