I didn't care for this at all. I found much of the language to be very dry, the depiction of the action inauthentic. I do like how the thing just -starts-; with but a paragraph of exposition, we're into the action. That's good, but through the course of the subsequent action-packed paragraphs, we need to meet these characters. Slow the pacing down a bit, give us some time. You say that, when she suspects that he's going to rape her, that she was no longer the person she thought she was - but ...

You've got good hooks in here, but they frequently get buried or lost in muddy language. Your first sentence is good, but the second is confusing- you use the word 'bridge' three times in the first two sentence, and it took me two tries to get that the second time you say 'three-handed bridge', you were referring to the novel, not the game. No agent is going to give you two reads, so I'd advise to not refer to the book by title until the second paragraph, and then to put it in single inverted...

Well, it's short, which meant that I read it all. If it had been much longer, though, I doubt I would have. Which isn't meant to be rude- it's just that there's not much to engage us beyond your crisp, succinct sentences. I think the biggest problem I have with it is that we don't know "you" at all. We get that you're seven years old, listening to grown-ups, and captivated by the woman. But we haven't got any context for you, so the fact that you're captivated means nothing to us. We don't ev...

I can tell you're a genuine, grown-up writer, rather than a kid posting his first story for the world, so I won't be gentle and look for roundabout ways to say what I mean. It's done out of respect, not mean-spiritedness, cool? That out of the way, cut the shit. I like where you're going- you tell a quick-moving story and your style is compelling and readable, but there is very little chance that any reader is going to love your words as much as you do. You say everything twice, or three time...

I can't say I really found much to latch on to in this piece. A common problem with personal writing like this is that the author is so emotionally invested in his own experiences that he feels like just describing those experiences will cause a reader to connect with him on an emotional level. Unfortunately, no story is that good (think of your favorite stories, the greatest tragedies, and you'll see what I mean- 'Hamlet' breaks down into "a dude's dad dies and his uncle marries his mom and ...

You've tightened this up considerably. It's not quite there yet, but I can see where it's going now. I'm just gonna cut to the chase here- Open with the sentence that begins "Billy and Steven", and save the title, genre, and word count for the end. You describe the book as a "dark comedy", but there's nothing funny about the letter. It's crucial, especially with commercial and literary fiction, to convey tone in your query. Without the word "dark comedy", what I see is a torrid sex triangle b...

You do some really neat things in this piece, but you also seem to fall prey to some of the traps that make this sort of writing come off as generic. This is at its best when it's thoughtfully observant, and at its worst when it focuses too much on the hum-drum aspects of sex. Ultimately, all heterosexual intercourse is going to involve a penis going into a vagina, and even describing that action as "spurring him on rotations on a pelvic axis" and "grinding against hard in the opposite direct...

Well, you've certainly proven that you know how to write a memorable sex scene, I'll give you that. While I didn't really -like- this piece, I can't claim that the criticisms I had of the other one apply here. I think my biggest problem with this one is that the point at which it turns from a conspiratorial thing that the two characters are doing into something that the narrator is doing -to- her is too vague. When the narrator goes down on her in the Tilt-A-Whirl (and thank you for giving me...

You requested brutality, so you're getting it. It's nothing personal. Cut the first paragraph entirely. The hypothetical question hook here isn't intriguing enough to warrant it, and the rest of the paragraph should be at the end. Start with "Thirty-two year old Maggie Russell" (only "thirty-two" should be hyphenated) instead. The "in Wichita, Kansas" bit at the end of the sentence is a little unclear- I think that she's going to Wichita, but the way the sentence is structured, I can't tell i...

This needs a lot of work before an agent should see it. The core of what you're going for is there, but it's all sloppy, and you bury your hooks. I'm going to burn through the good and the bad, and then talk about what needs to happen for this to work, cool? Good- your plot is compelling, and high-concept, which means that this should be an easy pitch to a lot of agents. The core idea, with global warming revealing previously lost weapons to terrorists, is timely and clever. I like that you m...