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Printed from https://shop.writing.com/main/profile/reviews/doublecat
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21 Public Reviews Given
21 Total Reviews Given
Public Reviews
1
1
Review by DoubleCat Author IconMail Icon
Rated: 13+ | (5.0)
Things seem to be getting better and better. You've certainly raised the stakes in general. I like the way the story feels. With the probation officer, the dialogue, how everything seems to play out, it definitely feels like a story from a different age.

Story progression is great, pacing continues to be good, but it still feels like much of what is being relayed has a very distant psychic distance that you more often see in summary or when establishing the initial story world. I've read plenty of books that do something pretty similar, but I keep thinking you're going to scope in for some reason, but it just keeps up with the same kind of distant narrative. Nothing wrong with how you're doing it, though. I think the last time I saw it done like this was in Bernard Cornwell's Saxon Chronicles series, and he kept it up through and through from what I remember reading. I'm not sure what that type of narration is termed as. I'm still learning too. Or at least let's hope.

So everything's looking really good. The only thing I have to say is that I'm concerned about this heist. We haven't even started really talking about it yet, let alone planned it (although maybe gramps already has), and then there is the actual execution of the heist. All of which I'm very excited to see, by the way. Hopefully we get to it with enough room to fit it all in.

So I accidentally read the title of your last chapter in your port, which spoiled a lot, I think, and now I believe I understand why you're spending so much time with the story where it's at. Specifically with Nolan facing consequences and getting a taste for the punishment that goes with the crime. I'm still excited to see how you pull it off and the heist itself.

Great work
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Review of Cat  Open in new Window.
Review by DoubleCat Author IconMail Icon
Rated: E | (5.0)
Admittedly, I don't know much about poetry, and as I'm sure you have recently seen for yourself, I'm not particularly good at poetry either, but I'll give it a shot if the occasion demands it. At one point I specifically noted on my bio not to request that I review poetry. But I still know good poetry when I see it. Speaking of bios and ports, I happened to see that you've updated yours a bit, and you mentioned your own recent poetry, so here I am.

There are a few reasons why I like this, and some of those come down to coincidence. There's the obvious, my handle and presumable love for cats. There is my recent contest for which I was honored to have you participate wherein I mentioned haiku (and not including them), and of course it being a Halloween-themed contest, we have another coincidence with those little pumpkins in the background of your selected cover photo.

A bit early for Halloween, don't you think, Beholden? Kidding, kidding.

What I like about this is how well you capture the cat. The cat of course being a fluff-covered liquid that assumes the shape of nearly any reasonably sized lesser boxes or spaces it may try to occupy. Undeterred is right. I loved your use of the second line for a couple reasons that I think sort of lose their effectiveness when articulated kind of like how it goes when you have to explain the punchline of a joke. The whole thing works as a whole very well, and I'm truly charmed.

This is probably my favorite of all the haiku I've read on WdC
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Review by DoubleCat Author IconMail Icon
Rated: 13+ | (5.0)
I'm enjoying the story progression so far. Everything is sort of whizzing by and there's not a lot of in-the-moment narration. I think it works well since you're covering a lot of ground quickly rather than steeping the reader in stagnant scenes that don't really go anywhere. So again I like the pacing. An argument could be made about establishing the MC's 'normal world' and spending more time there, but I think you're getting to the more interesting stuff sooner, and I'm really enjoying that approach for this story.

You end on another cliffhanger, but this one has much higher stakes. Any number of things could happen, and I feel very drawn to see what's in store. Not just with this predicament, but with how Nolan gets to this eventual heist.

Regarding the prose, I think it still flows well. There aren't really any hang ups. Maybe little parts here and there I think you'd catch on your own with revision. This is still pretty clean. The one change I think would make this better would be to format this so each paragraph has an extra space.

