"The Grind" by Cole Eady

Cole Eady's "The Grind" is about a young man who tries to find work as a writer. He doesn't really want to be a writer (I'm not entirely sure what he wants, truly), but it's something he finds himself to be good at and is content to find a career in it. The conflict comes when the job he finds completely conflicts with his sense of art and idealism.

Something that worked well, I think, was the detail throughout the piece. I was able to visually follow the narrator through the process of being hired, disgusted, and subsequently quitting. The point of view for this piece was also a good choice - because of the conflict it deals with (internal, idealism versus capitalism) the reader needs to be very intimate with Skipper Fischer, the narrator, in order to understand why he walks out of the writer's room in the end. I also really enjoyed the final line. If it hadn't been there, and everyone had just remained quiet and had maybe felt bad about what they were doing, that would have been too unrealistic for the rest of the piece. The fact that the narrator makes this connection with the people in the room as he quits and leaves, but the connection means nothing to those on the other side, really makes this piece strong.

Something I would work on would be the connection between Skipper and Martin. I understand that the interview process went well, but I don't know why Martin would be so eager to help Skipper and hand him a notepad to save himself. As a reader, I didn't see anything in the interview to warrant that kind of interaction between them.

"Over the Counter" by Kody Blackwell

Kody Blackwell's "Over the Counter" is about a man who finds himself in a desperate place - he doesn't have money to keep himself and his three children in their home, and cannot think of a way out. The lack of money, however, is not the main conflict of the story. The conflict comes when a man he knows but wouldn't consider a trustworthy friend presents a possible solution to his conflict: selling prescriptions illegally. This creates a moral and practical dilemma for the narrator because he does not want to break the law and he does not want to risk losing his children. At the same time, however, he knows that this could very well be the only way to make the money he needs within the month. All he really wants to is provide for his family.

The voice in this piece works very well. The narration style is first person and done very well; as a reader, I was drawn in, and I felt like I knew the character and his personality in short order. The details within the piece as well, such as "we jogged, awkward and loud, in loafers and heels" when the family enters the church captures the mood of the piece and gives the reader an interesting mental image. The imagery is also something the reader can relate to without being cliche.

Something that would enhance the story would be to explain what happened to the children's mother. For me, that opened up a lot of questions, like if he didn't have money because his ex wife took half of it. Did she die? Those kinds of questions can be answered rather quickly. Similarly, I'd like to have Tim's character fleshed out a bit more. The narrator doesn't trust him, and as a reader I don't really trust him either (led by the narration) but why? Did he do sketchy things in high school? Yeah, he's suggesting selling drugs, but he says that he doesn't know much about the process. How bad is his character, exactly?

Coming Soon! Review of "Pretend" by Robert Elrod

Unfortunately, I didn't notice Robert Elrond's story "Pretend" was in another folder until this morning. The review for this story will go up sometime soon!

"Winter's Chill" by Lauren Barkley

Lauren Barkley's "Winter Chill" is about a man leaving to attend to his job as a funeral home director and the wife he is suddenly made to believe is cheating on him. The conflict is very brief - the text message that drives Mr. Smart to the conclusion of infidelity is only received and read two hours before he leaves to drive in the icy night to retrieve a body. It seems that Mr. Smart only wants to distance himself from the wife he doesn't really understand, and Mrs Smart wants to resolve the issue of her non-explicitly accused infidelity.

I thought the conflict was very interestingly presented. We've read a few stories about cheating husbands or wives, but there was no doubt at all that the party in question was cheating. We as readers were made certain that there is another man/woman. In Barkley's story, the third person limited POV lets us see the struggle in Mr. Smart to come to terms with what this text message might mean - his wife could be telling the truth, but he doubts that. At the same time, the reader also gets to see that Mrs. Smart isn't a terrible, hateful woman. She wants her husband to come back safe, or not go out at all, so that they can discuss and work out their issues.

There are a few times when the dialogue between Mr. and Mrs. Smart doesn't flow as well as it could, so reviewing and rewriting some sections would probably enhance the story. Also, I think expanding on characters with more back story would make them more relatable, believable, and likable. I don't really have a real connection to the characters.

"Holes Full of Dirt" by Ethan Hightower

Ethan Hightower's "Holes Full of Dirt" is about a young teen who wants to impress a girl who is not at all interested in him. She's old enough to drive, and he just barely isn't. The year between them (two years for four days between their birthdays, she points out) makes him feel inferior, too young and inexperienced to catch her attention. He sees a chance to impress her when she makes an offhand comment about the holes in the road to his house, and it's just the kind of sudden project-that-will-take-more-effort-than-I-anticipate that I think a fifteen year old would make to impress a girl. Unfortunately for him, the narrator is forced to realize that the undertaking was, essentially, pointless.

