Here are some of my thoughts after reading your poem "April's Cruel Day." I hope you find my feedback and ideas are useful to you, but please remember that this is only one girl's opinion.

Well, this poem has certainly gotten me to think about something I never have before. I never gave any consideration to what people born on April 1st must go through, but it's a compelling idea.

I feel like the poem is meant to be lighthearted, but it worries me that I can't completely tell. it seems like there are some more serious bits in there, especially about the vicious children. The end made me laugh, but in the middle I was a little unsure.

I had a difficult time following things in this poem from time to time. It seemed like there were statements that didn't have a clear subject or point of view, and I kept having to stop and wonder what or who was being described.

"Born on Christmas don't make you Christ!" That's true, and somehow quite funny. It's just like a Mom to come up with some kind of painfully obvious statement like that in an attempt to make everything better. Of course, it never does!

The last two lines were certainly my favorite. The rest of the poem lost me at times, but that was clear and had a nice sound to it. True and it made me smile.

Take another look at stanza 5. That's one of the passages I felt lost in. The speaker of the poem, the boy who was born on April 1, was being sent to the principal's office for giving someone a swirlie? Or is it someone who gave one to him? And in both cases, why? The connection to the birthday isn't clear to me.

Stanza 6, line 2 is equally tricky. I had to read it a few times to figure out who punched who and why. My final guess is that the speaker overheard someone making fun of his birthday and punched him for it, intending to make sure that the guy says only "happy birthday" from now on. Right?

My general advice for improvement is to reconsider the parts about the children and their back-and-forth violence. At least make it clearer who does what, but also think about the tone. Those parts seemed more serious than the rest of the poem.

Here are some of my thoughts after reading your piece "The Witch's Diary Part I." I hope you find my feedback and ideas are useful to you, but please remember that this is only one girl's opinion.

At first I was almost put off by your writing style - rather than flowing smoothly, it seems a little mechanical and almost pulled back from your protagonist. As I kept reading, though, I appreciated the straightforwardness of the prose. The way you wrote this made things clear and moved them along with a minimum of fuss.

The idea of this story is compelling to me - I'd love to find a book like that. Well, I probably wouldn't like the things that come next in the story (all that danger and plot and stuff), but it's a fun thing to read about and I'm interested to see the parts that follow.

I liked your description of the abandoned house. It was desolate, run-down, and nicely creepy. The porch swing was a nice touch.

It's fun that Melissa keeps comparing her situation to that of a horror story heroine, and that she draws comparisons to different stories. I love when the characters don't realize they're characters!

It's unusual to put a puppy in a story like this, but I approve. Puppies are cute!

Lilacs are one of the very best smells on Earth. They are the nectar of all happiness.

Things seem to happen a little too quickly and easily for Melissa when she gets to the house. She may be brave and somehow drawn to the place, but I didn't fear for her as much as I wanted to.

Despite what I said in the beginning of this introduction, I would like to hear the writing flow a little better. One of the things that would help is looking back through it and finding places where you've used the word "that." Sometimes it's necessary and sometimes it's not, but when it's not it can make a sentence sound a little stiff.

You've got that puppy in there - so maybe you could use him to amp the tension. Maybe she doesn't set the puppy down - maybe he wriggles out of her arms and she can't catch him. In trying to get him before he gets hurt in the old house, she'll go farther into it than she otherwise would have.

That would allow you to put the book deeper in the house, and of course build tension on the way there. If Melissa is concentrating on getting the puppy before it can fall through the floorboards or something, she won't be as careful about her surroundings.

One of the things that could make this section creepier is to have the girl in white get really close to Melissa before saying anything. Just float/walk right up to her. That would be scary.

What is that mysterious light? I don't think you told us, but it's one of the things that's bugging me. I wanted to know where the light was coming from.

Is there anyone that Melissa might confide in? I'm sure you have some ideas about where you're going with your story, but I almost want to see her try to explain this weird experience to someone.