All Comments on 'The Sales Man'

BillandKate usually do a good job. But I never made it past page one. Literotica is a porn site. I read the stories posted here to get a laugh and be entertained. I'm sorry, but I just don't want to be reminded of the horrors that exist in people's lives on this site. Having wives and children dying is NOT my idea of being entertained. It's just plain depressing. Maybe you had the men get remarried and live happy lives at the end. But nothing completely fills the hole in your heart after you bury a wife or child. Nothing. Maybe the next time you get an idea like this, post a warning at the start of the story so no one has to drag themselves thru something like this if they don't want to. In my book, this was a failure to entertain.

gave it a 1 because Gail got the fucking she deserved. 5***************************

because Gail got the fucking she deserved by the courts, 5************************************

.... till there was you. Shirley Jones vintage 1962 is a pretty sexy visual for your Marian!

Harry’s saga for me brings to mind the lyrics from another song:

"Jimmy some of it's magic, some of it's tragic / But I had a good life all of the way."

- “He Went to Paris” by Jimmy Buffett.

Poignant HEA story with believable and sympathetic characters - except for Hailey and Lonnie - what a couple of d-bags they are!

Sweet tale. Thank you much.

Yeah, no one wants to read about real problems, like lazy assholes not replacing toilet paper rolls. You just can't stroke to that...

It was a good story, but the ending was a bit abrupt. Details of the date, or at least some kind of fleshing out of his romance with Marian would have been nice.

Gwen's death was tragic, especially losing the baby too. I was curious what Hailey said in her letter though...

I liked it and that's all it counts for Me!....5 Stars★★★★★ WOOF!

Well done and thanks for sharing your work.

You caught me flat footed with Marian as the librarian.. neat. great story. Please write more - top rating and kudos.

the beginning was going good but then i didnt like the rest of it. the guy sounds like an asshole, he moved on from his wife's and unborn child's death a lot faster than i would have. cant get i real feel for the time line but it was before 4 years which is a bit too soon for my liking. then his sale's tactics, yeah i guess i didnt like the story bc u made him out to be a shallow ass. at least thats how i read him to be. was well written though as all ur stories are, as my other comments, its probably bc theres 2 of u. will keep reading ur stories and hopefully i will like the next one, ty for the try

... loss, recovery, loss and redemption. This was a truly entertaining tale of a man's travel through a portion of his life - completely contained and not needing additional padding.

The story was just the right length for what you were trying to tell.

5/5

It all tied together well.

And I do love a happy ending.

Thanks for writing.

To the Anon whom gave up on the story because of the sad beginning, I hope you come back to this, you'll be glad you did!

@Huedogg2, who the hell is "Gail?"

Before I gave my answer, I would want her father to set up the scholarship regardless. It shouldn't be in exchange for leniency for his daughter.

If he was doing so well that he got a promotion and a "substantial" pay raise, why would he be one of the workers let go?

Heh, I figured Rose gave his bedroom performance a good review, and Marion wanted some!

"She just knows you two dated and Rose said she enjoyed your time together." - Heh, I was beginning to think of a mother-daughter threesome!

"He's building the house on spec? He doesn't know if you're going to accept his proposal?" - Presumably he's going to need a house anyway; if it's too much for just him, he can always sell it.

Hot tattooed wenches like Hailey are hot. Got to spank em regularly to keep em in line.

No, it’s not perfect, and no, he’s not perfect. But in reality, who is? It’s a really good story of tragedy, depression, gaining strength, falling down in sorrow for oneself, and ultimately, redemption. For some on this site, it’s only a good story if the ending describes physical revenge on an unfaithful spouse by the wronged party. Thanks again.

FOUR years is too soon for you? The traditional mourning period is one year.

As for his sales tactics, I think it made him more human, not some paragon of virtue, and at least he never made them think it was any more than a hook up.