The tone of the piece is spot on for a fifteen year old boy as a narrator. The awkward dialogue between the narrator and Ashlyn makes it clear to the reader that he is very much interested in her and she is very much not interested. Sometimes, it can be difficult to make the relationship (or lack of romance) between two characters without using exposition. At the same time, the tone between the narrator and Denver is absolutely frank -- Denver can see right through the narrator, and they both know it, but the narrator will stalwartly deny it because that's the relationship they have.

This needs a whole new paragraph: the depressing realizations on page 6, starting with "I sat in the truck overwhelmed by a sense of failure," captures the uneven way human emotion works perfectly. The sudden change from "I can do this" to "I can't believe I even tried that, what was I thinking?" fits so well into the story that I have to applaud Hightower.

I understand that this is a story about the narrator's love for Ashlyn, but I think the story would be enhanced by more mention of the father earlier in the story. The character's realization of self is very much tied to his father helping him out of his mess, and I think the relationship between them would bring another dimension to the story.

The Short Story by Adam Smith

This story by Adam Smith is about a young woman named Margaret who wants to get out from under her stifling and worrisome adopted mother. Lucy Delamar -- the mother -- is beyond terrified of the world after both world wars, the shock of being robbed in the middle of the night and finding her husband gone forever. The fear she feels from these events pervades her entire life and affects the way Margaret lives her life. Young and knowing little of life, the now 15 year old girl looks for a way to liven up her life by disobeying her mother and making a friend. Unfortunately for her, she made the exact wrong friend; Marcus never speaks an unkind word to her but shows his true colors to her unknowingly. Margaret is then forced to look at what she believes and admit to her guardian that the world is, indeed, every bit as dangerous as Lucy has always told her.

I enjoyed reading the back story in the beginning of the piece. Smith manages to give plenty of information without making the beginning of the story expository. I felt like I was reading the real plot, and when there was a time skip and the real story started, I wasn't offended or jarred out of the story. The transition worked very well. Another aspect of this particular story that I liked was the time period. It's not far enough in the past that the story becomes genre on principle. It's not set during a major historic event; instead, the story is affected by the wars in a way that makes sense. Lucy's questions about Marcus wearing a radio or looking like a German was wonderful, and I thought it was very interesting that Lucy was so afraid of these far fetched things in every day life -- wolves don't need to be exotic to be dangerous.

Unfortunately, where I wasn't jarred from the story by the time skip, I had a hard time enjoying the story when things kept changing structurally. For example, Margaret suddenly became Margarite, Lucy's last name switched from Delamar to Melamar, and Lucy's flat suddenly moved to a completely different street. Technically, these things aren't part of the story itself, but they did make me as a reader have to regard the story as text on a page instead of a riveting story.

"Deception" by Laurel Kostakis

Laurel Kostakis' piece, "Deception," is about a middle aged woman who finds out in a disturbing way that her husband is cheating and no longer loves her. What she wants is to be loved, needed, and no longer lonely. This is her own internal conflict - her children have grown up, her husband is always working, and the dog she had once loved had died. But the conflict of the story comes when Marcy's husband, Kevin, tries to kill her in order to save his extramarital affair and comes into direct contest with an at-large, armed and dangerous burglar.

As always, Laurel delivers an interesting piece with an interesting point of view. I think the fact that the narration  is in third person limited form and follows Marcy through the entire piece, instead of Kevin, who is, apparently, a murderer, or the unnamed burglar, who is very much capable of murder, actually presents an interesting perspective on the entire situation. It would have been easy to follow the other two characters and hold the attention of the reader - in fact, that could almost be expected. But Laurel chose to follow the victim, a difficult thing to do without hinting very heavily to the reader that the narrator is, in fact going to be the victim in an obvious manner.

One thing that could help the piece would be to establish the ages of the characters early on. For some reason, reading the first few pages, I was convinced that Marcy and Kevin were a younger pair. There was no evidence that this was the case, but there was also no evidence to the contrary. Another thing to pay attention to is that, like my story, "Leaving," the end of the conflict is given to the reader very quickly. The end of the story is actually done in a very timely pace, however.

