A really excellent story Capt Matt. I am looking forward to reading more from you.
It is always great to see a new angle being used.
Your stories are very polished. I think the only way to have anything more perfection would be to have multiple proof-readers before the text is finalized.
For writers in general, I wish there was a way for the forum to let them to go back, re-edit, and fix their spelling mistakes, say for a week or two after the episode is posted.
I remember reading one story by one author where his characters often had "stake" dinners, but it was a mis-spelling and he meant "steak". And then there are the authors who write "cloths" when they mean "clothes". Of course these are mistakes spell-checkers don't pick-up. I never bother to point these errors out because the authors don't have a way to correct them anyway. They are little annoyances, and if the writer has good plots or good character development, and the story is generally enjoyable, I want to encourage him or her to write more.
In your case, Capt Matt, your standards are very high. Bringing in vampires in this role, the plot, the grammar, the spelling. Excellent.
The only thing you could add would be to give us a look inside the characters heads at what they are thinking. That the steroid enhanced vampire killer had killed the homeless couple would have made readers happy to see her killed. But a look inside her head at what she was thinking when she enjoyed killing these helpless people would have been even more powerful.
Of course going into that detail could turn your short story into a lengthy novel and make it too slow moving. So there are pros and cons, and maybe it is better to have left it out.
I really enjoyed your story. If you can see the "hit counts", I think the hit counts are the best indicator of how much your work is appreciated.
Thank you very much. I've always been a fan of fiction of any sort that at least keeps a toe in the reality pool, even if its only how the characters act and react. So I tend to write my characters as I feel a real person of similar experience and demeanor would. I rarely write someone that is impervious to emotions, unless they are the antagonist. Then, more than likely, they are some sort of sociopath, and thus you still have a realistic persona.
The "He thought...", "She thought..." would be nice to delve into, but like you said, it could turn these posts into novels. So I try to convey what they are thinking by their actions or reactions. That way, you get some insight into them, plus it moves the narrative along.
For example, the thing you mentioned, the Freak killing the homeless couple. The way I described how they found their original path to the car blocked by the murder and the alternate path impassible, leaving only the alley, I had hoped to convey (if I hadn't stupidly left the line out) that the Steroid Monster had killed the homeless innocents purely to box Craig and Lillyia into their trap. And there you also have the sociopath angle for the Freak laid out.
Like I said at the top, its all about the reality. You stray too far from it, you lose a reader connection with your characters, be they good or bad. And, at least in my opinion, you gotta connect with the character and hopefully like them, to make the story enjoyable.
