Deleted

Deleted; off to enter it in a competition.

Hello! Thanks for posting this story. It has lots of potential as a very honest and personal piece.... it is one already, really, but one huge thing is standing in the way. Well, it's not that huge actually, depending on how you look at it. It's Pete's dialect! AAhhh! I have never encountered anything more distracting. Have you ever had a conversation with an actual Scotsman? I have spoken to people from Glasgow before (which I'll admit is a little different than some other parts of Scotland) and it is --nothing-- like this. Sorry, it had to be said. I can barely take the story seriously with Jamie's 'brogue' interuppting... It conjures the image of an old lumberjack for some reason.

My advice is to leave the brogue out! It does nothing for the story to know that Pete is Scottish, and writing in dialect is a very romance-novel thing to do... sorry, it just makes it impossible to concentrate. Well, that's my opinion at least.

As for the important thing, the story itself. It is very much "gold star material" for me. (I'm new here so that little star thing struck me funny. Very ' Well pin a brownie button on you!', you know?) Your characters are very honest with themselves, and we get a nice picture into the dynamics of this different sort of family.... I'm struggling a bit here to say just what it did for me.... But I liked it. It was very "real," how's that? As for troubles, it's a bit difficult at times to be able to see who's head we're in, Jamie's or Pete's. Maybe italics? But then again so much of it is in thoughts, it might get a little intense if it were all italisized.... Paragraph spacing might help out more.

I think that this could have been shorter. You seem to go over everything twice. Maybe I'm just not a careful enough reader.... Some stories become very powerful when they're trimmed up, it could potentially do a lot for this.

I think that about covers it for my part. I really, really liked this, though, and I think you've got a very strong "heart" for this story, only a few details remain to be sorted out. Good luck with the contest, I think you should definetly enter this!

I definitely think this story was amazing. It touched me on a personal level, since my grandfathers are actually gay, and it was really sweet. It really showed the innocence of childhood versus why your jealous of someone you love, for inexplicable reasons.

Now, if you meant for that to be the theme, I can't be sure. Every reader gets something out of a piece of work that can be completely different than the author's intent.

The speech is somewhat Scottish, but sounds like broad Yorkshire to me. I could be wrong though.

I definitely think you should enter this in a contest =)

I agree with the person above, lose the scottish accent.

I think this could have been good, maybe even deep, but it was too drawn out without any important description to grab me. Neither Pete nor Jamie are described and neither seemed like particularly intriguing characters. Plus, is Jamie supposed to be a man? It didn't seem clear at all that this was a homosexual couple.

What I would suggest is more character development, more interesting dialogue, and definitely more description. What does everything look like? How does the light touch everything the room? What do Jamie and Pete look like? How do they look at eachother? If you can ask yourselves those questions and implement them into the story I think it would be greatly improved.

On a side note, I would suggest steering away from writing gay fiction. I am not prejudiced against gays and do not think their should be any violence or discrimination against them. But, regardless of that, same-sex relationships always seem wrong. I have trouble seeing an beauty in them because the unnaturality of it just stains the whole story.