I have to admit my favorite stories end with somebody butt fucking a cheating whore, but I like your writing style. Always an easy fun read. Maybe you could get the grease out and write one of my favorites. Please......

re: Thoughts

If he was doing so well that he got a promotion and a "substantial" pay raise, why would he be one of the workers let go?

------------------------------------------

Actually pretty common, the new owners only see how much paying him costs vs someone else.

So they get rid of the experienced people who know how to do the job and keep or hire people who don't for a lot less.

A few years later the company goes out of business, but by then the executives that caused it are working somewhere else.

Lots of corny americana, but I did read it.

5* from me.

I like your stories. They are always nice to read and somehow uplifting. I do believe good people sometimes do bad things, but their actions doesn't necessarily turn them into bad people. Thanks for the heart warming story, and please keep writing and publishing here.

But this one I couldn't get into .5 🌟 because my hubby said he liked it and all your stories are his cup of tea .Mine too so 5 it is thanks for the read!

...on a site that could use more of it.

Always enjoy your work. Thanks.

Always enjoy your work. Thanks and keep writing.

And not in a good way.

At least you have that self appointed moron interpreter sbrooks103x telling people what you meant. I can see why people delete his comments

I concur with the commenters concerning the authors writing skill.

The story does meander quite a bit and there were times that I lost interest. There are several plot twists that stretched the imagination e.g. software salesman to ace mechanic and the coincidental meeting in the Pits at the Indy 500.

The tearing of Hailey's envelope left me bewildered. Perhaps her reluctance to pull the trigger on the scheme to get half of his money was because she developed real loving feelings for him. He never confronted her so we will never know. Maybe the envelope contained the results of a pregnancy test and she was carrying his child. What was the point of the scene?

Overall a good read but not on my favorites list.

Thanks.

Another superb job of story telling and a perfect ending.

but its where you finish that counts.

A really sweet love story, except we don't really get to share the interactions and dialogue that feeds and leads to the love story. All of that was kind of "reported." Too bad, as those events and exchanges of their developing love affair would have made this a real classic.

What we got was a guy who was happy, then angry, then compassionate, then a drunk, then a stupid drunk, then a predator and a jerk, then remorseful and rehabilitated, then lucky beyond reality, then happy, finally.

Whenever you twist and morph a character through that many different incompatible personalities it just ends up being sort of a cartoon. Fiction is not real, but is has to be realistic to be compelling and engrossing.

Thanks for the effort, and for ending on the high road. It was good. Sure, it could have been better. But God, it could have been a LOT worse. I appreciate your time and effort.

Something worth reading came up.

Thank you, I needed a story like this!!!!

Concise, nicely paced, and interesting. Well done.

Rare. Well written and much appreciated, thank you.

This sounded familiar once he started his sales job. Its a shame he wasnt selling musical intruments. The Music man has been modernized.

I will have to agree with some of the other comments that this could have been more than one story the way it was written (multi faceted) But extremely happy with the reading experience. I have to strongly agree with FD45 comment about getting a high quality story in the current summer drought of stories. I have gone to trolling my favorite authors to see what I might have missed or re- reading my favorite authors past submissions. This includes BillandKatie to give credit were credit is deserved.

A sincere thank you for your writing talent and sharing your submission. Yes I did give 5 stars if there was any doubt from my comment.

‘Please do keep writing and I will keep reading’. [I wish I could remember or find who I borrowed or I paraphrased this statement from to give credit!]

A well-written tale by writer(s) who have all the technical skills they need. The dialogue is good and the main character is adequately developed. Unfortunately, character development was not done for MC's love interest. All we know about her could be found in the local newspaper. Sentence structure and grammar are fine. An emotional connection between the MC and his love is sketchy. We don't know much of anything about how the resolution to the story came about. To me, you can't just gloss over how the two decided they were in love. Four stars, and here's hoping you turn the next corner....

I'd say he knows the territory.

No trouble in River City.

.. to all of you who left comments; comments always help us understand what we should do to improve the next story.

