All Comments on 'The Life of Michael Preston Ch. 05'

Great story, great plot, & a completely unexpected twist at the end. Keep writing

left in sorta of a fuzzy mental picture with chapter 5. this has noting to do with your writing abilities. you've proven those. it has to do with the ending. i was hanging on the edge with chapters 1,2,3,4, and looking forward to chapter 5 with enthusiasm. chapter 5 just didn't seem to line up with the previous ones. i went back to check and see if i had misread or misunderstood. chapter 1 has kim going out alone dressed to kill. just throwing something on to go out with her husband. coming to bed in face cream, hair pinned back, and wearing a turn off t-shirt. kissing him on the cheek and immediately rolling over and pretending to go to sleep. chapter 5 has her telling him that she would try to play, but he would just push her back and "wham bamm". chapter 1 has her trying and seeming to only enjoy sex when he gets a promotion or a bonus check. she didn't seem to have any problems playing or getting him to play at those times. the confession in chapter 5 about the gun would scare the shit out of me. her only solution to her supposed problem was to blow the guys brains out. isn't that a confession of planned premeditated murder? recalling how she seemed to love money. how she didn't ever say no to vic's planned killing of mike. how she confessed to planning to kill vic. i'm affraid i'd be running like hell to get away from her. i'd be more concerned that the planned killing of vic was going to be after he killed me, then she'd be rib of both of us, with a good alibi, and with the insurance money. now is she just trying to get back into the house to finish the job and get the money. better than being broke and living with her parents. better in her mind that is.

I thought you started in one direction, went in a different direction in the middle - which was the strongest part of your plotting and your writing - and then changed direction again at the end. In other words, you took on too much plot and ended up not doing justice to it or the characters. To do a plot with this many changes, you either have to reduce to the descriptive minimum - that's what most people do, just recite what happens - or you have to write more. That would then be a real book and maybe that's what you should be writing. This was good practice. You write coherent sentences that flow together. Some of your settings are cliché, like they're cribbed from too many pulpish novels but others are realistic in feeling. There's a lot of good in your stuff.

What happened here?

I can only surmise you got bored, and decided to end the story as quickly as possible. The typos here would easily be caught by a spell checker, after all.

I was hoping at the end at least, he'd tell Kim she has to go, since his GF's coming over for a 48 hour sex-fest, oh and since he and Christie were getting serious, they wouldn't be doing this again. <g>

Without that, this chapter doesn't fit with any of the previous stuff at all and my litany of complaints would go on beyond the space and time I can spend on this.

Keep trying, though. The first four were quite lucid, and logical.

This part of the story doesn't really flow with the other chapters. I thought in the beginning it was said that he tried to get her interested but she did all she could to turn him off. Wearing face cream to bed, only really starting sex with him when he brought in a bonus check, going out dressed up but not for him, etc.

What happen to all of that? None of that was brought up with his talk with her. Why had she never talked with him before hand if she thought he might have been cheating? Though she knows he wasn't then that isn't really an excuse for her.

What about Christie and the plans they made for that weekend? Why did he accept the wife back so quickly after just a few hours of talk when they had months of problems behind them? I have nothing against them getting back together but it happen so quick and a lot important things didn't seem to be covered. Maybe they talked about these things off screen but did she even once tell him she loved him? I don't recall that to be honest. Did she also say she was sorry for cheating in the first place? Doing it in their bed?

I really enjoyed the first 4 chapters but chapter 5 seemed like you weren't interested anymore and just wanted to end it. Was this the case?

A very good story, all the chapters were good. but the ending was alittle week. WE don't knw how he felt, he didn't explain his affair started after hers and no hint about what the future is for them

It was a very good story. I liked it--but come on, this can't be the end. Well I guess it's your story, so it can be the end if you want it to be.

JimDinMN

...She withholds sex from him deliberately for an extended period of time, has a serious affair with a slime ball, at least initially goes along with the slime ball's plans to murder him for the insurance money, gets caught and then runs home to mommy without a hint of an apology, and then he believes her story - no apparent doubts in his mind? Even when he has a pleasant and interesting alternative? To quote Al Borland, "I don't think so, Tim."

The first 4 chapters were excellent, though.

You defiantly have a real talent for the written word. You have a flair for being able to describe common things in an uncommon way.

Pulling off a believable ending in a story of the genre is quite often tricky. There is so much detail and history in the preceding chapters that has to be taken into account and reconciled. Consistency in the plot line and in the characters must be maintained for any ending to work. Unfortunately this ending, as you’ve written it, feels a little abrupt.

Yep, enjoyed it! Very good work!

However.....I would have liked to read how Christie would have taken to having a three-way with Kim and Michael. No? Why not, something had to happen in that relationship & how did Kim know he got laid?

