All Comments on 'A New Profession'

Assume author drinks heavily during final chapter to mix all the girls names up like that....but good story from great writer

He never made good on his promise to Honey... and she really deserved it.

With a good deal of humanity within it.

Nicely done.

Most excellent writer. But I think your best is in the romance category. 5

But that shouldn't be surprising. You're a hit factory.

More errors than I am used to with your stories. Some lax use of pronouns in the middle got me lost for a while. Otherwise pretty standard LW fare, which I guess is the point of this event.

Thank you very much. As the second story I've enjoyed today, i'm really transported back a few years, when I first started reading here. These type of stories, even when not a fresh post, were still featured regularly on every page of the random spinner.

Seems these days, one has to dig through pages of random garbage to find an old style gem like this.

There has always been a power in the transformative narrative of it all going to shit, but still managing to work it out fine in the end anyway.

The real problem with these stories is not getting into HER head enough during the process, favoring HIS head space instead. Possibly rushed epilogue explaining a little of what happened with her in the end is still always better than leaving all or any of it out. Good stories can make the reader uncomfortable, AND relieved. Better stories do both. Q has always excelled in a fine attention to detail that provides both, consistently AND realistically.

Bravo, and thank you very much!

Cause im'ma hoe

You know im'ma a hoe

I rock rock three different freaks after every show

Cause im'ma hoe etc, etc

The story was plausible and well executed. It got confusing for me when the boss told the story of the State Trooper. After that it seemed as if it had happened to the main character because he and the Trooper spoke as if "they" had history. Maybe I read it wrong. Putting the children of the "hoes" together at the end was a bit much but there was a basis for it early on in the story so it works. Good job.

Your story confused me. You said it was 1983. There was a mild recession. They both got laid off and jobs we're scarce. They were barely getting by. She was a high school dropout, without a GED.

Yet she gets a job making $10 an hour, with no diploma, in 1983 as an overnight clerk at a hotel??? The national minimum wage in 1983 was $3.35. So, she was making 3 TIMES minimum wage. You wrote that all her prior jobs had been minimum wage. Yet, you also say she was used to $6.65 an hour. This doesn't add up.

In 1984, I graduated from college with an engineering degree and was hired by a big tech firm as a systems analyst. My pay was $7 an hour, $280 a week. She was making 50% more than me with no diploma as a night clerk at a hotel????

Hubby only says "that's a pretty good wage, Gail." Pretty good???? It was SHOCKINGLY good and his lack of reaction made me scratch my head.

KB

Felt like "Oh well, I'm tired of writing. Let's get a pizza."

I was trying to figure out how Honey would disappear from the wedding. In the end, Mack did the right thing and took care of his family Bravo and five stars!

Well, that only confirms it. You had her pay at the hotel all jacked up. In 1983 in North Carolina, I was working minimum wage making $2.65 and that was just after getting a big pay increase from $2.25. That was just a couple of years after having worked cropping tobacco at $1 a day. In 2019, the minimum wage in NC is $7.25. So, for her to be getting $10 an hour for a "do nothing" job in 1983 would have been like hitting the Lotto and Mack should have been ALARMED.

I also remember lap dances were $1 a song and extras were $15 to $25.

I also did a LOT of cocaine back in the mid 80's. I nearly died from it twice, then swore off it for life. Never once did I not know what I was doing or blackout, nor did it make me want to do things that I would not have done without it (like fuck Bill or become a prostitute). It didn't do that to anybody I knew, either. It just made you feel like you were invincible, amped up and ready to go go go, until you did too much, then all you wanted to do was sit and snort Coke. To have that happen to Gail would require that she was doing huge amounts of cocaine, which by the way, is highly addictive. You do a little, you want to do more, you do more, you want to do even more. You want to do it every day, all day. There's never a time that's not "good" for a little toot, when you use Coke. A little bump in the morning to start the day. A little bump here a little bump there.

Normally what would happen is the strip club owners would get the girls to toot, so they would get addicted to Coke, which was expensive. Then, to afford their addiction they would need more money and would do extras or go full-on hooker. Coke is not really the choice drug to give someone to get them to blackout and do naughty things.