Response to "The last bit of home-made sugar" by Nate Lundberg

"The last bit of home-made sugar" is about a man who has grown up in a generation that is too uninterested in following the traditions of the previous generation. It bothers him, on some level, but it doesn't actually provide him with a purpose; what the narrator wants, I think, is to find this purpose. Through most of the story, there is no conflict, and the voice of the narrator reflects a kind of nervous waiting. When conflict does come, it's sudden, all encompassing, and takes all of the narrator's attention, but then it's gone again and we're left with the narrator standing alone in the dark, wondering if there isn't more.


An element I found really worked about this piece was the fact that the narrator had no purpose. It's a fine line to walk - one could easily make the entire story purposeless and lose the attention of the reader, but Nate manages to move the story along quite well. I also rather like the title (though it could use some capitalization) and how it fits in with the overall mood of the story. It isn't random; the reader gets to watch as the last of the Stir Off sugar is used and the container thrown away. The attention paid by the narrator to this detail and his mother's face makes the situation monumental enough for a title without being too heavy handed.

I have a bit of issue with the flow of this piece. One way to smooth out the kinks, I think, would be to reduce the amount of dialect used in the dialogue, especially by the grandfather. Following the language of the narration - very precise and without any regional dialect cues - the grandfather's language is a bit jarring. That being said, I think that the first couple of lines of dialect, such as "Hey, buddy, what do ya say?" instead of "How are you?" as an opener, work well to establish the grandfather's tone. Another way to smooth the difference between the narration and the dialogue would be to put more regionalisms within the the entire text.

"Off" by Aimee Bender

Aimee Bender's "Off" is about a young rich woman with a goal. The goal is simple - kiss a red head, a blond, and a brunet - but the reader never finds out why she had this particular goal. This is actually a big part of the narrator's character; we never find out the why for a lot of things. Why is she rich? Why did she paint morbid images into her art? What does she want from the hostess, from the party, if she feels too good to be there? There are some interesting observations she makes, such as the fact that women will say "oops, sorry" when they've done nothing wrong (due to society, upbringing, meekness?) and that these people who would like to consider themselves sophisticated can't eat their cheese the right way.

As far as form goes, I actually found this piece interesting to read. When I read "Off," I was coming off of a fever. The long, rambling sentences reminded me of my own stream of conscientiousness. The minimalist description of setting was also an interesting touch with the first person point of view - when thinking to myself, as the narrator was, I don't look around and take note of everything. The odd things she does notice, however, she gives a reason for - the brie is eaten the wrong way, the nervous woman says "Oops, sorry" for no reason, Adam is speaking animatedly with a woman to make the narrator jealous. These little details make the story work well, even without a lot of description.

I think I used to write in a style that was similar to this, but I doubt I succeeded. In my own attempts, my minimal description of setting and character was not countered by increased detail elsewhere. Other than this, however, I didn't find much appealing about this writing style. It confused me (again, I was coming off of a very high fever) and was circular. The subject matter was interesting enough, but I've never found long, block text pieces to be interesting, especially with rambling, run on sentences.

Response to T.C. Boyle - "The Love of My Life"

My first interest in the piece "The Love of My Life" by T.C. Boyle is the syntax he uses. His style of persistent concrete imagery used to describe a scene or situation over a long period of time reminds me of what I try to do with my work. I'll definitely be reading more of Boyle's works to try to decipher exactly what his pattern of writing is.

The description of China and Jeremy in the beginning ("They wore each other like a pair of socks") is very different. It pulls the reader in, because it's not cliche. Again, the concrete imagery -- everyone in his intended audience knows what wearing socks is like -- plays a strong role in setting up the scene and telling us about the characters. The two of them weren't just joined at the hip, they had a "sashay of love" that persisted through everything they did. Boyle's words, his list-style method of showing the reader exactly what he means ("to the mall, to the game, to the movies and shops and the classes...") serve to create a characterization not only for China and Jeremy, but for their relationship as well. But he isn't heavy handed with these descriptions. He only lists enough to convey his meaning, and then he can trust the reader to infer or remember enough to continue the story.

The mood he creates is also noteworthy. He is able to seamlessly move from very much in love to finger numbing fear to helplessness and despair from the beginning of the story to the end. The characters are also believable in this aspect because they don't jump from one of these emotions to the other. The emotions bleed and blend into one another in a way that is very human - in the end, China still loves Jeremy, though she will, supposedly, testify against him to save herself.

There's is no abrupt jolt for the reader until the end, when the story is inexplicably over.

(What is love worth?)

