All Comments on 'All Hallows' Eve'

they both hate Kate, (they both ran off to hell, at that time in history witchcraft equals hell when you die) left Kate with a bastard child making her a harlot and outcast. romance? nope pure selfishness.

jump forward to. child attaining powers hunts down asshole parents separates them forever. makes Kate young and desirable gets her happily married and moves on with life.

I had trouble seeing any romantic moments in this story. Just saying John and Jill lived for each other does not make it so. Show us. The thoughts in either of their minds when Jill is alive are exclusively about sex and making a baby and so are the ones when Jill comes back from the dead. The words also do not match the category - for e.g. "Meanwhile they would fuck themselves silly for the practice" - no. That makes me think you're confusing lust with love. At least, you're not showing any love between the two.

The plague death was a ridiculous. It happened in two sentences and then Kate was living with John. Bam. Just like that. There was no pining from John, no farewell, no dealing with death, nothing. Again, a great place to have shown the love the husband and wife had for each other but....

Finally, as the earlier commenter said, Kate really got a bad deal out of this whole thing. For no fault of hers, she was used by John and Jill, plus was given an illegitimate (for her) child and no support to raise it.

How was this a romance? What was romantic about it?

That has to do with your writing skill. Your technical ability.

Historic romance is one of the hardest stories to write. Not only are you going to have to tell a love story but your also going to have to sell a period in time. I hate to say it but you didn't do that.

When is the story set? Where? What country?

Those three things influence a HUGE amount of the quality of the story your telling, when your writing this type of story.

Other than, before Antibiotics, I have no clue as to when you have your character are living. How about what country they are in? Their names would say the very early United States. I guessing about that. I shouldn't be. I should have know that before the first half of the story was over.

The names would change if they were in Europe. Are they?

His wife was checking a calender to see when she was going to be most fertile? No try a Midwife from the local village. Most families really didn't have printed calenders in that day and age. Printed anything really before 1700. Only the wealthy had things like that. Again the time makes a difference. After about 1800 things like that would have been making there way into the hands of the less well to do.

In some period of time it would have been seen as the duty of the younger unmarried sister to take her sisters place in a marriage in the case of death. The Husband would have been expecting it in fact. Death was common. Life was hard and the dark shadow was a every day presence.

Others went after you about the Romance part so I will not. It was not as bad as they were saying but it needed work.

I'm sorry if any of my words stung.I do my best to be honest when I give someone a critique. It's what I would love to get but almost never do.

Now. Go write another one.

M.S.Tarot

The story lacked depth. If they had wanted a baby so bad they would have taken care of it. Also Kate is played out as that person who can never win. All she wants is love to be left marked as a woman of sin or unwed mother as we'd say. I didn't really feel like it was back in the days of the black plague. It would have been far easier to make it a modern illness. Last John and Jill didn't seem In love with each other when they were together they just wanted sex/ a baby. It's not a real romance in that way.

Thanks everyone for your comments. You make some good points, and I clearly need to improve on the way I write romance.

The stuff about the plague was a bit vague. I wanted to have Jill die, plus her parents, to force Kate to move in, and move the plot forward. If it was set in modern times it would have been a bit unbelievable, and if it had been set in the 13th century I probably would have got a whole lot more detail wrong.

Crap tale.

Yes what others are saying are true. It is hard to write a history tale of any sort without some info.

I like the idea behind the story though. It was just rushed. If you had more time to take this idea and split it up into chapters and make a whole story line out of it I am sure it could turn out wonderufl maybe putting it in a different setting or with some more research of the time. It even sounds like this story could continue since the child will have special abilities or what not.

Again needs some work but I actually apprciate the thought behind it :D

So, as you said in your comment (this is to the author), you feel you need to improve your romance writing. I will not debate this, but your writing skills are better than many. I think this story could be incredible if you expanded upon a few things:

1) create the setting.

2) character building...let us love or hate the characters, don't just tell us to love them.

3) tender moments...being the romance section, you really want to describe those as vividly as you can and as readers, we are really looking for it as well.

As I said, this really has potential, with a few versions it could be Romance OR Erotic Horror!