There's no way for her to have been doing it ONLY TWICE to that level and NOT have been hooked on it and doing it 24x7. Especially if what he was was exceptionally "pure", which it never is. It would have been noticed. But, when arrested, her drug profiles were clean???

Lastly, everything she said at the end was completely nullified by one thing that she did MORE THAN ONCE. You wrote she "smirked" at her husband and she did it often. That means she LIKED what she was doing and LIKED having it as a secret.

KB

I like resilience in people and the ability to reinvent themselves, and surmount their obstacles. Mack reinvented himself with a new wife and moved on.

Gail was tired of being poor and when the door to family life closed, she went full in with her new profession and sounds like she became a successful bussinesswoman. She could have gone into major depression and spiraled into a junky street walker.

They each could have gone down into despair, but they didn't. Good on both of them.

This starting off in 1983, I thought it was heading into Gail getting HIV when she went off on her own. Glad it didn't go that route.

Minimum wage in 1983 was $3.35, not $6.65. And the cop lady who only stripped and didn't do lapdances was silly. I don't think strippers make hardly any money dancing on stage. They make it all in lapdances. And her husband who worked as a bartender while in college in the strip joint, I aint buying he didn't fuck any of the strippers, if they wanted to fuck him. Why work at a strip joint, if you're not going to partake?

I was expecting to get a satisfying revenge story, but in the end it was a tragedy. Everyone got damaged on one way or another and lost something. Good story.

I have to agree with several comments -- the ending was a bit of a letdown. But at least they didn't reconcile. 5* until the ending, so I ended up only giving it 4*. Still, when I see a new story and it's by QHML, I grin and think "Allllright."

Well written and it ended well. No weird loose ends. 4*

I understand that people who never danced in the shadows get most of their "knowledge" through movies and TV, but when you write and share it, people who DO know the subject see right through.

In the mid-80s I was making $15 hourly working on the line in the UAW. $10 an hour for managing a desk in North Cakalackie? I spent time in Jacksonville, ain't now way.

You've got cocaine confused with Molly, GHB, SOMETHING. That wasn't coke.

By the time you started wrapping things up you started mixing the ladies names up so bad I don't know who was who. Mack's step-daughter was 7 when Chad was 12; but when Chad was 24 she was 17. Uhh...

Yes, you ARE a storyteller. Your concepts, premises, are deep. There are times your execution, the legs of the table, don't support the table top.

Excellent plot. Pretty good characters. Thanks for the story.

Lots of details are just plain wrong for the time period. Names and timelines get pretty loose. I was living in a condo on Morehead St in 1984 and I still have a memory of Charlotte during the time. Parts of my less-than-sheltered life included dating a stripper for a year or so and the use of various pharmaceuticals from the mid-60's through the mid-80's. You missed by a mile and the $$ aren't close. Do better research.

Isn't it usually customary to threaten the groom and not his father in the case that the bride is ever hurt? I mean, what's he supposed to do about it? That was weird, as was the passive aggressive move Gail made tarnishing Mack's name on a business he obviously wouldnt approve of. Didn't seem to fit her weak attempt to make things right. He should have torn up and discarded the card in front of her and let her know not to worry - she would never be needed.

Yup,qhml1!

Why the uncertainty?

Well, he hadn’t started a cult, written a book, wasn’t a millionaire nor had he fixed vast inner city social ills.

Have you been well? ; )

Teasing of course.

Three of my favorite authors had submitted 3 very satisfactory stories so Thanksgiving came early.

Be well!

Not once.

Not after the arrest.

Not during their brief meeting, during the divorce.

Not afterward or when she gave her final explanation to her ex-husband, all those years later.

Basically, Gail blew up her whole family, broke the heart of every single relatives she had, and never actually apologize to any one of them for it. Hell, even Brown apologized to Chad about how everything went down, and he was just doing his job!

It's as KingBandor pointed out: you add all of this up, and it becomes impossible to believe that she ultimately wasn't glad to have gotten out of her family and parental responsibilities. Regardless of what she claims later on, making money became way more important to her than being a wife or a mother, well before she got arrested. And the fact that she is still this reluctant at being part of Chad's life pretty much tells us all where her priorities remain, more than two decades later.

And to think Mack almost reconsidered setting her up. He actually did her a favor!