As to why we didn't take more time to flesh out the romance and courtship between Harry and Marian - this is why: We felt there was a certain magic to their mutual attraction; that Harry and Marian belonged with each other; a love at first sight that is difficult to understand. We felt that anything we wrote about that attraction would only take away from the magic (similar to a magician explaining how an illusion works) and would be redundant. So, we just decided to let the reader use their imagination.

Very well done. Thank you

I've pointed out before in a comment on another story something similar to LongHorn_07 comments. I brought up the examples of Hemingway and Twain (both of whose complete works I read over a couple of different summers a very long time ago) you don't really flesh out the characters and there really aren't that much emotions in your stories. However, in your stories, like theirs it's more about the story itself and the things that happen as opposed to the inner thoughts of the characters. It's been a long time since I've read those two authors, so perhaps I'm remembering their stories incorrectly.

However, one thing interesting as far as the LW world. When the MC does horrible things he gets so much slack, but if something is done to the MC, god forbid cheating, those people need to be crucified with no redemption. Most small towns have small budgets and are barely able to keep a small public library going. So a $200,000 mistake (and I think these computers lasting 3-5 years is extremely generous) really hurts and hurts a lot of people. How many women lost their jobs for those mistakes, like his 3rd wife could have?

Plus on top of that it was even less excusable because he wasn't desperate for money and he wasn't doing it to "feed his kids". But he gets slack because he had pain from two marriages, that he was sharing with the rest of the world. And I believe most people, except for psychopaths, should have the opportunity for redemption. What I don't understand why others (especially women) in LW stories don't get that opportunity as well by SOME of the readers when they do something despicable like the MC did?

Just what you expect from BillandKate, a well presented story with good characters. We.have tragedy, evil, good, and a man who fights through to find happiness. A very nice story and very welcome here.

We agree with your observation regarding reluctance to forgive any transgression by women on this site. We've written btb stories and reconciliation stories and notice the different reactions. Some of the women have fallen do to extenuating circumstances, yet many of the comments are adamant that there can never be any reason to reconcile afterwards. We think doing stupid (not necessarily evil) things is part of being human and forgiveness (under the right circumstances) is a virtue.

Good plot with all the required elements.

Good stories within a story,

something that BillandKate exel in.

Most enjoyable reading.

Regarding johnadp's comment

and BillandKate's reply, I have something to add.

A salesperson is sopposed to sell.

A customer knows that and if experienced,

is vary of salepitches.

A wife is sopposed to be faithful.

Anything else is a betrayal.

A salepitch is professional,

cheating is personal.

It's about the size of the crime.

Got it?

Anyway, one more delight

from our wonderful BillandKate.

Top ratings from me.

I found it hard to believe a good financial adviser needed to become a junk salesman

A very good story on this site. It seems we only get one every now and then. Thank you for one of them.

1. "A salesperson is sopposed to sell"

So drug pushers, pimps, those selling defective products, tainted food, unsafe baby cribs, etc, do not owe the counter party any good fate behavior? They simply smile and say they're a salesperson and they're "sopposed" to sell? After all the customers need to be "vary".

2. " A salepitch is professional"

So his fucking these lonely librarians to get the sales didn't make it personal? It was all part of the "salepitch"?

3. "It's about the size of the crime"

Funny you should mention crime. One could certainly argue that what he did was fraud and thus a crime. Cheating, on the other hand, is not a crime. At least not in the US where this story is based. Second, as far as the size of the "crime." The wife that cheated on him hurt one person. Say we give a value to his hurt of 100 points. On the other hand, for 5 years he sold computers to libraries. Say he sold to one library a month, so that's 60 libraries over 5 years. So 60 librarians who are going to feel victimized that they were taken advantage of. Say about 5 of them lost their jobs because of this. Let's say the hurt from this is much less than his hurt of being cheated on so let's assign a hurt of 5 points by every librarian on average, and 20 points by the ones fired. So now we're at 375 hurt points.