Overall, it's coming along nicely. I'm excited to see where it goes. I think it's even better than the last one.
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Review by DoubleCat Author IconMail Icon
Rated: 13+ | (4.5)
Well, Timothy, I think this is a pretty good start. You took the story right through the introductory phase and dropped in the inciting incident, or what I believe to be the inciting incident, pretty quickly. The writing is easy to get through, and you don't spend much time on any one point in particular. It moves along at a good rate without feeling rushed. We get a feel for the character, his day in and day out, and we learn about the down-on-his-luck theme that has jagged its way through his life up until this point.

You've gone with a mystery box approach here while including little details about some of the important parts of what could lay ahead. To me, it mostly works, but it sort of doesn't at the same time. This kid has gone all this way on his singular day off to meet a strange woman, then to gain access to a storage unit where he finds a letter. Only he doesn't bother to read the letter in full for the first chapter and scans it over instead. It's not that I think he'll never read it, but all the same that might have gotten a little raised eyebrow out of me, and it felt like you were trying to drop in some enticing details without inclusion of the actual letter here by way of a sort of cliffhanger. Still, Nolan is a 15-year-old kid. It wouldn't be too farfetched for him to not want to read a wall of text. As the narrator, he also mentioned he found his grandpa to be a little boring despite his checkered past, but he also says this letter is nothing like the others he received during his grandpa's time in prison.

All in all, though, I thought this was pretty good. While it flows well, it could flow a little better in one or two places, but there's certainly nowhere that this is bad by any means. We know a heist is involved. Diamonds, art, etc. This could be a fun story. I think all signs point to that being the case, and I may very well be coming back for more. I'm something of a crime writer myself among other genres. It's good to see another someone on WdC taking a crack at the genre as well. Solid work.

Thank you for allowing your work to be reviewed.
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Review by DoubleCat Author IconMail Icon
Rated: 13+ | (5.0)
You're a great storyteller. I'm not a writer of non-fiction, although I've thought that someday I'd want to look back at my own journaling one day, but I haven't started that yet. I probably should.

I really like what you've done here. It could have been some story with a monumental act of kindness (I probably read a disproportionate amount of fiction), but this is more subtle, less earthshattering, and I think it's all the better for it.

I think of people who find themselves in situations where they are stuck with the dilemma of either doing nothing, which might be an egregious choice, or acting and helping another person, which would be the more moral decision, of course. Most people, I like to think—me being more like the you at the end of the story than the one at the beginning—would do the good thing. We can applaud people when we see them make that choice, and often times we do. Especially if that good deed involved saving someone's live or something profound, but I've often thought good deeds like this come with a choice of doing nothing and living with that terrible choice, or deciding to act. Maybe those heroes you occasionally hear about on the news only chose not to make the terrible choice.

With a smaller, more down-to-earth act like what you described when your customer foot the bill for the other party, that to me is an example of unencumbered kindness. You're right, though, about a lot of things. I see a lot of people bustling to get ahead and without any care for how they're impacting others. This was a great story that shows that it doesn't always go that way.

Thank you for sharing this. I hope selfless acts from others continue to surprise you frequently, and that you're on the receiving end of it more often than not as well
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Review of Epistolary Dreams  Open in new Window.
Review by DoubleCat Author IconMail Icon
Rated: 13+ | (4.0)
Interesting read. You never reveal just what the subject of the picture happened to be, but you left me curious. So my interpretation of this without stretching too far beyond what I can say from what you lay out plainly is that the main character is able to manifest her art in some other dimension. Her art has the potential to cause pain, and a recurring dream revealing this to her finally leaves a lasting enough impression that she decides not to go through with the completion of her art project. This spares the lives, souls, or condition of some off scene characters that exist in another world. I liked the vagueness of this. It's interesting how you can read a story that doesn't go into details about some of the more interesting aspects and how your mind still manages to draw up a picture. For me, I had a vague idea of the world that isn't described, the art, and maybe that final bit of art your character never completed. I don't think you really touched on any of this much, and I think that was a good decision.

This reminded me a little bit of the Will Ferrell movie 'Stranger than Fiction.' I'm sure you'd rather hear of a comparison to a book with a similar plot, but off the top of my head, I can't think of any.

