All Comments on 'Painting by The Numbers'

We definitely don't deserve these beautiful stories you share with us. Thank you for bringing new meaning to the Romance category. There are so many emotions packed into this one.

Magnificent. And you got into the skin of an artist. She perhaps works a little too fast but it works for the story. In general authors fail to capture the reality of artists, musicians, writers and even actors as the sheer hard work is a distraction to a plot. But without the distraction of reality the plot becomes unreal. You did good kid!

This was a wonderful read. Outstanding again. Thank you.

Excellent. Your artist works like many software engineers I knew. Wish I could rate it higher.

Really wish we could have read Mr. X Games.

@bobabcd - Mr X games is on Kindle Unlimited. It is simply as excellent as this.

Absolutely superb as always, Bebop old bean. Five big fat juicy stars.

This is the nugget of gold that makes Lit shine. Thanks very much for this wonderful and exceptional story. Not necessary to discus stars.

Wonderfully complex and heartbreakingly effective. Thanks so much!

What a wonderful story

Phenomenal. Strong strong character development. Complex back stories. Believable but not predictable plot. Really just flawless. You have great writing talent. Thank you.

Sheesh. Another excellent story perfectly paced and filled with intriguing, likeable and engaging characters. You keep doing this sort of thing, you're going to end up with some sort of reputation. I hope you're prepared for that. Seriously nice job. Couldn't put it down.

An awesome work in any category, this is easily one of the best stories in the Romance category. Thanks for this contribution.

I think this is my favorite story of yours yet! I missed rereading Get on The Bus Gus since you had to pull that from Lit. I probably read that one and its offshoots 20 times or more and they had been my favorite previously. I am sure I read mister X Games but don't recall it, I will look for it on another platform. Really happy to see you back and thanks for the fabulous and touching story, your writing has so many layers to it! What a joy :)

Nicely done as always. 5 stars. You’re one of a handful of authors that I regularly reread, so when you removed some of your stories ( like Mr. X Games), I really missed them. Please, don’t take that as a criticism…I miss those stories because I liked them a lot. Thank you for closing the loop on Ronnie, Nicky, Cat, and Lori. Even felt bad for George…it’s rough when younger, stupider you makes a big mistake that an older, wiser you regrets. It’s rougher still when being sorry isn’t enough to redeem you.

Brilliant.

It’s refreshing to read about real characters with real issues without becoming too maudlin. My only negative comment is that you cost me half a night’s sleep finishing your long story. Oh well, greatness has its price.

This was a touching tale that is certainly one of the best in this category that I have ever read. It pulls the heart strings in so many real life directions. Absolutely 5 stars

I found this story to have a well developed plot and detailed characters that portrayed real people that were not perfect and very human. That is what kept my interest in this story even for a length of 18 pages. It is a very good romance story. One of the best romance stories I have read in Literotica.

great story with well developed characters.

would have loved to reread X Games

What a wonderful story. I hadn't read X Games before so found it on Kindle, along with Fighting Back which is also related. I don't think I've ever enjoyed reading more than those three combined. Bebop3 Thank You so very very much for all the hours of fun reading.

Very enjoyable, good character expansion and a moving story beyond the erotica. Your characters are flawed and relatable - deeply so. Thank you for sharing this with us. Sorry you had to pull Mr X Games. - NotAristotle.

A rare but great pleasure.

You paint with words as well or better than Veronica does with her art (although she does a pretty fair job using words to paint "Princess Penelope Purplepants"). I don't think we deserve you, but please don't let that stop you from writing more.

A wonderful story, with a cast of secondary characters as nice to spend time with as the MCs. I particularly liked the format of the epilogue.

One of the best!

Another great one ! So very well told.

Great writer and story! But geez, 18 pages. Breaking into 3 or 4 parts would be better. I know this is a free site and we shouldn't complain. But if I buy a book on someplace like Amazon. I can read a few pages and bookmark it and read at my leisure.

5

Fantastic, Bebop. Took me a while to read it all, but worth every minute.

Seems like this one was a true labor of love, like there's something hidden in here you wanted to get out. There are a couple gaps that are driving me crazy. It's never revealed why Ronnie's father left Lori and Nick from his perspective. As much as she can't reconcile his actions, neither can I. It's simply too large of a jump for me to make. Maybe someday you'll write a spin-off about it. As "sweet" as Lori is, did she stray once? The character development of Ronnie was a bit drawn out, but I appreciated the depth. As a frequent visitor on the site, I don't have a problem with writers posting an entire works at one time, so take that as a counter to WD's comment. I'll look on Amazon and see if "Mr. X Games" is there? 4.6*

PS - To those who want to read "Mr. X Games", click on the Amazon link by Beebop3 and the series is there.

