Hi, Matt. Have any great feature articles for me? We're really wanting some
change at the mag ... everything's looking the same, and we finally have the
means to branch out a little. I wish you were in Norman.

Regarding your story. First, the picky things. It's not the language that
needs changing--that's her character, and the dialect's not so messy you
can't read it easily. What needs work is your punctuation. So, a good
tightening up/copy editing should do the trick and leave the reader flowing
through your prose at a much more comfortable pace. There is also one place
where you refer to My Charlie, minus the My. Watch that. Consistency! Oh
yes, and never use a semicolon incorrectly (p.3).

I like the idea, but how do you plan to flesh it out? Eight pages isn't a
short story ... at least none I've been taught and/or forced to write. I
like the idea of sin. Maybe you can play that up more, even bring it into
the beginning of the story, which I think needs more urgency. Why am I
reading this? If I were the editor of whatever magazine, those first couple
of paragraphs don't give me quite what I need to keep reading (of course, to
my eyes, punctuation probably has a lot to do with that). It is a rough
draft, of course, and the idea is good; you've got some good stuff in there.
But I think you should think more about your introduction.

So, yes ... that idea of her sin. And maybe bring the two Charlies together
in likeness even more. There's definitely more to be written. I realize now
that maybe I've missed something regarding the volcano. Did I miss something
important? If I did, why did I miss it? (Perhaps because I have ADD and tend
to miss things ... I'm always the only one in the room who is surprised to
find that Mr. X is indeed the killer.) If I didn't miss anything, maybe
there should be something more there ... something more urgent about that
particular flashback and how it fits into the rest of the story.

Now I might sound like a fool. But that's the risk I take.

This piece did make me emotional at one point, but I would argue it should
be a more emotional story for the reader. That's the art of it, eh?

Good work, Matt. Keep er goin' ...

ME

P.S. The password is: urgent (twice in one email ... i'm a bad girl)