I liked the way you finished this off. Though I'm not sure exactly how to interpret it. Playing it safe, your main character decides to cease pursuing her art. She regrets it, and wonders if it was all just a dream. No one comes forth to relate a similar experience that would corroborate what she's gone through, so she's left to wonder if it was pointless to stop. The meaning I took from this was a simple one. A person can either use their gifts for bad or good. If a person doesn't use their gift for good, or won't use their gift for good, it's better they don't use it at all. To me, that seemed like a flawed theme. I get that your character must be inherently good or she'd have continued with her artwork heedless of any harm it may have caused. But she didn't, and by the end of the story, she still badly misses her old hobby. Which begs the question, why couldn't she just make art that didn't depict terrible, world-ending subjects? Not her style? Would it take the fun out of it for her? Maybe.

Another possible theme—and this one seems unlikely—is that she may have been using the whole thing as an excuse to stop pursuing her passion the moment it became challenging. Suppose there is no alternative world that she's able to manipulate at her every whim and digital paint stroke. That would leave the occurrence of her dream as little more than a stress-induced reaction to encountering difficulty with her art for the first time. The recurring dream, then, would have been nothing more than an excuse to quit rather than persevere.

Anyway, for what it's worth this got me thinking. The story was good. It's something you could easily explore a little more if you wished to. You could definitely expand it.

I'll talk about your prose a little bit. Sorry, I don't like signposting either, but I felt I needed some kind of preamble before I jumped to this topic. Your prose was inconsistent in quality by my estimate. It went from flowing really well to being somewhat cliché (using overly familiar means of expression) to almost inspired. Really all over the place. One thing you did well through and through was maintaining a good sense of rhythm and pacing. I mean specifically with regard to rhythm in your prose and pacing with regards to your storytelling, although I guess they can be related. Back to your prose, there were moments where it seemed like you really landed on something that could have made this shine even more if you'd been able to sustain it. Other times I saw where you tried to reach for that same level and just missed the mark. All of my writing is usually in the mediocre category, so at least you've have moments of brilliance.

And the story itself was a fun read. You left tension, and you built it up well. The ending made sense, but was a little unsatisfactory. I'd have preferred to see the MC go on with art, and I'd have preferred to see some greater stakes established. There were stakes involved, so it's not total bereft of stakes. An entire world or alternate universe hung in the balance of your character's decision to continue or to forego art, but we never saw this world or got any notion of it aside from its predicament. But what was at stake for her if she quit? The adulation of her adoring fans? Maybe it's enough. This is just a short story, after all.

Either way, I like what I read, so please keep at it. Don't leave your art behind like your character did. Consider hers a cautionary tale, but not of dreams better left unfulfilled, but of the potential regret for dreams left by the wayside out of an irrational fear of failure
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Review of Beneficence  Open in new Window.
Review by DoubleCat Author IconMail Icon
Rated: 13+ | (4.0)
Hello, I came across your story after using the random review feature. I don't rate poetry because I don't write poetry or really enjoy it, so it took getting through a bevy of poems before I found this. All I wanted was to find a good short story.

As I'm writing this, I'm seeing that this was written back in 2009. If you've been writing consistently since then, I imagine your storytelling and prose have likely seen significant changes. That makes much of what I can offer irrelevant, but I'll review all the same.

The story starts out with a woman who is depicted as old. You mention she's 40. While not young, I guess I don't see it as an age I've thought of as being an elderly age despite the over-the-hill attribution. Maybe it's actors like Brad Pitt who show up in movies like Troy dishing out a beating with the best of them that have disrupted my perception. I'm under 40 myself, but I keep looking ahead at that milestone with more and more acceptance by the day. I'd consider myself lucky to reach 40, actually, rather than disappointed. Not that I'm ill or in a dangerous profession or living a crazy lifestyle or anything. Just, you know, you never know what could happen.

Anyway, it almost seems unfair for me to point out any defaults in Beneficence. It's old enough that you've probably moved on from it in a number of ways, but I'll still offer some gentle criticisms. For the most part, I have good things to say.