Brilliant character development as usual for your stories.

I love all the psychoanalysis going on in this story. Well written too, great story.

not sure if this is a comment or a question.Do Americans or city people in general have as much food delivered and eat out as often as in this story?Just like to know if my observation is accurate to normal life,As my eating habits are very different.Enjoyed the story greatly,Not my normal reading taste try to find novel length work,Glad i stumbled upon it

Another terrific story by a gifted writer. Really well done!

I started reading this later in the evening than I should have, and wound up so enthralled that I read it in one sitting that lasted well past midnight. Bebop3 always delivers well-wrought stories with relatable characters, and this story is no exception! 5 stars

I gave 5.

But that was for a well written story..

The portrayal of her dad has holes though.

In real life I am an adopted dad to a very capable woman of substance and integrity.

He natural dad walked out on her mum, brother and her when she was 6.

Seeing as I have no children of my own I treasure a relationship going on for 19 years.

Including her marriage and now having 3 sons.

Who call me grandad.

Life is full of surprises.

Still yours is a very good story.

The skill in character development shines through here. Lots of good amateur authors on this site and this is where they should be aiming for in terms of where to set the bar.

Excellent in so many ways…so thanks. If you’re inclined to clean up a master file, here are some minor errors:

I lowered my voice an octave or two. [Not sure why she’d lower the tone of her voice…making it deeper or more male-like. If you meant loudness, then maybe decibel.]

I tried to pay for my own food, and he would let me do that either. [wouldn’t]

Calvin leaned closer, whispering in my air. [probably ear]

There were little geniuses, so of course every drawing and coloring was immediately approved. [They]

I would get her a high-res copy and a couple of weeks. [in]

I originally saw 18 pages and told myself no way.

Then I read page 1 so I had to go to page 2, but after several interruptions over a couple of days, I finished it. Obviously, if I'm going to read 18 pages, it has to be a 5 star.

I think the only thing that was out of place for me was the Calvin reaction when Ronnie dumped him. He became mean and vindictive, while the backstory suggested he was only that way with his wrestling opponents. It just seemed inconsistent to me. I have read often about athletes who are terrors on the field or on the ice (often ice hockey players are portrayed that way) but teddy bears when not competing. But it's your characters and your story and you get to choose how they act.

Extremely well done and creative.

An excellent story, very well told. the humor and the serial Princess stories were essential to the greatness of this tale. If it became a movie, I would buy a ticket. ( The last ticket I bought was for the first "Lethal Weapon")

5/5 I wished you had resolved the Dad issues, it really hung over the entire story.

Easy peasy 5 stars.

Perfect ending.

Bad endings happen often on this site. Good one's are fewer. Really good ones are rare. You are one of the few authors on this site that consistently know how to end a story.

Thanks for the great read (and reads).

Ranks up there with some of the best here. I too looked at the number of pages. Glad I took the time.

Why did u have to pull it ? Im pretty sure i read it awhile back ? This was an awesome story. Thought there might have been more problems with calvin. But all in all it was enjoyed n appreciated 5 stars to ya.

Wow one of the best I have read here. Certainly not too long, I liked the character development. I am sad that I cannot read the earlier story

Great little story. Your MC was flawed and well written which was enjoyable.

I found her lovable, disgusting at times, self centered, generous, selfish, myopic and growing during the story into a more mature woman.

John was maybe a little too convenient for reality, waiting like a wounded saint in the wings while Ronnie got her ugly problems under control, he wasn't perfect either but a little too close to it and conveniently available for her.

I enjoyed the read. Thank you.

There are two major advantages of long stories: you can develop the characters more completely and you can build on the plot until it, too, is more complete. I haven't done a statistical analysis, but I'll be the length of stories in the Romance file is on average longer than in the largest of the files, the Loving Wives genre. This story did have a group of characters who were definitely flawed, but real. It was never at all clear why Dad, (George), was so cruel to his first wife and son. It would have been somewhat contrived for that problem to be solved, but a movement to an explanation would have done wonders for the overall taste of the tale. But it was good enough to earn an enthusiastic 5* from the majority of the readers.

I did notice that the story was written entirely in the first person using Ronnie as the narrator. Much of the story is told through dialog which is tricky to do, but effective. It was well done throughout and although I dreaded the idea of reading an 18 page story, it wasn't bad when broken down into sections that were easy to digest. The negative aspect of that approach was that I did lose track of who some of the many women in the story were. I was OK with Nick, John, Calvin, Dad and a couple of minor players who appeared now and then, but were recognizable in context. The women were much more difficult: Cat, Lori, and others confused me And the bunch of children were also confusing. Some of this was due to the fact that Dad had two wives and two families and two sets of grandchildren and their associated families. Still it was a good experience and well worthy of the almost universal 5* rating.

