Twas The Night

Published in Black Ink Horror, Issue #5, Spring 2009, by Sideshow Press

Published by Black Ink Horror, Issue # 5, Spring 2009

Reviews

[Michael Bauer]

this is the kind of authentic and involved writing that makes stephan king look silly. you go right into the work, but not with the paranoia of, say, peter straub, and that allows the reader to always keep an eye on the story and not the author. ... another point about king-type writing... it's always, for me, "this guy's got to be smarter than this", cause he seems to be just writing for little buzz.

someone, on another site, just now challanged me that king "didn't work out all 700 pages before he...", and i think that's the point: that he's writing formula. your writing doesn't read like formula. one thing about starting a piece is that we seem to have an idea of the effect we want to express for the reader: how we want the reader to be involved in our writing. a strong idea of this purpose is, i think, what shows up as strong writing. good writers only write when they've got to say something.

this story is convincing as writing... and the difference between it and a hundred little stories with the same plot that you seem to have visualized what you're writing about: you seem to have the gift to match dynamic and actual vision with words, and then edit the experience down to an acceptable level for your readership. that's what takes this writing out of genre, and what makes "reading the author's working" as the real plot of any story.

[Steve]

This one was tons o' fun, Montilee. Thanks!
'I let my mother kill him and he tries to burn my house down." Only you could come up with this a line like this. Brilliant! Had me laughing my head off! No critique available. (I'm still making rather merry doncha know!)

[Shawna Johnson]

Interesting twist. I like them dark like this. I have one suggestion, before some man points it out.

She'll drop two or three shells onto the floor before loading two or three into the chambers.

I'm no expert by any means, but I don't think you can load more than two shells at a time. The nitpicker police will tweak if I'm right. You might want to check it out.

Thanks for a bloody little christmas !!