This is written well. The prose has a nice flow to it. You begin by immediately drawing the reader in by assuring empathy for the main character. We learn of her loss, first of her husband, and then of her son. Since she's an old lady, she's never considered remarrying and remains alone. We see that the wound is fresh. Six years has a surprisingly short feel to it in the face of unrelenting grief. As Vision said, "What is grief if not love persevering." You mention how her husband insisted that those who are fortunate do what they can for the less fortunate as a matter of duty. This principle is what led him to his demise, and to her widowhood.

Later, your main character is tricked into giving up her soul to reunite with her son. Only there's a catch to it just as you see with many Faustian bargains or be-careful-what-you-wish-for cautionary tales. Fortunately, we have about as literal of a Deus Ex Machina as you're going to get when the archangel Michael intervenes. I particularly liked how you used the idea of the seven deadly sins as prerequisites to the sealing of any kind of immortal pact with the devil. Since Alastor failed to meet this criteria, Michael ordered Alastor to undo it all, and your main character returned to life as normal with no recollection of any of this aside from a fading sense of malaise. She'll probably get a dog.

I've always liked stories about devils or demons and angels. A fun story, and one that was mostly very well told.

The style has somewhat of a reliance upon conventions used almost to the point of cliché. The prose at times borders on purple, but mostly manages to skirt it gracefully. In the end, the story had little point to it, but to exist as a conflict between some of the most archetypal forces of good and evil. The conflict was brief, but interesting. A story based in a world of this making would be fully enjoyable to read.

My biggest concern with the story is that by the end of it, I'm left wondering what the point of it all was. As far as your main character, all she gets out of it the idea of getting a dog, but I think that was already present, so maybe not. Oh, and that she didn't go to hell. That's something. Still, it's interesting to think what may be going on "behind the scenes" of our world, and just how much we're oblivious to, and I think that this story of yours will almost definitely bring that question to the minds of your readers. You captured an imaginative instance of this and if nothing else, it was a pleasure to read. Good work. I'd be interested to see what you've been up to since this time
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Review by DoubleCat Author IconMail Icon
Rated: E | (2.5)
Since I did the random review thing, I wound up on this story in the middle of everything. I haven't read a single bit of this until I landed right on this page.

My biggest issue with your story or this chapter is that there is absolutely no urgency to any of this. You would want to have a story that has a pressing need of some sort, and since I'm reviewing this largely out of context, I may be missing something. I realize not every scene should be explosive and intense. You need to have ups and downs. I entirely believe that, too, but it's just that every scene should accomplish something. I got sort of a slice of life experience out of this, and this wasn't really enthralling stuff.

It starts off with a diaper change. Not exactly a hook.

Next, they go shopping.

Finally, Marie is fed.

It's not until the very last couple of sentences that any tension is introduced:

"Marie was thinking about trying to secretly find out what Callie is hiding"

As a standalone piece, this doesn't really stand alone. Maybe I should have started from the beginning. Not to die on this hill too much with my stance about almost no conflict being a problem, but the story should have something in almost every scene. Technically, you could say that you have three scenes here. I don't know why you included some of what you did. The part with the poopy diaper, feeding Marie, etc., it's just not the kind of thing that exemplifies my idea or maybe anyone's idea of storytelling. It's good that you put something in here that alludes to some kind of mystery. It's just that it might have been a little too little, too late.

This certainly isn't bad. It's just that I think there is some room for improvement.
9
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Review of Jackie Runs Away  Open in new Window.
Review by DoubleCat Author IconMail Icon
Rated: E | (3.0)
I found this by using the random review button. Many parts of this are well told. I can practically hear the preacher's voice by the time I got to the end. That means you must have done something right.

I don't usually go for the family drama or religious stories, unless you include certain kinds of horror as religious.

