Karl_A_Russell's profile
AGE:
33
LOC: United Kingdom
GEN: Male
LAST LOGIN: November 08
LOC: United Kingdom
GEN: Male
LAST LOGIN: November 08
33 years old, complaints analyst for a major UK retailer, married, voracious reader (predominantly SF), collector of comic books and artwork…
This year, I’ve lost my Nan to old age and found that I’m about to be a dad for the first time. Talk about your life changing experiences… Between the creation of new life and a stark reminder of how short my own is, I’ve finally got my backside in gear and started one of the three big stories I’ve always intended to write and just never got round to. Hopefully, if enough people like it, I’ll find the motivation to continue and complete it, and those of you who don’t will give me enough pointers to make it as good as I know it can be.
Items
Version 2
1 Review
0 Comments
I woke to the sound of a dozen carts trundling past the station. It took me a minute to fully realise where I was, staring up at the unfamiliar ceiling and trying to piece the previous evening back together in my head. Then it came together and I understood the bed, the noise outside and the fact that I was already late for my first full day on the job. I dragged myself out of the bed, took a quick shower a...
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Version 5
1 Review
0 Comments
Josh died without a sound. Raising the ruined stump of his forearm he held it to his chest with his remaining hand, but there was no real effort to stop the flow of blood which washed across his stained denim workshirt. He showed no fear, no anger, just the same docile acceptance as all the sheep we had lifted into the grinders together. The machines had slow...
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Reviews
Not much of a review I'm afraid, but this is probably the best piece of non-fiction I've read for quite a while. Even knowing that you made it out in one piece (physically at least), there's a palpable sense of danger and uncertainty and that old excitement of doing something really dumb because you just can't imagine it going wrong. Probably my one request would be more detail about Mike, even if it's just a two line sketch. You create some very clear images, but Mike is a bit of a blur, and...
100.0% Review Quality (2 Votes)
This was a well written and fairly enlightening piece, to which I can only make a couple of suggestions for improvement. Firstly, watch the parentheses. Using them early on to give editorial asides orks well, but you start to tell that joke too often and people start to skip anything in brackets (even if it's important). Secondly, some of your freewheeling sentences become extremely tortured in the car journey section, especially when Daddy stops the car. I know that your building a head of s...
As short pieces go this is effective, up to a point. If we're to empathise with your character then you need to be a bit more careful with your phrasing, and more detailed too - Tell us about the smell, the soft dripping sound of deliquescent flesh trickling through the sofa springs, the slight suction of the rotten carpet sticking to her feet every time she takes a step... Think about her feelings and how to ramp them up. Is she dressed? Bound? Hot or cold? All of these things would give a d...
Just a couple of suggestions. Firstly, as this is told pretty much from Sarah's perspective, I would refer to the adult character as "her mother" throughout, rather than "the mother". Also, I'm not sure if blind (or any) eyes can root around, and if they do, they would be hunting for their dinner instead of its dinner. Other than these little quibbles, this is a good piece of writing, with a realistically depicted 4 year old.
100.0% Review Quality (4 Votes)
This is a nice snapshot of a crumbling life. I like how you avoid explanations while giving clues to the possible reasons (unless I've completely misunderstood the scar and Michael's repressed thoughts at seeing the schoolchildren?). I would say that you need to look a little closer at some of your sentences, especially where you run two separate events into one sentence. The line "Drumming a patch of silver..." in the first paragraph is particularly jarring as it seems to suggest on first re...
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