J.J. Nelson's "Lessons"

"Lessons" is the story of a young man's encounter with an older man on a train to Sorreno, Italy. At first, it seems the entire conversation is an old man speaking soothingly and condescendingly to the younger, but it turns out to be an elaborate scheme of pick-pocketing -- age and experience vs. youth and diligence. The words exchanged between the older man and the young, however, as well as the thoughts the reader is able to pick up from the younger man speak to much more than robbing other people blind. The young man's feelings of frustration regarding those who are older looking down on him with contempt is something many young people can relate to, not matter the situation.

The third person, limited point of view works well for the format of this story. An omniscient narrator would have muddied up the story with what the old man was thinking in addition to the young man, but the story isn't about him. The reader doesn't need to know what "lessons" the old man has learned over his many years, because the reader doesn't need to relate to him. Instead, we are able to relate to the young man who speaks of "having his own life under control" and knowing loss.

Something that I think would make the structure of the story better would be to change the gender of the young man. Because there's only two characters, and neither has a name, this change would help to reduce the use of "the young man" and "the old man" as indicators of speakers. Another aspect of the story that it might affect is the condescending tone of the older man. In the opinion of this particular old man, young people are foolish, and I would find it quite believable if he thought of young women being less capable than young men.

"New Coach" by Lauren Sides

In "New Coach" by Lauren Sides, Kaylee, a competitive cheerleader in high school, tries her hardest to succeed in her sport to attain a scholarship. Unfortunately for her, the new coach's standards are extremely high -- they're just close enough to impossible for her to tear her ACL attempting to please him. This only leads to higher conflict between Kaylee and the coach as she goes through months of physical therapy. Finally, Kaylee lets go of her dream of a cheerleading scholarship in favor of keeping herself safe and healthy.

The beginning of the piece was very strong as an interest grabber. Nothing quite gets the attention of a reader like unexplained pain. The nature of the conflict, especially after learning that Kaylee had not been sold on chearleading as a sport in the beginning is also interesting. The stereotype of vapid cheerleaders doing anything they can to get ahead in a social scene generally overshadows the fact that the sport is a very dangerous one, requiring high levels of strength, coordination, and concentration; when looking at what is needed to succeed, the reader is more likely to believe that Kaylee would get lost in her drive to succeed, at any cost.

I think the story would be stronger, however, if the last scene -- where Kaylee makes the decision to put her health above her dream of a scholarship -- was drawn out a bit more. As it is, the scene is very abrupt, short, and doesn't make much sense. It seems as though Kaylee had no conflict in herself over the decision, but she should have. She invested years, and her ACL, to cheerleading, and she was banking on that to take her all the way to college, so I think a reflection on these things would make the decision seem more real, and more emotional. Another issue I had with this story is the technical language. I'm not familiar with cheerleading or gymnastics, so I don't know what the different types of "tumbling passes" are, let alone what a "full" is supposed to look like. This makes visualizing the situation difficult, creating distance between the story and any reader unfamiliar with the subject matter. Lastly, though the concept of pain draws the reader in in the beginning of the story, it's abstract - is the physical pain shooting, sharp, throbbing? Emotional pain is named, but not really relatable.

"Mountain Blood" by Cary Bayless

"Mountain Blood" by Cary Bayless is about a man who wants to forget his past, but also wants to have the past back in his hands. Chad Grune is a young man weighed down by the murder of the woman he loved, as well as the guilt of surviving the ordeal when he was supposed to be the next victim. The conflict between the overwhelming feelings of guilt and regret and Grune's desire to not dwell on the past create an inner tension that the reader can feel. Grune is forced to confront his feelings of guilt, however, when he loses the ring he gave Julia before she died. Beau, Grune's room mate tells him that he needs to release his regret and move on with his life, which seems to be the point of Bayless' piece.

The first person point of view works very well for this short story. As I stated, the reader can identify the feelings of regret and guilt that the main character has because we as readers know what he is thinking. This style also works well for the flashbacks because they flow through the story like normal thoughts -- persistent and circular. Another aspect of the story that works well is the mix of dialogue and action between Beau and Chad. Instead of straight dialogue with minimal dialogue cues, the characters did things - drinking, changing clothes - while the spoke, which seemed very natural, especially for the characters, the subject of their dialogue, and the fact that they are drinking.

I think something that could enhance the story would be a bit of back story on Chad and Beau's job, and how Chad came to be there. Was it Chad's idea, or maybe his parents? Is it just a job, or is this an internship, or maybe even a protection or emotional healing program? The setting of the mountain is key to the story due to the lost ring, but is there a reason Grune didn't go to work next to the ocean where the same thing could happen? The reader is made to understand that Grune went to the mountain to escape, but why and how?