Pity Michael didn't read the journals six months prior, might have saved him a shitload at the PI's. When you elaborated on that subject I thought it would go somewhere. It's like she left a call for help "read this you stupid prick, and know what I'm thinking...".

There's too many balls still in the air, here. The story has been compelling right up to this, I agree with someone below who said there was too much plot, and it's like when you suddenly went for the door you fell over it.

Again, very enjoyable notwithstanding. Looking forward to more work.

Up until the finish the story was enjoyable, and somewhat plausible. It needed sonething more to achieve the conclusion that was reached. I felt something was missing.

but Michael deserves a bullet in the head. Kim ask him about his lover and their sex life and he admitted he did have a lover and the sex was very good. Very Stupid. Unless she had hard proff of another lover, it would be her word against his word. Now he admitted it and Kim will always remember. Now, what about Christie? Is she going to be out of his life after she gets her car, or is she and Kim setting him up. Michael should have never had a meeting with Kim and he should tell Christie to find another lover. He has been betrayed by one woman and he believed her SAD story. What will he do the second time, if he is alive.

You know it was difficult to score this chapter - all 5's until now. It isn't the talent lacking it was the closing that wasn't credible. The very value of the first 4 chapters was sorely lacking in the very end and flatly so.

When I went into sales it was soon apparent that I would never be super successful as I couldn't close as well as some others could. Writing is very much like that isn't it.

The opening and middle seem to drive themselves in a talented imaginative setting by a wordmiester. It is the ending that creates the credibility previously built so laboriously by the author that failing reality is like " wait a minute - what the hell happened - what did I miss that could have caused this to happen in contortion of what was built before".

Learning curve, inexperiance, writing on the fly and who knows what else can interupt the standard and the discipline that was exhibited prior to the abrupt 90 degree character change end? Short stories are tough and difficult to close in the begining of a writers experience it seems. Hopefully, the author is resilient and purposeful enough to continue as the talent is truly there and largely appreciated.

We look forward to more author - with high Regard

Hard to believe that someone who was willing to let him die just so she could avoid embarasement really loves him.

Even if you disregard the wife's lack of concern for his life (even if she didnt want in on the planning, she at the very least was willing to let her lover continue with his plans while she tried to find a way out that wasnt an inconvenience), there is still the new girlfriend that you just forgot about, the wife's behaviour leading up to her extended affair and then her reaction when it all fell apart.

As someone else mentioned, it really did seem like you got bored with writing and just wanted to end things as quickly as possible. Overall, it was a good story with lots of suspense and build-up, but the ending nearly ruined it for me. Im not even saying they shouldnt have gotten back together - just that this last chapter seemed rushed and didnt really seem like it fit with the rest of the story.

The ending in particular fit the story..........

Hitchcock would have made a movie of it!

Thanks for the twist. Dave

just another wimp and whore wife got caught cheating.two decent women giving theirselves to him and he take the whore back.wimpy crap.good story and plot ,but the ending sucks.

...but you should have stopped with Ch. 04. There was no reasonable connection between 04 and 05. Too bad. You had a really good thing going....

I really enjoy your writing. As a retired technical writer myself, I appreciate concise, factual, well written documents/books/articles/stories. A big however is the last chapter. It absolutely has no correlation to the first four chapters. No man with his intelligence would knowingly take a woman back as a loving wife after finding out what she has done. Please continue to grace these pages with your gifted word crafting ability, but make the next novella more realistic and "Real World".

Thanks...

Mike

was good,but taking the slut back...NO WAY would anyone normal do that.Of course she meant to murder Vic,but only revealed it after she caught,she was probably planning to sell her husband the Brooklyn bridge as well!!

I was wrong about you not finishing the story.

You held my interest right up until he asked Kim to stay. Not too many technical errors.

srgeek

All these years later I'm getting comments on this story. That's great! I've been considering an edit for about a decade now. Perhaps it's time. I still regret the ending after all this time. Thank you all for commenting.

no reason at all,

Great story terrible ending. Ok to give her one last fuck but should have tried to make a go with Christine. I knew a guy whose wife conspired with her sister to kill him for insurance. Couldn’t divorce him because she was his divorce Atty and taught all the tricks. One night she sent him to garage to get ice cream. Light not working. Just had sex with her. Kelts guns all over the house. Heard the gun slide turned grabbed one of his guns and fired in direction of noise. Emptied clip. When got the light on found sister in law dead. Couple blocks from house cops found her car with emails. She was going to do it for a boob job. Wife went to prison and visited her for years. Never would had visited her other then to hurt her someway.

But he did not have a lover until the very end of her affair with Vic. Kim is way off the mark in her perceptions, but is not brought to task for that. Really liked up to this chapter, but it ends weakly. Very weak.

I DIDN'T LIKE THE ENDING, SINCE I HATE "RAACS",,,BUT I STILL MARKED IT FIVE STORES.