Sad story, really - the things that greed and the pursuit of money make some people do; the people they are willing to risk to get it. It seems so not worth it, unless you're willing to pay the price... which, evidently, seemed to have been the case for both Gail and Honey.

A fine story, overall, well deserved of a 5★... which I would have gave it... if I haven't read KB's comments before voting. Yeah... you definitely drop the ball on that salary thing, author. Still, 4 outta 5 ain't too bad, right?

So insulting us with ridiculous all women are whores is better than homicidal husbands? Dream on jerk

No one burned anything here. Good writing but the ending was a little rushed and to be fair more than a little contrived. There are over 6.5 million people in NC in 1985 say. Even more now. So what are the chances that Chad's girlfriend was Honey's daughter? A little more of a stretch in credulity than even I can do. But other wise a solid 4.

Best Regards

C

How do you NOT tell your wife or at least later when she’s your ex that YOU brought it All down on her?!? Rub that in her face, she rubbed that smirk in yours!

MIxed-up names? - A sign of a good story: I'm a nit-picker and didn't even notice.

@Sanzego - While it was Mack that got into the fight, I think Bobby was there as well, so they BOTH had history with the Trooper.

@KimgBandor and others - Please excuse Q for not being an expert on cocaine usage, early 80's wage scale, and the cost of lap dances!

I DO agree with King that her little smirks belie her story about doing it for "them."

I'm a little confused on the money. Did she get ANY of theirs, whether 30% or 50%? If so, how doe he get $2,000 from her? Wouldn't it simply be deducted from her share of theirs?

5 stars.

But I will say this - not up to your usual high standards. Numerous technical mistakes, errors involving the time period the story took place in and the lack of emotion was surprising given the skills of the author. In the end I can't believe he didn't tell Gail he was the one that blew their operation up! That was a missed opportunity. One other thing that rubbed me wrong - prostitution is STILL illegal in Las Vegas. (I'm assuming she's still hooking or is involved with it). Thanks for the effort. It would be great if you could post more often and show some of these wanna-be authors how it's done!

5 stars

However, this one needed another round of proofreading. A couple of times I had to stop and spend a couple of minutes rereadingA couple of times I had to stop and spend a couple of minutes rereading trying to figure out what was going on before I realized there was a good reason I was confused. and trying to figure out what was going on before I realized there was a good reason I was confused. having to do that took me away from the story.

* I was really confused when he remarried and Katie’s daughter Melody became Chad’s step-sister—and then a few lines later we are told by Jeff that “Melody is Honey's daughter.it says that Amber was speaking (about herself in the third person?) But it sounds like Jeff is actually the one talking (“Iona dojo“?), but Holly’s daughter is named “Pam.“

* “Amber ... smiled to take the malice out of her words, but still made me know she was serious. "’I own a dojo and hold a black belt in three different styles. Amber holds two.’” It says that Amber was speaking (about herself in the third person?) But it I spent a couple of minutes going back-and-forth trying to get this straight, before I realized that the problem wasn’t mine.sounds like Jeff is actually the one talking (“I own a dojo”?).

* “I hesitated for about a mute ...” Would that be “I hesitated for about a minute”? (OK, this one didn’t confuse me and I wouldn’t of mentioned it, but for the other two.)

While I thoroughly enjoyed the read and am satisfied with the end I would echo some of the other comments made.

The first chance Mack got to set the parameters was when Gail grabbed him to dance and held herself tight against him. He should have pushed her back, maybe even left her standing alone on the dance floor. She had no right, and he needed to demonstrate more respect for himself and his new wife.

Her speech at the end, her explanation to Mack, was just that, an explanation, no remorse, no apology. One has to conclude that her "wanting to do it for them" proclamation was BS, she clearly was all about the money and that she liked fucking all of those men, liked it more than being a mother or a wife. A devoted mother, even one who fucked up enough to lose a custody decision, would have stayed nearby in-order to have all of the contact with the child as could be had. She did not, chased after stripping instead. That says volumes.

Next, as other readers pointed out, the end of the her speech should have been followed by Mack saying something like, "You know, at the time I caught those little smirks you gave, and I knew something more was going down. I decided to find out and shit, Gail, it was so easy to uncover that you were a whore. I knew divorce was the only option, but I couldn't stand the idea of you using Chad as a weapon. So it was me that got the State Police Task Force involved, me that helped bring down the local cops, and me that you got arrested so that you would not win custody. Now you hand me a card for a strip club to give to Chad? Use my name on a place where men come to see my ex-wife naked, maybe screw her? Fuck you Gail."

