Hi Deb,

It is so cool to meet you, I am Joey C. a member of the "Invalid Item"  reviewing guild, and I found your smart little short "Cat and Mouse"  while thumbing through your portfolio. I am offering my review of this work as part of your Shower, I can only hope that you find some joy in it’s reading.

I must first give you this disclaimer, even though I have had some personal successes in my writing career; they in no way make me any kind of expert. I believe that there is no such thing. Moreover, I would advise you to disregard the counsel of anyone who claims to be one. You must include my own feeble ideas in this same lot, do not hesitate to discard any of my opinions as so much flotsam. Hee-hee-hee . . . I am an engineer by profession, so I am quite used to being told that when my brown eye are blue, it is only because, I am a quart low.

Creative writing is a subjective art. It is no different then the craft of painting. Rembrandt, Monet, and Grandma Mosses used earthen pigments suspended in oils; they arranged these colored pastes on a mead cloth drawn tight over a wooden frame. Each of the painters, much like their contemporaries, called upon an image in their minds, that image they viewed was as often imagined as it was real. Then, they smeared, stroked, scraped, blotted and brushed their oils, and pastes, and let them dry. All in the hopes that they could capture and then share a moment in time and space with someone who missed the original view.

Ernest Hemmingway, William Shakespeare, Mark Twain, George Orwell, and Mary Shelley used ink and quill on the media of matted fibers that we call paper. However, I suggest that their intellectual process was no different from any old world Master of canvas and paint. We as authors paint pictures the same as any other artist. We just use repetitive squiggly lines on paper. Amazingly, I believe that our work even though it is most often black on white scribbling. It can show a much more vivid a picture; the colors can be much brighter, even iridescent.

You see Rembrandt could not make you hear the heavy rain pound angrily on the hot tin roof of Ernest's Keywest bungalow. As wonderfully, folksy, and homespun, the works of Grandma Mosses (Ann Mary Robertson) are. She could not let you smell the musky odor of sweat from the dank clothing of big Jim as you sit next to him and Huck. No, it was Sam Clements (aka). Mark Twain that actually put you on that undulating log raft as you rode down the big muddy. No painting ever made the hair on the back of your neck stand on end, as you silently scream at Jim, to pole faster. All the while, praying that you can get out of the way of The West Memphis. Do you think any of the works of Salvador Dali would allow you to taste the pungent, black smoke from her twin stacks, as it bellows out, choking the early morning sun as its sooty fingers mixed into the fog turning it into a thick gray soup. Have you ever seen a Norman Rockwell that could make you feel the same emotion as when you watched the angry paddling arms of the 200-foot long steam wheeler digging at the water beneath you?

Ok, so, maybe if I have your minds eye peaked, you can understand where I am going to try and take you with your little story of emotion, maybe even a small glimmer into a way to pulling your reader deeper into the terror of the mouse.

First, you are a wife, mother of four, and a nurse. All of which require a courage that by far exceeds the spirit and grit of even the most stalwart of dragon slayers. Therefore, I will not accept this short as a cry for help. No, I see through your clever disguise, it is an exercise to explore the psyche of the mouse. Your story is interesting and a clever portrayal.

So, the question is where do you want to take it. Is it to stay a brief snapshot of a bad day at work? A day recalled with symbolism of shattered remains, and a casual metaphor. Alternatively, do you want to use it as a catapult to insane terror, a chance to drag your readers into complicit despair, where they are so empathic that they stop reading and start calling the wage and hour hot line to report the catty cad who dared disparage your feelings?

If, the latter is something that might sound fun to play with, then I have but one suggestion. Rewrite and pour on the show, move in more action, pull every sense you have into these moments. Stop and replay each step in your mind, see the game in the tub from Boo and Sully’s point of view. I don’t mean you should write it from their POV no I suggest you just see it from a foot off the floor. You may be very surprised at how it might change the way you describe the event. Let me see the mouse, his frightened face, his bent whiskers, is his fur damp from Boo’s sloppy kisses, was there a trace of blood on his hind foot. Do all these details find there way into the story, maybe not. But, if you review the scene in your mind, perhaps there is some detail that will just stand out that can bring out the personality of the mouse, if we the readers are to empathize with the comparison between the two of you, then we need something to identify with.

What I am trying so poorly to suggest is that you need to show us as many senses as you can shine a light on. In addition, do not forget to include Intuition that’s our sixth sense and it is one that can be a very powerful tool.

Now before we go any further I want to say that writing or rewriting someone else’s idea is like calling the next play at the water cooler on Monday morning. It is completely without value. Anyone can look the superstar if he already knows what the other team is going to think and do. But, just for the hell of it, what do you think the intensity level would be if you had written the second to the last paragraph like this example.

“For five grueling hours, a seeming lifetime, I ducked and dodged, to avoid his ire. Every time his slinking, slick, stride, patted into my periphery, new ankhs of pain radiated through my torso. With each near brush in the corridor, a jolt of adrenalin surged through my constricted veins. It reinforced the desire no, my need, to run screaming into the night. The urge, burned, a constant throbbing through my trembling legs. When I could not get beyond his unrelenting prowl, I tensed in anticipation, awaiting the swipe of his unsheathed claws, the bite of his needle sharp teeth. Bile boiled in my knotted stomach, my breath held abated, paralyzed in anticipation, the weight of his station pressed heavily across my chest, like a giant unseen foot. His toothy smirks evidenced his sinister designs, he was but toying with me, and the more my terror, the better his glee.”

Ok I am not offering that my version is better or worse, just different. I tried to picture myself not as a nurse dodging a pumped up full of himself sexist. But, rather I was trying to be the mouse in boo’s tormented game. I am not sure I have been able to show you the best example of my thoughts, but none of the good stuff comes out in the first draft. You have to rewrite and then rewrite again. George Orwell said that, “If you do not rewrite your manuscript at least fifty times, you should rightly consider it rubbish and throw it in the dustbin.”

Wow, can you tell that there is a bit of the Irish in me blood; blarney and an unending breeze seem to flow from my direction, when all you really wanted was to know if you missed spelling a word, or if a quotation mark was dropped. However, to tell you that I would need to send it to my copy-editor, because my English classes were all scheduled the same hour as my nap-time and I was not as good at multitasking as I thought.

There you have it the two-cent opinion (and maybe that’s a stretch) please don’t go running off with shriek squeaking screams, like Boo’s little friend Mortimer. The pain can be relieved with one push of the delete key.

If anything I have offered is seemingly helpful you should thank the wonderful mentors of our forum, but if you are seeing more pink then blue then blame, it all on me because they don’t get to see my ramblings until after I post them. Maybe we should have a broadcast delay like they do in television. Oh wow I need to send that idea off to Storymaster.

Please understand there is nothing wrong with your story just as it is. You don’t need to change a word if it is how you want it. Most of the stuff I write is better fit for George’s dustbin. But once in awhile I will read back something, and say to myself, "Wow that was good, oh my god that was good and I wrote it, holy crap I am not afraid to let someone read this." Even if you never post a word of that paragraph, it doesn’t matter. Because, when you find yours on that just right night, that’s when you know you are a writer, you know it, and it doesn’t mean a tinkers damn, what anyone else may think.


Oh goodness the most amazing Carol St.Ann was walking home in the dark the other night and she bumped her head on a low hanging limb, then in her daze she read something silly of mine and decided to make me one of her Rising Stars. I am sure she will come to her senses once the swelling goes down. But, until then I will proudly fly the banner she made for me. I hope you will not think me too vain.