I've tried to review this on three separate occasions, and three times, I was rudely interrupted. As if that weren't enough, this is the first time in my paltry recorded Urbis history where I've felt like I cheated. I did not read this story so much as ingest it, inhale it even, from start to finish. And from start to finish, you've maintained a truly unique, manic, frenetic - if not frantic - narrative voice, as sharp and hardboiled as a chipped marble egg. You've used the exceedingly origin...

The things I never knew about, errr...Fronch dressing? "French" dressing? The only-in-America all-out insane mindset that if one thing (pizza)is good to eat, then mixing it with at least one or even two other things must absolutely and definitively make it at least twice as good, right? There must be a lot of Neapolitans out there who are either rolling on the floor in major fits of hysterics at those crazy Americanos, or else pounding at the keyboard in horrified outrage. ;-) But whatever I ...

I have a sneaking suspicion that writers who prefer writing in a language not-their-native have fewer qualms and inhibitions about subscribing to the Nitroglycerin Theory of Language (patent pending). This theory hypothesizes that for writers such as these (that means you, my friend), their preferred utensil of verbal expression can be used and stretched in ways that would never even occur to writers with no knowledge of any other language - or utensil - than their own. Some of them (again, t...

You've taken on an immensely difficult subject - the origins and lifelong effects of depression. You've chosen to do this with yourself - or your "self", the self you assume when you write, which is by no means the same thing. And you've made it into a harrowing and very painful read. Reading about it is like temporarily living inside someone else's headache, and not, I might add, in a good way. Which is one of the two worst things I have to say. You're the first to admit in your notes to the...

Had I known that there are, indeed, testosterone-driven men out there who are turned on by flabby feminine flesh, I would never have bothered with all those agonizing triceps Pilates. And had I known that somewhere, out there in the aether, there were phrases such as "dipped in the furnace of pulchritude" floating around in the twisting and convoluted spaces between someone else's synapses, I should immediately have become far more than chartreuse with envy. Dude, this puts the flash in flash...

The territory you're exploring here is so familiar, so well-known it's like visiting with an old friend. I measure a vampire story's success by two things - how well the overall story arc convinces me and compels me to suspend my disbelief, and by how much I'm intrigued by the characters. By both criteria, you've succeeded very well indeed, since I thoroughly enjoyed every word of it! My one minor gripe is that maybe your Tristan is just a touch one-dimensional, in the sense that he's ever-so...

As a general rule, I think that "mature" literature (I use that term advisedly), or erotica, which is the term I prefer, has to be one of the hardest literary genres to write, if not necessarily to read. ;-) Which is just about the very worst thing I have to say about this. Because this particular little short story, containing an uptight - in several senses of the word - protagonist and a surprising twist at the end, not to mention a rather unique premise from the beginning, has been a pleas...

I'm not quite sure either how to review this or even how to categorize it. It's listed under "Journal, diary and blogging", but in my opinion, it could just as easily be turned into a short story. For no other reason than all the requisite ingredients are there: late teen angst and insecurity, casual sex (in this context and setting, actually anything but - casual), and general existential malaise. Anyone should be able to relate to any or all parts of it, whether it's imagining your own shor...

At long last I finally got a chance to review this. And I'm thrilled to say that after such a long wait, I was most emphatically - not! - disappointed. Ancient Egypt! One of the world's most enduring love stories! One of the world's oldest bad guys, too! And the introduction of the horse - what, I ask you, is there not to love? You have done quite a bit of homework here in terms of both research and story development. Story development in the sense that given the ending is a foregone conclusi...

This reads very much like a comic book storyline, and that is most emphatically a compliment. In fact, reading it reminded me of a Dan O'Bannon story that was drawn up by Jean Giraud (aka, Moebius) one of the greatest graphic novel artists ever, IMHO. And just as in that story, it has an alien touch, a recognizable situation and an unexpected ending. But it took a Frenchman four pages and about 35 panels to make it that far, and you used - 100 words. Wow. You have managed to cram back story, ...