Oh, one other thing, when Katie tugged on his arm and said, "Later" - we didn't to find out what that was about.

I do enjoy your work Q, please continue.

Sorry I only gave it a 4, but I got confused a number of times, in the reading. It's a good story, but found it a bit tight, and hard to understand, especially towards the end. Motivations where sound for the story, but again, there was no acceptance of reality on her part. As far as the threat to break Honey's nose if she fucked over his marriage wasn't fulfilled. Sorry about the 4, but you have much better stories here.

Why start screwing ?

Coke did before so just excuse for more cheating

Used up

No diseases?

More punishment

Not a Jihad, but a good one none the less.

Felt a little hurried at times.

Maybe timelines of an event can do that.

All in all good work, from one of the best.

Solid plot and entertaining read.

Top ratings from me.

Q is one of the LW legends for good reason. He writes stories with heart. This was a good one about a wife off the rails who left her husband and son to fend for themselves. They survive and.make good lives for themselves. My only quibble is that he didn't make good on his promise to Honey. Great story.

This story captured that feeling from both sides.

This story is well written. I held my attention and as such is a quick read. Great gut wrenching betrayal.

Well done!

Keep 'em coming!

At least no cucks.

Always confused over this alienation affection thing. The pimps did not have anything to do with their marriage. Only crime there was drugging and raping the woman. I doubt they even cared or knew she was married. The only actions against wedding vows were those of the wife fucking other men. Besides I doubt the men had any money left to get in civil court. Assets frozen and their own lawyers to pay. Zilch left after that.

Oh well...

This story was good but nowhere near your best. Story seemed a bit rushed. Enjoyed the story and will definitely check back in on your next posting.

I'm like a lot of other readers; I can't understand why some people go into such detail trying to point out every single error. Hell, I've written some stories sitting in a pick up truck at six in the morning after a night's work; a couple I wrote while high on Hydrocodone. I've posted my stories without any expectation of recompense other than an occasional appreciative comment.

I've been reading some Ken Follette lately; he makes mistakes too. I read an old Larry McMurtry the other day; what a mess, and he gets an occasional Pulitzer! Some of F. Scott Fitzgerald's stuff stinks, but he's considered a giant.

I'm sure you're good at what you really do. The posting on Literotica is just for fun. I enjoy what you post. Please continue. I miss guys like Francis MacComber, Rehnquist, and the Troubador.

Jedd Clampett (carvohi)

It's a five of course. Warts and all it's a five!

So Uncle Pete, his divorce lawyer, became Uncle JAKE during the settlement conference. Of course the Melody/Pam thing happened too. Mack's Strip Club was just a big fuck you to Mack. Almost as if she KNEW who ratted them out to the State Cops.

If Jeff hasn't seen Honey in twelve years,how does he know she will come to the wedding.Who is going to tell her,supposing they know we're she lives.?

learned nothing..... regrets nothing.........and still had a succesful life

3 starrs

Well thought out plot, man retains his honor and wins the war if not every battle. Good to see new story from Q!!

Q, in general I like your stories and have you as a favorite author. With this this one, I felt I have to only give 3 stars. It was a good story, but when you got to the section about Chad and his soon-to-be wife, you went off the rails for a bit. The names got all confusing and I wasn't sure who was who for a bit. I re-read it twice, just to be sure.

Overall, entertaining story.

And for the ever elusive and opinionated "Anonymous"......MAN UP and claim your comment

Four out of five stars.

Good, but not great for all the reasons listed by others.

Q is one of my favourite authors, and he still is.

Steve

She never once said sorry. The only regret she showed was when she said, "We never did find out how they knew about us." And that wasn't regret for what she was doing, only regret that it came to an end. The fact is, despite all the bullshit talk about being a victim, she LOVED every second of what she was doing. So much so, that she walked away from her 9 year old son, and ignored him for 15 years, to continue doing it in another state. She loved it so much, that before she was caught, she was bringing home what she learned, asking Mack to try 'new things' like anal.

