All Comments on 'Life as a New Hire Ch. 20'

Psychic twins, star war references, cael's growth as a fighter and leader. I think i need to change my pants again

. . compliments & praise . . . : )

with all the other wierd shit in this story i am wondering if these 2 dont have some kind of connection we dont know yet

I love this storyline. Turn this into a book, pronto.

Seeing a new post to one of your stories makes me smile. Thanks for the enjoyment and keep the sagas flowing.

I regularly (daily) check to see if you have uploaded another chapter. And I love it so please continue to write these amazing stories

JW.

Very much some of the most entertaining prose on the site. Keep it up!

Once again, a simply superb tale. Imaginative, fast-moving and well-written. 5 stars all the way.

F_S, another fantastic chapter in Cáel's saga. An amazingly clever combination of the archetypes of Joseph Campbell psyche-mythos and the genius of Lon Chaney comedic angst.

Excellent, funny, weird, why out of reality, and just a pleasure to read.

Thanks

Got my fix. Thanks for the great read again and the rapid fire rate as well.

I love how over the top this series is. It reminds me of a Tarantino film, but with more descriptive sex. Keep them coming.

Not what I expected to see here today. Ha!

so of course she knows the references of his heart-likely through very subtle spying. A short examination of the instigation of his hiring would probably find her placing his name in the subject pool for new hires.

The above 'Comment' implies I have a clue what I'm doing. I assure you, I do not.

I would have loved to see what you'd have decided to do with the crew in "My Brother's Back." However, since that's pretty dead, I'm glad this one is allowed to dance freely and violently and sexually. Two thumbs up.

With every chapter is better and better , I am addicted too your story .

Awesome read. I check daily for updates. Thank you for your efforts.

Thank you for another well done chapter

Contrary to the comment from anonymous about the mind twin, I don't think Pamela was planned at all at the beginning of the story. The arc suggests that the story is being planned maybe five or six chapters in advance. We're way beyond that now. Perhaps the end of the story is planned from the beginning but not the details.

Totally love it, though.

FS,

Man you are something else.... love what you did with this chapter... cant wait for the next one... how long will it be???? 1 day, 1 week 1 weekday.... who knows.. but HURRAY!!!!!!

Thanks to Nut Ranch, I have been able to post a Chaster of Characters. Unfortunately, there is a word limit on the Bio page, so I submitted a List instead, updated to the start of Chapter 25.

but sunofabitch I swear the sun must shine in your underpants! holy cow, I really need some support right now.... if'inn you're where I'm at in the story, I'm about to reck the shit out of existence, even if we don't see it right away.......have you seen this 500m bullet?

... I'm not quite sure what you mean. I do hope your enjoying LNH so far and continue to do so. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me.

James aka FinalStand

I gotta say, the long and creepy psychoanalyzing of every woman he sleeps with is getting kind of tiresome. It makes sense for characters like Rhada and Buffy, but this time around was really too much. I mean, there was a whole page of this weird breakdown of Cameron's personality and why she is going to fuck him and what it means for her. The actual sex was confined to a single short paragraph. Why am I having to learn all of these different women's eccentricities if they are just in the story for single paragraph sex scenes?

The plot is great, I'd just rather see it move forward than spend time making this guy seem creepier than the Amazons he works for.

... sorry about that. I wanted to go more into Cael's state of mind and the distractions he embraced at this difficult time in his life. I guess I went a bit overboard.

James aka FinalStand

TL;DR: The overall quality of this story more than balances any roughness of draft caused by the difficulty of using first person POV on a character of Cáel's makeup. If you read the story twice, you'll understand.

The protagonist/viewpoint character has a nearly-subconscious ability (and need) to profile every woman he meets. It's his curse... and we're getting the story solely from his stream of consciousness.

As you read through the series, it becomes obvious that he's an unreliable narrator: not everything he thinks is actually correct. Some of the time he knows (but prefers to ignore the fact), other times he suspects (but it makes him uncomfortable), but there are plenty of times where he's just plain wrong.

Further, he presents what he "knows" or believes to be so as if it is truth. You have to read between the lines, and across chapters to discover the difference between what is so, and what he thinks (or prefers to believe) is so. He's also occasionally prone to holding on to his comforting self-delusions with both hands, kicking and screaming to retain them in the face of assault by gangs of brutal facts. It's interesting to discover the distortions in how he views himself...

For a writer, it's a challenge to communicate all of this to the reader subtly enough to avoid jarring the flow of narrative but obviously enough that the reader doesn't overlook it and get blindsided later.

From the storytelling pov, the author often has to spend many paragraphs to communicate things that flashed through the protagonist's mind in an instant. That's a serious writing challenge, in this case magnified by the characteristics of the chosen viewpoint character.