The story started out a bit confusing. There might have been more errors than I could ignore, and that might have contributed. Further along, things picked up, then they died down, and the resolution came about by no action on Lucas's part. His daughter just came back. She said something about not deserving to have his granddaughter in his life, and then the next minute it's all happiness and acceptance. It seemed like something was left out.

It was well written in a lot of parts. You also did great in representing that close-minded attitude of many who are devout in their faith.

This could benefit from a once over. The writing again does show skill, but some of the sentences could have been reconstructed for clarity. It took me a while to get who the deceased mother and the daughter were for instance.

Anyway, this shows a lot of potential, and I think it demonstrated the skill of a pretty good writer
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Review of Oubliette  Open in new Window.
Review by DoubleCat Author IconMail Icon
Rated: 18+ | (5.0)
What's probably the most commendable aspect of this story is how you used such a limited premise and evoked so much emotion, namely helplessness, despair, resignation, the conflict between preservation and unnecessarily extending the throes of eventual starvation, and then capped it off with the main character's eventually failing grip on his sanity. A lot done with a minimal, possibly non-existent plot.

Here is the premise: a man is thrown into a hole in the ground.

Inherently there is not much here that inspires a great deal of possibility from a shallow mind like mine. You really went for it, though, and created something both artful and painfully grueling. It was both a misery to read and a joy. It went on too long and yet not long enough. What matters is that you fulfilled the completion of a story while staying under a certain word count, and it felt fully fleshed out under those constraints.

I'll probably come back to this more than once to see how it was done. A simple idea executed to near perfection. I only spotted one or two things I'd change in the whole thing, and if I pointed them out, you might not agree anyway. Easily written at a publishable quality in my opinion. It took me a while to find this, but I'm glad I did.

Grimdark without any of the fantasy or speculative elements. Masterful work.
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Review of There and Gone  Open in new Window.
Review by DoubleCat Author IconMail Icon
Rated: 13+ | (4.5)
I found this very short story by the Read and Review feature. I don't really do poems, writing, reading, or reviewing, but the random review button didn't seem to want to take that into consideration. I got six poems in a row before I landed on this guy.

You ought to put this one under Western, I think. How short was this? 300 words? It must have been for something specific.

What I liked about it: it certainly had that Western feel to it. I didn't have to get very far along at all before I sensed this. Sure, the mention of holsters, hats, and horses made it easy, but I think I was clued in by the way this was written just as well as the more salient clues. I really liked the style and flavor of this, if you get what I mean.

So what do we have here? A story of revenge. A story about what might be an undeserving outlaw on the lam, and the man who hung his father just as he aims to hang his son, our main character. It's assumed that the MC has a better lay of the land, clearly, as he's posted himself up some place where Calhoun will confront him and in doing so be laid to waste by the elements. Almost a Deus ex Machina except that Gus's salvation came about by his own planning, so I guess that spares your resolution from that kind of attribution.

Good stuff. Maybe too short for my tastes. I say that not because I have a problem with shorter pieces, but because this left me wanting to read more.
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Review of The Agreement  Open in new Window.
Review by DoubleCat Author IconMail Icon
Rated: 18+ | (5.0)
You did a lot with the space you were given. The funny thing is, going in I was going to say this seemed like a story with a bit of a talking heads problem, but that impression dissolved once I caught on to how low the word count is. It's tough to get a story out in that kind of economy of words, so as I was reading this, I was thinking you really had to conserve what you had. Later on, though, it made more sense, and for a different reason.

So that little twist, I didn't expect that. You managed to veil some of the unexpected behind conventions that come with such a short read. Way to use what you've got available to you effectively.

Well, thank you for the entertaining read. I thought of M. Night Shyamalan and how he kind of writes these stories with almost no substance and that are really there just to uphold the trick at the end, and I always thought that was cheap, meretricious maybe. It's a lot more fitting with a shorter piece of work. You executed this really well, and I enjoyed the dialogue. You did especially well on the dialogue.

It looks like this was for a contest. Chances are you'll do well in the next one, I hope. Good luck to you. No suggestions for improvement, unfortunately
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