She was hooking for months, and had 14 thousand dollars hidden away. She said she had a target of 60 thousand before she would quit. That meant she intended to whore for YEARS!

It was apparent that she was still turning tricks, when she gave Mack her card, adamantly telling him that neither he, nor their son, was to EVER go there.

This happens way to much especially to younger females, it's sad but just read the headlines now a days. Putting out to get ahead is still prostitution yourself. It doesn't matter if your in a boardroom or on a street.

KingBandor makes a complaining comment about this story. On KingBandor’s site on here, he states that he will remove any comments about his stories which are negative. So, maybe you should remove his comments which were negative to YOUR story’s details! We sure don’t want KingBandor to appear to be hypocritical!

Thanks.

It was well written but sad and predictable. Perhaps took too long to get to the end . We wanted to find out why and I felt sorry for Gail. I might have made her more forlorn and more expressive of her regret. Also some of her perspective would have been more interesting.

I liked this. They went their separate ways ,and were both successful , with I’m sure a few regrets, but life goes on.

I agree with your comments but you left out one. When they were filming "The Big Sleep" with Bogart and Bacall no one could figure out "whodunnit" so they asked the writer of the novel, Raymond Chandler and his response was to the effect "why are you asking me, I don't know who did it." The book is a classic as is the movie, one of my favorite Bogie movies, I miss him just as some of the authors you mention. Signed: BTW

Mack never did make good on his promise to Honey.

I do not know your circumstances, but I thought I should start there. I appreciated the depictions of police as both sides are true and I was rooting for the state police.

As an anonymous myself, I must say that some anonymous posters give us a bad name. Well told story of life as it sometimes is. The man was hardly a "cuckold" in any sense. He was a man in an untenable position who did what was right for his child and himself. He acted within the law, was successful in protecting his son without allowing him to be destroyed by the legal system, the tempted and weak wife or anyone else. He didn't do the immature revenge bit, and didn't put his and his son's futures in jeopardy.

Well done! I hope you're doing better physically, and I hope you've published more. I really enjoy your published version of "Summer by the Lake". If you have published more, I would love to buy them.

After the husband finally grew a set things started to move along well enough.

Heart wrenching story really well done

This was a good one that I really got into. Feel a little unhappy that she ended up successful after what she had done. Still a great story.

The story had too much fantasy for my liking.

Very cool, cunning and calculative, it seems he was planning right from the start how to divorce his wife, get her arrested and get full custody of the child without considering the fallout on his only son! It's sure understandable if he doesn't want to live with her, a mere divorce with a joint custody would have been enough! Any normal husband would have confronted her straight away when he finds so much money in her purse! A direct confrontation may have brought her back from the felony and given her a chance to establish herself as a normal divorced wife with liberal visitation rights to the child! After all, a child needs both parents. But he decided to trap her and even refused to pay the bond only to ensure she didn't get custody and visitation rights? A mere divorce would have been okay, sorry, he seems to be a real asshole, at least a wife deserves from her husband that he tries to save her ass, even if they are in line of a divorce! Good as a revenge story, not a loving wife or husband at all! Probably he was already planning to dispose of her even if she was honest!

That business card would have been burned instantly. Once a slut always a slut. May karma return in force.

Sad story really. The slut wife did not suffer enough, and Honey???

What a miserable bitch.

Gail and Honey, what unsavoury characters, miserable whores.

The divorce didn't add up for me, whatever they had + her $14k and he walked away with $2k and child support.

I feel like Gail wasn't emotionally affected at all. She lied in the divorce, her confession at the end sounds very matter of fact and she seemed pretty ok with just leaving Chad to pursue her business. Not sure if intended, she came off as a very cold person and the whole situation just worked in her favour instead of a BtB story.

I did enjoy the story overall so gave it 5 stars still.

But like earlier posts point out the details need some work. For example, I wonder why she would give up her visitation rights? If she didn't want to, or feel a need to see Chad all she had to do was to simply NOT see him, she didn't have to give up any rights she had.

Possibly the author means just that, but visitation rights is a specific right she had been awarded by the court in the divorce.

Full marks for brilliant story! Liked it from the outset!

