Romance / Author's Notes- Chapter Two

It seems like your focusing too much on the document fraud aspect of the meeting between the two. I would have preferred to read about the mutual initial opinions of the two strangers and maybe throw in a little more physical analysis to increase the level of sensuality.

but it seemed like the nice thing to do at the time, to help her out
“but to help her out seemed the nice thing to do at the time”  it reads smoother this way.

Get ride of “And” at the beginning of a sentence.  It weakens your prose

The storm is a nice touch.  I don’t know about the cliff hanger with all the wires but it will be interesting to see what follows.

I am still not getting a sense of “romance”.  I am not a big fan of “form for function”, but I would like to see if the romantic suspense as you described it hooks me when you finally bring the two together.  As you’re writing it, I am not getting a sense of how the two characters will relate to each other.

Small gramatic errors.  Use spell/grammar check and then proof.  Only way to catch errors you miss.

“And, if he solved the case, he was a cinch to take over the Fine Arts Fraud Division when his boss retired in three months.” – I don’t like that this bit of information seemed to just be thrown in here. I think you could probably introduce this later on, maybe there would be a more appropriate moment rather than in the middle of the case facts.

A question: was Ash following Kate? Did he follow her so that their ‘unplanned’ meeting at the BBQ shack happened? I had assumed during this entire chapter that he had been tailing her but then at the end, you mentioned that this was a chance meeting. I think the story actually works better if Ash was following her than that this was blind luck.

I found no spelling mistakes, which shows that you were very careful with your work (I can really appreciate the care that you obviously put into this). As far as the actual structure of your writing, it seemed to skip around a little bit; one sentence you are writing in the third person, the next you are writing Ash’s thoughts. Maybe italicizing his thoughts would allow the reader to better distinguish between the two.

Overall, this is a great job, though. I read the first chapter and am glad that I stumbled upon the second; this really seems to be moving in a great direction. Keep up the good work, I look forward to chapter 3.

I liked this, and you’re right. Usually the romance follows some big event that ends up bringing the two characters together (hence the 6 in romance for now). I really like how you were able to put us, the reader, in Ash’s head. Reading this was like I could here his voice in my mind. Great chapter and I look forward to reading more…

It’s always difficult to rate novel excerpts and as you say the romance  is not really evident so far but the first hints are there.As theis excerpt is only short it is hard to get a feeling of the story but I would want to read more

You should likely not list Publishable as criteria quite this soon.  There isn’t enough to the story yet.

I’m glad you explained what you are doing since there still isn’t any romance.  There is some foreshadowing, but no romance.

What you have so far is descriptions of two people and a possible connection between them.  They are not uninteresting people either.

I’ll read some more before making any major comments. but I will say tighten your proofreading; there are several errors.   Putting interior quotes, even if thoughts, in quote marks, for one.                                

I think you have given this much thought. I can tell that by th neat way you have organized both Ash’s thoughts, and the events to come. I like the list you made for Ash. It details his thoughts without sounding forced, and it helps the reader to know what is unfolding. I also think you also did a good job listing the places Kate was spotted and have given the reader something to wonder about. If you keep going in this vein you will have a wonderful mystery on your hands. I do remember reading this before. It’s been a while but i can see the improvements. I might mention that you did the descriptions just right. The rain, the little white skips on the pond. But could you give the reader a little more insight as to where Ash is parked. I need to see chapter one again. I recall the wallet and how i had many questions about it. Here, there doesn’t seem to be anything amiss. I might add that i have read over it twice to make sure i didn’t miss anything. It has the feel of Mary Higgins Clark about it. Good job. Sandi

Great stream of consciousness from Ash. Wish I had read the first chapter. I haven’t picked up on any real troubling grammatical errors and the actual storyline is quite thoughtful. I might suggest that all his thoughts should be italicized just for the reader’s sake. Otherwise, quite a good start, though a fairly short chapter.

One quick thing to say about the facts. You should definitely capitalize what comes after the colon. It seems to me that the facts are written properly “Fact One”, but then the immediately lack of capitalization makes it seem sloppier. Maybe that’s the way that the protag. would write it, but if that’s the case then the rest of the facts should be written the same way. Treasury Agent wouldn’t be capitalized in this case.

It’s not a big deal, but things need a sense of uniformity I say.

When the protag. goes into accessing all of her information, I would go into just a slight bit more detail about the fact that he’s using his profession (e.g., using his detective’s ID number) or other avenues (e.g., hacking) to get all of this information, since that kind of thing isn’t available to the public. It answers the implicit question of “how”.

“He glanced at the convenience store, then at the rain, then at the beckoning lights of the store again, then shook his head.” instead of using all of those then’s, try something like:

“He glanced at the convenience store, eyes probing through the rain, then to the lights of the store again before shaking his head.”

Also, for the ending scene of this chapter, I would show rather than tell. Rather than simply state the transformer exploding and surrounding the car, show it in a scene. The hum of the transformer growing louder before the explosion, the sizzle of the power lines as they cut through the air, etc.

Solid writing otherwise, I don’t want you to think that I was just picking you apart with no rhyme and reason and found nothing redeemable.