I must say you packed this story with a lot of interesting points and possibilities for each character to evolve, and I'm sure that's exactly what many sensed when they commented on just the one idea of how the story may feel and the emotions they experienced upon reading it. You certainly provided a buffet for about anyone to enjoy, but there were some items that have been improved upon.

***

The story makes it very obvious Veronica experiences many iself-confidence issues to begin with. It's obvious that she also has a fairly sharp tongue at times that gets the better of her (and at least later should have thought about and controlled better), and we know that she's got a lot on her plate emotionally, plus a lot to navigate in order to evolve into a more mature person. She's obviously very talented, yet she doesn't truly appreciate it at the start. Nothing wrong with that, although it does indicate perfectionism. What I found interesting as we begin reading about this is she heavily criticizes grandmothers that want to commission paintings of their children or rich people that want to commission her to pay to paint pictures of their star athletes in the family.. while I understand that point they're paying her to do it, I don't understand why she would be complaining about that. The one thing that also is obvious is that when she first meets this Croatian wrestler named Calvin, that Calvin exactly mirrors her.. except that he's male, but he mirrors her personality in many ways, which I'm kind of surprised at because usually you tend to slow-roll a lot of how these characters develop and rarely does one get telegraphed this soon in a story. But that's not really a major point, except for the fact that Calvin and Veronica are the same except for being of different sexes. I do find it novel that you use Veronica's father in order to partly reflect the process that Veronica needs to go through later, and I definitely give you kudos for this, because therapy for anyone is a process and it can be very long and drawn out to get to the real issues. The one thing though is that despite how the dad treated Lori and Nikky early in his life and yet how he stood by Veronica when she had the kidney replacement, both children either inherited or developed talents that end up making them very successful and very sought after. It's kind of an interesting idea that his children are immediately successful, because somehow you use the story as a vehicle to recompense the children for what they missed out on either from him, or from life in general.

***

I truly appreciate that you paint Veronica is someone more interested in showing off her subjects as human beings rather than just a successful sports figure. I noted how she wanted to humanize Calvin and do the same with Jessica, although we later discover a very interesting irony about Jessica, because While Veronica muses that she could understand that people were going to look at Jessica as a type of object or a pin-up, it turns out Jessica later in the story actually perceived and knew this very well, and simply turned the situation to her advantage, socking way all that money and doing something practical like hiring a kind of financial agent to help maximize return on her money so she would basically have a good life after the endorsement deals stopped after college. In the same vein of those paintings, the story however presents Veronica getting involved with Calvin, which is something she absolutely should not do.. because it's an obvious conflict of interest. While I realize the story is fiction, this is kind of a serious mistake because this hints at the idea that she could lose that commission at the least and it could possibly cost her the other paintings as well. So this is something then I'm surprised was overlooked, because it strains Veronica's credibility to the stretching point here, and it's pretty clear that while her dalliances with Calvin don't seem to be discovered by the college, that in reality they should have and could have been, certainly when she was in Nashville and kept him late at her hotel. This is a serious weakness that the story doesn't resolve plausibly.

***

Returning to Veronica, not long after she first hears Calvin singing along to Britney Spears in her car, we're presented with Nick and John grilling together and the story displays her having passive-aggressive behavior in 3 aspects: her lying about what's bothering her about John is full-on narcissism in one degree. It's obvious that Veronica has a lot of stuff to resolve, as this is still early in the story but it strikes me as odd as to why Cat and Nikky don't call her out on her poor behavior, nor admonish her to resolve the issue with John nor at least offer to play intermediary to help talk this out and confront the situation to deal with it in a healthy manner. I realize that she nearly dies before she has kidney transplant, but that incident is distant relative to this point in time in the story and doesn't paint Nick nor Cat as truly loving her, because sometimes when you love somebody and you see them doing something destructive you have to step in and you have to be the bad guy--even if it hurts. While eventually this kind of thing gets resolved through the twins, it could have been set in motion here gently by Cat or gently by Nick, and this is also kind of a head scratcher as to why at least in some small manner the turnaround didn't start here. Oddly enough, my notes reflected that when Veronica blasted John rather harshly, I put that John should have told Ronnie to grow up at this point. He does exactly that much later in the story, but much closer to the end, and it's not really that admonition from him that spurs her to go to therapy.. but rather one of the twins telling Veronica that she was wrong for not giving John a hug and telling him she was sorry. So, it's kind of novel to use the twins as a vehicle to rehabilitate veronica, but it's a shame that the adults who are assumed to be more mature never call her out on her behavior.