We're already almost quadruple his hurt, but let's keep going. How about we count the hurt of the people frustrated at how slow the computers were working, that their project was lost, or that as the computers went down one by one the wait time got longer. Then when the system completely goes down and since the towns didn't expect this to happen and didn't have the budget weren't able to immediately replace it so for months low income kids that were reliant on these free computers at the library didn't have them. Poor unemployed men and women who used them to look up jobs didn't have access as well. Shall we give a number to all that hurt? So which one had a higher hurt? His wife cheating on him or what he did across the country?

I would ask, rudely like you, with as poor spelling and grammar if "you got it?" But since I have a feeling you don't get much in life, I won't bother!

I only gave it a 4. The reason is, I didn't feel any emotional involvement in it. It seemed dry, factual, no one is really here. The concept is good, even believable, but robotic, if that's a word.

No real sex but it kept my interest all the way through... that's rates four stars. Every now and then it's refreshing to read a well written romantic story.

Reasonable,apart from the fact that Marian had to do the chasing.

Every time I get sucked in to your stories.

Great work - thank you

The salesman in “The Music Man” is Harold Hill. Collina in Italian means hill so Harold Collina is Harold Hill.

Glad some paisan finally caught it. Congrats!

sometimes the circle broadens and lets in pure light, TK U MLJ LV NV

That was the only real mar on an otherwise very good story. I liked the looks at the different phases of his life and how they affected him. It was a good manner of spinning his tale. I just found it a shame that, after their very nice introduction, his romance with Marian was pushed out at breakneck speeds. All told we got to hear more about how he worked on cars and fixed a ferrari than we got to hear about the second love of his life. Kind of skewed priorities there. Anyway, it was a good story that made me change opinions on the MC several times. Nicely done, overall. Just hope you put more into your endings in other stories.

... hoping to help you attain perfection--this needs fixing:

"Whomever designed Katherine's sessions did a fairly good job of it."

What's with the rushed ending, you too have done fantastic stories that are wonderful. This story (5 stars) seemed to have a very rushed ending, please rewrite and finish it a bit.

Really enjoyed that but the ending felt really rushed which is a shame.

Doesn't really ring true that he felt something for Marian initially, at least it then doesn't make sense why he didn't try to date her or anything. What we are shown as readers, through his behaviour afterwards doesn't mesh with what we are told.

It's not like he had anything to tie him down, and he could afford testing the waters with a long range relationship.

Instead a few years are wasted.

Out of his deceased wife's insurance payout. The sad part is there are absolutely people out there that would do it in a second.

Great story

"Hailey tried a few times to talk to me; even tried the old ploy of refusing to sign the divorce papers until I sat down with her. I told her to go fuck herself and I'd wait the full year for the divorce even if she didn't sign." Damned straight and the third straight up Judge that I've read here, they do or at least used to exist. Don't know the laws where this would have taken place but where I'm from she couldn't have touched his money from the insurance payouts after the accident, unless he wanted to give it to her. He would have been willing to give it to her all right, just not the money.

"...(old Ferraris, Lotus, Lamborghinis) mostly for all the newly minted millionaires working for high tech companies in Silicon Valley..." I've never understood the reasoning of the people with too much money and not enough sense, who live in cities owning automobiles like these unless they are collectors. These fine machines need to be Driven, not idled around city streets. Places like Montana in the pre-55-be-damned days when they had no speed limits other than what was "safe and prudent" out on the freeways. If they really knew class they'd cruise to someplace like Auburn, Indiana and check out real star quality automobiles like the Cord, Duesenberg and Pierce Arrow. Or if they were in Texas check out the classics at the Admiral Nimitz Museum in Fredericksburg, Texas.

