Forum: Story Discussion and Feedback

Fuck. Even more procrastination material!

I'm not even gonna look until I get the next chapter of my current story up.

It seems pretty good already. I'm interested to see how much the characters from A Flawed Diamond come into the story, as the end of Chapter 4 teases Randi Raver, who according to the epilogue to A Flawed Diamond would still be living with Brock and Meredith. He hasn't had much crossover in his stories before, so I'm curious as to what will happen.

Its one of those 140 plus chapter jobs. The first posting was 135kb. I am going to wait until its over and consider it a Christmas Present to be unwrapped and read once its all there. I wish I had strength of character to handle all the serials on SOL on that basis. Thank God Banadin has stopped posting on Fridays, early. I don't want to get up that early to get the next fix. And now Thinking Horndog is posting again. I may never get to read all the Clitoride finalists, never mind the winners. Is there going to be a new thread to discuss them?

I can actually see Travis spending time with Brock Miller talking baseball and discussing women.

I'm rapidly thinking that this might be Jay's best story yet. With a potential former SEAL, Cynthia Lu coming into play, Randi Raver... I'm super hyped to see where he takes this. So much potential. So many possible twists and turns coming our way. I just wish the chapters were a bit longer.

I wonder how much is intentional, but it looks like a non authorized Taylor Swift's biography. Many clues, first one the name Liz associates with Taylor almost naturally. Then there is the whole country singer turned pop star angle. I'm not enough a celebrity fan to know about her lifestyle, drug abuse and sex partners and all. I won't be surprised if a so called rap singer pops up with some hate speech sometime in the story.

With the first act in the books, I'm pretty happy with the direction this story is going in and how Jay is choosing to tell it. I've noticed that he has a tendency every second or third story to have a soapbox character that stops the narrative to pontificate on one subject or another. WHen this trait pops up I usually start skimming as the subject usually seems at odds with what we know about the character.

I'm very happy to see this story being told through actual action and with characters that are so far well thought out and act reasonably (well, reasonably for their characters). About the only thing that doesn't ring true is the way the music business operates. IT seems like an anecdotal mish mash of 70's pop A&R and 90's Florida boy band management... but that conceit is integral to the story and dovetails with characters from previous stories that have been mentioned.

Cantrell tells a really good story, but you have to be a hearty soul to hang in there for the duration -- this one looks as if it might last longer than I will, as I'm not as young as I once was.

My only complaint is that Travis' character is a little but too quick to get nasty with people he doesn't like. That early tiff at the office in his original job seemed childish to me, and then I didn't think he gave the female security officer much of a chance. I think she was supposed to be a highly objectionable character, but he started fighting with her without too much ceremony. A little more patience and adult behavior would better match Travis' otherwise attractive personality.

All that said, I'm certainly going to keep reading.

He's definitely not the first to use the angry man in some of his stories. However, I challenge anyone to name another author who does it better.