[stylist] Chapter 0

[BDM]

What I like about this bit you've written:

* You didn't start out with the sun shining , birds tweeting, and a picture 
setting. Instead you jumped right in to grab the reader's attention.

* Very quickly we find his name, he has a young family, is a writer, and 
has some sort of secretive bultish past he'd rather forget and was at odds 
at with once before.

* I like  how you interjected Christians own doubt and insecurity of 
getting away from the group with   no strings attached  and what it means 
to him now with  his attention wandering to the picture  of his family and 
then right back to the phone conversation.

* You wrote it so I was hooked from the start and  held my interest.

* To me things have to be believable for me to get into it and stay there, 
this to me is. I liked the fact that although Christian was scared of his 
past, he also isn't afraid to bite back a bit in fear for his family. Says 
something of his character which is what we as readers want to either 
connect with or despise :).

Couple minor possible things :

* The voice over the answer machine was written before we knew it was the 
answering machine... I thoght you had picked it up which was countering the 
forethought of the telemarketer bit. I tend to look at such as a song when 
I write them. With a song  being pushed by the flow of music/tempo, there 
is no time to go back and look at details to gain clarity. Though reading 
text does afford the ability to go back and look, I think its still best to 
keep a song's standard of flow and clarification. I just lost it there a bit.

* Perhaps a little more clarity of Christian's contribution of the 
telephone call dialog. As in when he said "You're unbelievable". When 
reading along I wasn't sure which person said it as it could apply to both. 
Granted visually there were seperate quotes  in the conversation, but I had 
to look for them. Again I just tripped up a little there.

That's it for me really. Knit picking probably, and I'm not the grammarian 
so someone else would have to comment on that  type of thing but it isn't 
so much to that point yet I'd guess? I think its a good  bit for the time 
spent Joe. Nice job.

Brad