It's amazing, when you're young you have all these plans then life happens and it's not always fair and sometimes your path is chosen for you. This story just reminded me how I thought my life would go and with who. Not better or worse just different, no regrets. A very thought provoking story. Thank you

A well written story. Too bad I didn't run across it until now. A sequel would be

nice...

The story is an example of double standards. A beggar family. The father and mother are forced to break the law in order to survive. Father breaks the law by receiving a black salary without paying taxes on it. Mother breaks the law forced to work as a prostitute. In the eyes of the law, they both commit criminal acts. However, from the narrative of the story it follows that the father is a positive type, and the mother is negative. Why is this happening? The father uses the money that the mother earns: they buy food, pay bills. In this case, money does not smell for the father. However, he betrays his wife to the police. He is outraged by how she makes a living for him and his son. Vile type as a husband. He does not take the necessary steps to support the family - this is the duty of the father and husband. Mother is a positive example as a wife and a woman whose husband is weak and weak-willed. The mother is forced to take full responsibility for the family, even by selling her body. She is a hero in this case, not a vile and weak-willed husband. The husband is a slug and must apologize by kissing her feet.

This was not just someone using sex to make money, this was a wife cheating on her husband and destroying the trust between and married couple. The was actually worse than cheating but having multiple sexual contact with strangers is and can be a definite health danger to the rest of the family. Very poor judgment on her part. There is no justification for 'cheating' if you wish to screw around, don't get married. It seems no one these days believes in the oath they take when they get married. Not great but a good story. keep writing

This anon "The story is an example of double standards. A beggar family" is what we call a femi-nazi.....huge difference between the husband and wife, only an adderall fan could even THINK of comparing the two in the way this brain damaged neanderthal did.

It seems antithetical for a a city known as "Sin City" but prostitution is illegal in Clark County Nevada. Las Vegas is in Clark County. I think it's legal in all other parts of Nevada. The closest brothel is 60 miles away in Nye county in the town of Pahrump.

creegalt

Not sure I see how someone can say the hubby and wife were the same in their actions...

Until the wife was being bitchy to him, *he* was going to tell her about the money... and likely would have also told how he was getting it...

No way she'd have ever done that by her own admission - she'd planned to filter the money back into their life...

Plus, where did it say he was all smug to her...? Nowhere...

And though it was probably too late to keep her out of jail he *did* try to help her not get caught in the bust...

Another thing to consider... would *she* have told him to stop if he told her about earning under the table? Obviously not because even she knew these were different things.

This was a great story with very true to life experiences. I'm sure we all have stories of people down on there luck going into the sex trade to make ends meet while at the same time trying to keep there personal and private (sex lives) from co-mingling or becoming public knowledge.

Read it again. It's still a good enough story, but I wish the cheating whites had done hard time. Twist with the wedding was a good one.

Normally I really like BTB stories but this one was just sad and one of the few times I have actually felt sorry for the woman. Why? They were clearly very poor and never came from money. She got taken advantage of by a serious predator and she obviously wasn’t that bright. Also unlike other stories she never came across as a bad person who was unrepentant, which made her seem more like a real person. Just someone who made a string of bad and irreversible decisions that changed her life forever and caused her to lose everything. Yeah she’s running a strip club/brothel, but if you know anything about the old women involved in the sex trade, you know they all hate themselves when they look in a mirror. The depression rates and suicide rates among sex workers are sky high in reality. It’s clear at the end that she really doesn’t like where she is in life but since she has no other skills as a high school dropout, she’s stuck. Her naming it Mack’s is an example of her real feelings about her life and that she knows she will die alone.

Legitimately one of the most brutal unintentional BTB stories I’ve seen. I don’t consider the prostitution breakup to be the real BTB of this story, it’s the fact that she’s stuck as a sex worker for life and the stats of people doing that are horrendous. I’m not sure any of them are happy at all.

I enjoyed this read a lot... but I was sad at the end.

I am echoing Slamnuke’s comments below (from 14 days ago); I did feel for Gail and thought she was taken advantage of. Yes, she should of walked away; and her desire/greed for money over a life with her family just corrupt her values to the point of no return. Yes... just sad.

Thank-you for this story

I caught my wife (now ex-wife) stripping and prostituting herself. I started the Divorce proceedings the very next workday.

He finds out then way later tries to talk her out of being there when raided. Then tremendously upset when goes down.

