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I just posted the last two chapters of Helping the New Neighbor. It ended up clocking-in at over twice as long as any other story I have written and posted to SOL. Thanks to everyone that has stayed with it and provided great feedback the past few weeks! Enjoy the conclusion.
I have received a few messages about this story. Specifically, I am being asked if the latest chapters are part of the story. The short answer is that, yes, these are part of the story.
Chapter 7's title is "Ignominious Beginning" and the first line is, "Part 2 - Chicago, 1941."
To be more clear I have added this to beginning of Chapter 7.
Helping the New Neighbor, Part 2 - Chicago, 1941
Reminder: Darren Brimble is who bought the land and built the houses where Barb/Nick and Maggie/Ricky currently live.
I also included the reminder at the beginning of Chapter 8, and will probably include it in upcoming chapters, too.
-DF
I had an editor review my most-recent effort, Reflections of a Convalescent, and have reposted all of the chapters in the story.
From the updated description:
Jimmy is an 84 year old in excellent health that has never spent a day in the hospital until the carelessness of a neighbor's kid causes an accident. He learns that the exercises done in rehabilitation can be more than just physical as he forms a special bond with his rehab therapist. The reposted chapters include a huge editorial update. It's the same story, but now it is much cleaner and tighter.
Thanks much to all that have read the story! If others read it and have comments, they are always appreciated.
-DF
Completed and published my latest story - A Small World - a few days ago. The download and vote totals of this one story exceed the sum of all my previously published stories! The totals do not necessarily match other stories on the site, but for me they were nice bump and much appreciated.
As such, I wanted to write a quick blog note to those that have downloaded and read this tale: Thank you!
Also, for those that have sent notes - of encouragement, pointing out typos, asking questions - a very sincere thanks for not only reading, but taking the time to send feedback.
I published my first story here in mid-October and just recently published #4 and #5. I really tried to come up five unique stories to get started as this is my first outlet of any kind of writing. After getting the stories online I have been a little surprised at the voting, the number of downloads, and even more so, at the feedback that has not been received.
I read somewhere that the voting can fluctuate wildly and to be taken with a grain of salt. That is, a story can be well-written and executed, but if it doesn't contain the elements that the reader wants or expects it won't get a good score.
Correlated to the number of votes seems to be the number of downloads. Once a story is published it quickly falls down the "recent" list on the homepage and is doesn't have any exposure. I published one of my five stories a chapter at at and that kept pinging the story back to the top of the list with each new addition.
One of the less-than-10 comments I received was a question about the ending of a story. The reader asked a specific question about the direction, and if the story was going to veer that way he would cut his losses and stop reading. If not, he was enjoying the story and would wait for the ending to published. (It did not go the queried direction and the reader presumably continued to read the story.)
The rest of the comments have been very benign. A few have been "Thanks, I enjoyed it." (Which, don't get me wrong, are great to hear!) And a couple have been sent to call out typos in the story text. And then a few have been sent behind the safety of Internet anonymity. One basically asked me if I was really that stupid to end a story a certain way.
If you're still reading thanks for your patience at my rant! I guess the above should be expected in this kind of forum.
-DF
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