"I was working in the pits two days before the big race at the Brickyard..." Made the trip to Indy one time, sat if front of the Tower, right behind Linda Vaughn and the rest of the Hurst Golden Shifter Girls. Everything is so much faster sitting there watching those cars rocket by down the straightaway than on tv. There was no way back then to take photographs of the cars on the track with the consumer cameras available that didn't give give you a long smeared blur. Since he was king of Indie car racing, an A.J. Foyt (sponsored by Gilmore of Kalamzoo) joke: A guy dies, goes to heaven and is given a tour by St. Peter himself. They go to a track where he sees a red Indie racer with the #14 on it and the driver is wearing a gold helmet. He turns to St. Peter and says "I didn't know Foyt died." St. Peter responded "That's not Foyt, that's God, he just thinks he's Foyt." I tend to doubt anyone ever told that joke to the man himself.

I'm not sure that I agree with the comments made that the ending was rushed. For me Marian's letter summed the future up pretty well, all I needed to see was that he followed up on it. Signed: BTW

Another nice story from these authors with a happy ending. The despair one feels after a few setbacks is that “all the good ones are taken”. I like the boldness of Marian in her letter. Waiting for Prince Charming usually isn’t the best strategy, so go for it.

I sometimes read a story and say that is not believable based on my own thinking and feelings. But the thing is these are not my feelings or thoughts so who am I to judge as to how likely is it that someone else will react the way I would. Harry Collina responded to the events in his life because he is Harry. Some commenters think he should respond the way they would but wouldn't the world be boring if we all thought and acted like everyone else we know. That is why I like the stories by BillandKate. They not only think differently from the way I do, there principles seam to think differently from story to story. Maybe I'm not saying it right but there stories seam real and the people in them seam real. Thanks for entertaining me.

What a great story first the sad loss of his wife then the Evil Bitch Haley trying to fleece Harry of his dead wife's insurance proceeds to his travels and experiences and then meeting Marian the woman he fell in love with and then lived happily ever after. Well written and well done. 5 stars

Wonderful.

a very big story.. A very beautiful imagination. A very beautiful imagination.

I really like the character of Marian. Une femme belle, forte et ayant le courage d'exposer ses sentiments.👏

Thanks for the story.5⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Good story. Would have better with a more complete ending.

For a sequel we could have a new bank officer move to town, get on the library board, and set his sights on Marian.

I'll leave the details up to you.

Just a beautiful story again, the second time through.

Loved the story but the ending was a bit rushed. It would have been enjoyable to read how their relationship developed.

The last chapter could have been expanded to complete the story. Other than that once again an excellent effort

Something about that coffee mug really rips me up…

This touched me. Very nicely done, and enjoyable. I wonder what became of the texting driver…

By the time I got to the end of the story and saw the asterisk with the explanation of the quote at the beginning of the story, I’d forgotten what the quote was. I guess I really am getting old. It was a very nice story though. Had a feel-good ending. Thanks, B and K.

If Marian was that attractive,why was she single?.

Good story until it came to the software drama, unnecessary with Marian.

Great story! Would have loved a more elaborate ending… more story. But… c’est la vie. Thank-you still a very enjoyable read!

Ending was rushed. ⭐⭐⭐⭐

When you have a wonderful story to tell

You did that very well

@nitpic - because many, if not most, men who are good partners for a strong woman with a child, are either already taken, or are not interested in "ready made" family (aka raising someone else's kids), despite what literotica romances tell you. Living in a small town narrows down the pool of available men a lot, so coupled with that first factor, it's not at all surprising she's not married.

An attractive woman who's single is only limited by her own standards/pickiness. But she's not single - she has a child.

Anyway, great story. I feel it could use a sequel, given a bit of an abbreviated ending, but that's a compliment, not criticism.

Good story. Hits you from the start. Good to see he got out of his asshole phase.

I am on page two. On page one you referred to coup d'etat. That is a violent overthrow of a government. You may have meant coup de grace. Back to the story.

If,Marian was that beautiful,why was she single?.If Audrey loved Daniel, how could she spend fifteen months away from him?.Just for once in these stories it would be nice if our hero lived in the real world and married plain women.

wow, all over the place with this one.

A sweet story, although I didn't like the MC much to start. And yes, the ending was rushed but that doesn't take away from a five stars story.

JPB NOT BOB

Good tale but the ending was a bit rushed!