***

A big question that the story almost tries to hide or doesn't explain is why Veronica's musings in some point, regarding her father and sometimes regarding John, or even Nikky, are fairly irrational and lacking in any type of logic. The story only gives about two points of evidence that she's effectively bipolar, because in one sense she coins the very phrase of manic, and then she works on a painting for eight, 10, 12, 18, or even 20 hours before she just kind of finally collapses. I lived with a bipolar schizophrenic personality for 3 years, quite by accident... but this explains almost the same behavior that Veronica manifests, and it's the only thing that really explains her irrationality...although you only partially mentioned that Veronica herself once she became more self-aware said that she seemed to skip maturing between being a teenager and becoming an adult. So somehow there needed to be possibly 6 to 12 sentences interspersed throughout the story to give the readers enough bread crumbs to determine with more certainty that maybe Veronica was bipolar or something related. This would explain why she struggled so mightily with her dad because in reality, we don't always know why some people do what they do, and do certain things to other people that lacks a reasonable explanation. Perhaps you were trying to say that okay, life doesn't always explain itself and that's true- -and that's a very powerful point! I'm probably in the minority to say that in reality, no one should try to understand life and it's totality, because some things just cannot be explained just like Veronica's dad leaving Lori and Nikky when they didn't do anything wrong. If you live long enough, you come across situations like this that don't have explanations, and you just have to go on about your life and try not to wrap your mind around it so it doesn't drive you crazy!

***

I realize this review comes out far longer than some of the others I've left before, but in reality this story kind of merited it in that you did pack a lot of angst, a lot of things to disentangle, and a lot of thoughts and feelings that really required a lot of analysis to process properly. Certainly it was wonderful to see how Veronica's dad went to therapy to try to improve himself, and that's really all you can ask when somebody commits something so inexplicable as leaving a wife and child metaphorically in the middle of the night without any reason and is legitimately trying to make amends. However it's still ironic, yet realistic, that he would still kind of punish himself to some degree with his weight loss and the extra stress possibly causing extra grain.. however him selling the company goes too far, because it makes no sense to somehow donate I believe 80% of the proceeds to Nikky when he is already rich? Now, that could possibly explain Veronica's irrationality and bipolar disorder, because unfortunately things like that have been proven to be genetically disposed, since a child's personality has been proven to be between 40-50% genetically inherited from whatever the parents contribute to that child. Also, you use Calvin to mirror Veronica in a rather unique way although I find it a little odd that Veronica in some cases is not called out to be the bully that she is towards John. Even when John finally loses it, he really treats her with kid gloves with his very minor outburst, because he only says something moderately direct about one of her paintings if I remember correctly, and tells her to grow up. Both things are warranted no doubt.. yes, no one would have thought it unwarranted had he just lambasted her about unjustly labeling him about having a New York accent, or anything else she said that was really the basis for a series of cheap shots that he didn't deserve. You most definitely use Veronica's painting as her therapy, which is always been at least in recent years, as a very recognizable form of therapy to help people through trauma, which was something even used In the Heat of the Night as a vehicle to get a young child to remember who murdered someone in that episode. The dad certainly comes off as someone flawed yet trying to make whatever progress he can, and Lori is certainly pictured as someone basically beyond reproach and very hard working. I love how you use Jessica to draw Veronica out of her shell, and especially to socialize her more with the real world and with other people. Even using Lori's twin girls was masterfully insightful to kind of deliver the Emperor's New Clothes Line of redemption to Veronica, in terms of having her realize she needed to make it up with John more than John needing to make it up with her.. although both had enough things to work on on both their parts to have to fix the gaps in their former relationship. Certainly the happy ending is not unwarranted nor unbelievable. However not explaining more about why Veronica was of her certain mental state, and some of the areas in which there were chances to help Veronica earlier I consider unquestionable shortfalls in the narrative that had they been addressed, would have added even greater gravitas to the story and really smooth it out to where they're still the same struggle and fights and confrontation of each character shortcomings but it just would have given the few more bread crumbs to every reader to understand perhaps why Veronica thought the way she did, and to explain a little bit more about why the dad did what he did. It would have been okay to leave it largely up in the air, but the way the story presented it without at least a few more supporting pieces felt just a little short of what it should have been. 4

Well Bebop3, I feel the need to say; you can absolutely write! It was a pleasure to read this story, and I'll be reading the rest of them.

Appreciate the continuing saga of Veronica and her brother. Three long stories, though, and we still don’t know why George abandoned his family. Did he have a reason or was he just lazy or juvenile?