She making all that money just stripping but she's needs more$. You contradict yourself

jtwheels

I would have kicked Jeff and Amber to the curb when they tell him who their daughter really is and I'd do it smiling with my .44 in my hand. Talk about bad roots and bad starts. I'd make sure everyone involved knew who was who and what that meant. And I would have tried to notify the Las Vegas police that a certain women was running a whorehouse in their city. Done and done.

Man or woman's ability to rationalize any behavior is unlimited, just look around you. Good writing of a sad story.

Needed one more paragraph, where he tells Honey to run/

Sad story, should have come to a head a lot sooner. Some husbands are just so blind. There really should be less trust, especially with a wife working "odd" hours! Guys, stay on your toes & keep an eye on her!

Pleasant surprise, with a few issues. Honestly just was looking for some titillation, but got drawn into the story despite its near absence! Nice character development with Mack, and pretty believable plotline. Issues mostly have to do with continuity errors & some gaps in the narrative that cause confusion. Keep it up! :)

Not even a glimmer of remorse, he was well rid of her. Quite literally a whore, though sadly one without a heart of gold, actually no heart at all.

Thoroughly Confused!! Jeff and Amber are together and Pam is step-daughter to Amber. But Melody was Honey's and Jeff's daughter and here she's Katie;s daughter. So who is who??? Hate it when authors can't keep the names and relationships of their characters straight.

Damn

The only thing to improve this tale would have been Mack telling the whore that it was because of him that the prostitution ring was caught. The whore got off too easy and weren't sorry at all. Oh well.

... if you can't make enough money to support your own family - shame on you, you ignorant, stupid asshole. And you can surely expect and rely on God - and a wide open pair of legs with plenty of lube - to make up your humiliating shortfall - both as a provider and as a "man".

I don't blame the wife at all. And the hubby was such a yellow-belly coward he actually snitched on his own wife to the cops! What a useless, worthless loser!

I enjoyed the story which is well written with only a few grammatical and syntactical errors. A nice storyline with good character development and a nice little twist at the end.

A fine story that needed a little polish. The pacing was a little uneven, especially around the peripheral story. 5*****

Carpenter / should be around a few men with similar issues , why the hype on Love ? I never get it how they can talk love when the spouse is committed to being a slut // . You would never breed with or even date a women with those background issues // Disease alone , HIV is death sentence // and a lot of the STDs are untreatable / like Herpes' // all are as common as the FLU these day's of our being dumbed down stupid. ! Weird have any of you idiot / read up on child-hood-related anomalies from drugs /Herpes' or alcohol abuse/ Two of those about can contribute to the exacerbation of cancer , the rest can contribute to mental disorders and learning disabilities . Give your characters a little more respect for the life choices. THINK /it's never about sex , it's life experiences , sharing / and" time "spent together sharing those moments / .

Her 'why' was over when she said 'money'. After all those years one would never go into that level of detail and I cant believe someone would talk about douching out another mans cum to thier ex husband at her sons wedding.

Bleak. It rings true, though. People tire of being broke and do ridiculous things.

Such a sad story. Wife who has a family, husband and kid. Throws it away to get wrapped up in prostitution and drugs knowing she didn't see her kid grow up. Sometimes people have no self control and before they know are in a world so deep it's hard to get out. Just don't start in the first place, charish what you have and don't take it for granted. All can be lost in a blink.

Sad story but the idea that prostitution is legit in Vegas or Reno is false, incorrect and otherwise untrue. Those working ladies busy plying their trade are just as subject to arrest as those in your hometown. Take that Yankee!

firstly Gail had issues before she went to the motel or strip club. Secondly this story probably has happened much more ofter than you think. Lastly, if you have even interacted with a stripper then you know that are the definition of rationalization. They do it for the attention and of course the money...certainly not for the sex. Good story with some minor witers license. Will tread more of qhml1 work.

Bill, Gail, and Honey should all have been treated to a dance with Melody, where she beat them severely or worse. I know it's a story, but there are people like them in real life. I enjoy your writing!

Given their history she had the audacity to give her strip club/brothel his name? She is truly a nasty cunt.

So ... when does Honey get the broken nose she was promised?

“Yep, Melody is Honey's daughter.” Isn’t melody Mack’s daughter? and mack is married to katie…