Date: 03 Jun 2013 22:47 Title: Chapter 2
Boy, Jessie loves Jake a whole lot, doesn't she? But she'd just about rather be anywhere else than Pitt. You described this beautifully, showing the underlying currents of emotions, past and present, as well as the dreams of a future yet unrealized. The way your portrayed the running around the yard, the sibling interactions, and the easy manner that all of them get along was quite beautiful.
Well done. I look forward to more.
Author's Response: Jessie struck me as being deeply ambivalent about leaving the Burgh. She is, as she said, coke and smoke and steel. But it's such a hard time, this era; it's the end of steel in the region, it's thousands and thousands of jobs, and you can still see the scars here today. Maine seems to be the future. Thanks so much!
Date: 03 Jun 2013 22:29 Title: Chapter 2
Wow. Just wow. Evocative, beautiful, emotionally resonant.
" ... and then she fell in love with gentle, freckled Jake when they were in high school, and rode around with him in his father’s old Packard, to dances or socials or union picnics, or to making out somewhere tucked away in a drive-in, the movie crackling on unnoticed. Fell in love with him and dabbed off his split lip when his Daddy would belt him, and looked into his desperate hazel eyes while he tried to figure out how to love the man and hate him, all at once."
If I ever figure out how to write like this, I figure I'll have it made.
Also:
She’d declared she would be a cowgirl pretty much from the minute she was able to talk, and never wavered. She sat on Joe’s knee and he told her stories of the west, stories he could have only gotten out of some book somewhere; told the same stories, of cattle rustlers and hero cowboys -- or cowgirls, he always made sure there were brave, bonnie cowgirls for her -- and open ranges and wild horses and camping under the stars. And she always listened in rapt fascination, looking up at him with his own eyes, and Jessie sometimes thought that if Joe ever regretted not claiming the girls as his own, it would be in those moments.
This broke my heart more than a little.
I have no idea where you'll take this story, but I'm sold. Lovely stuff, so gorgeous it hurts.
Author's Response: I blame my narrators; they always tend to be better at words than I am. ;) I'm just happy to manage some poetry for once, you know? Some elegance to the word. I feel like I've pared mine down a little too far, of late, and this is definitely helping me remember how to put some lyrics into the prose. Thank you, seriously. <3
Date: 03 Jun 2013 13:23 Title: Chapter 1
I don't know if it was Trek-but it was good.
Author's Response: Thanks, Mistral. <3
Date: 01 Jun 2013 06:27 Title: Chapter 1
Sometimes I think soulmates really do come in multiples. It's beautiful; it's wistful and sad and it's hopeful and it wind its way back again. I love it. But I think you knew that already
Date: 01 Jun 2013 05:44 Title: Chapter 1
Oh, what a start here. In a beautifully written intro (you are too damned good) you paint for us the portrait of Pittsburg in the 80s and Joe, the guy with dreams of a life out West with a cowboy hat and a classic truck, but with a Scottish accent so thick they’d never call him a cowboy by voice. He’s sitting here, thinking on all that’s happened and will happen … he’s thinking on the way things are going in town and the future.
Jake, his good buddy, has a plan and like best buds, he wants his bud to follow along with him and his wife. But things are more complicated than they initial appear: this isn’t about different paths so much as it is lives intertwined, but unable to be intertwined for the future. The bit about Joe fathering Jake and Jessie’s kids? Brilliant. I love that and I agree with Joe here, that there’s no way he can show his face in Maine with Jake and his wife’s folks because the kids are practically his. Genetically, they’re his, and obviously he cares for them because he cares for Jessie and Jake, but they’re not HIS kids to raise. Joe is a cowboy and he’s heading off to be that.
And that’s the way the future has to be for everyone as it stands now. It’s easier that way and Joe has that dream … he’s not gonna settle down. He’s gonna round up the herd and live on the range.
Author's Response: Joe definitely has his eyes on the west, aye. Some wistful, drifter's dreams, unlike the more homebody Jake and Jessie. I don't know entirely how this story will go, though I know some of it. Thanks so much.
Date: 01 Jun 2013 05:43 Title: Chapter 1
Wow, interesting start, here. Two friends, closer than brothers. The arrangement that led to the children. They seem very entangled in each other's lives, and in a way that could get people badly hurt. But for now, they seem to be loving it all.
I wonder what kind of sway Jake has over Joe that he would sire children with Jake's girl and not stake any claim to them, but yet consider abandoning his own dreams to follow them to Maine.
This story starts off kind of heartwarming but has the potential for some serious heartache lurking just below the placid surface.
I'm interested to see where you take this one.
Author's Response: It definitely is a product of the end of an era. And a certain fascination with two families, who seem a wee bit fated to cross paths, ever so many generations. Thanks so much!