I won't spoil anything, but read all the way through the series, then reread it. You'll be surprised by how much your perception of Cáel changes, as you learn the nuances of Cáel's perception of Cáel.

Is the storytelling handled perfectly? No, but one reason this particular mode of storytelling is uncommon is that it's really hard. And someone like Cáel is far harder to use as a stream-of-thought viewpoint character than, say, a fairly straightforward protagonist who merely suffers from a bit of self-doubt and an excessive share of 'interesting times'....

For a professional writer, this story would merely be a 'rough draft'... but few professionals would challenge themselves with using such a difficult first-person viewpoint character. A professional can write more, thus receive more paychecks, by choosing to write in a less challenging style.

For me, the story would be much weaker if told in a different manner, and I find it much more satisfying to read a rough version of this story as it is currently written than a brilliantly polished version told in a different manner.

Thank you, thank you and ...

THANK YOU!

I've been trying to explain this to other commentators throughout this series and here you go, explaining it better than I've ever been able to.

Cáel is an unreliable narrator because you are getting the story from his viewpoint, with his biases and prejudices. He is wrong enough times to nearly lead to his own death via suicide. He does things with the best of intentions which lead to horrific consequences. He is a terribly flawed individual yet struggles to be a decent human being.

I fully understand reader hating him ~ at times. He a womanizer, adulterer and All-Around Playa. He hurts women emotionally. He knows he is doing this yet fails to curb his predilections.

On the other hand, outside of his philandering ways, he is a loyal friend no matter what the cost, brave through pain and adversity, compassionate to those who desperately need it, eager to learn from just about anyone, and willing to forgive at the drop of a hat. He is confident in who he is and willing to accept others for the way they are ... unless they are harming others (that last bit which is a new sensation for Cáel, btw).

And 'yes', he does continue to give a 'stream of consciousness' dialogue as he approaches sex partners because I, as the author, couldn't be true to the character if I didn't do this. If that annoys, I apologize.

Anonymous, thank you once more and take care,

James aka FinalStand

Helluva comment by Anonymous there. Personally, I really like unreliable narrator stories because they're so much fun to figure out - what is real and what is the narrator's biased perception.

Even in a story written in the third person you can insert a bit of unreliable narrative. Just add someone's thoughts as he/she completely misunderestimates an opponent or misreads a situation. It's funny. Example: Character walks into a room filled with real vampires and thinks "Jeez, look at all these try-hard wannabes, never seen so many pansies in my life." Hehheh, makes good foreshadowing, too, because you get a clue as to what mistake he's going to make next.

Also, I agree with the comment about reading an engaging-but-unpolished story. Few (if any) of the writers here are professionals and that's fine. I'm here for the stories - not the writing. They're two different things, users of this site need to learn to accept that in order to get the most enjoyment here.

To the commenter a couple down who complained about the Cameron sequence, from the beginning it's been established that Cameron changed the MC's life in a big way.

Now I dont know about you, but it makes sense to me that he would think preeeeetty deeply about the girl he had a serious case of teenage hormones for, that he was actually getting a chance to nostalgia bang.

Also, as another side note, don't know how you go about approaching women, but you should alwaaaaaayyyyyyysssss try and analyze their personality, likes, dislikes. If you don't you're probably having an unsatisfactory sex life, or at least she is.

FS, thanks for doing what you do.

This started out funny witty and cool especially when he interact with the Amazons and mess with their heads. Now she's getting f****** stupid the guy as people trying to kill him but he's not going to change his wife at the biggest stupidest cliche and f****** books and movies of course you're going to change your f****** life if somebody's trying to kill or kidnap you just dumb and then giving handcuffed to bed when you got people trying to kill you and came back you f****** stupid and you're out of falcon funeral for your father and you're trying to figure out who f****** kid getting killed and your f****** around Cameron f****** stupid I mean for fucksake yeah I know he's a sexual the addict but some of the ships just beyond belief and he has a full page f****** chapter what goddamn three pages is sex I'm missing s*** because I'm going to f****** go through the sex I mean it's just it's just getting redundant and f****** stupid

All I can do is apologize to you about the story going off in a different direction than you liked. May you have better luck next time.

Take care,

James aka FinalStand

once I stop laughing, I am going to wipe my eyes and say something. Nope, just gonna keep laughing, Please carry on!

Cameron just had to be a planted fore-shadowing early in the story. It would not have been complete without her showing up to have her moment. Genius, man. I'm so off balance by the speed and scope of all this.

Wow, an actual reference to the movie "Heavy Metal"? The Stern character to his frightened lawyer " Relax Charlie, I got an angle" I never thought I'd see the day!

Our MC is hilarious, if he can catch a thrown axe just in front of his face, he can face and beat ANYTHING!!!!

Legendary stuff.

5/5

Mad but definitely enjoying it.