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Yay! The second part is up! The first thing though, it's not double spaced, which makes reading it very annoying. Reckon you could double space it, just for me? Now, onto your actual writing...

Jamie's sister's like this.

He nodded

And then there was the memory of the beginning, long before the sickness, when they had been young and reckless, going to parties with mismatched music and warm cheap beer, crammed tight into someone's tiny front room. The floor was inevitably sticky, the smell of sweating lusting bodies, kebabs, soggy chips and cannabis penetrating every pore of the room.

or begin to fantasize

I like it. The characters are very real. You have the process of grief down completely.

His t-cell count was almost non-existent an' the antibiotics weren't doing any good

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I read this before I went to school, but I didn't have time to critique it, so here I am now! I hope I do it justice.

Pete drank, and he slept, and enveloped himself in the darkness.

The slither of light coming through the curtains woke him, falling across his face, letting the harsh world back in.

A waft of stale air hit his nostrils, his own unwashed body, cigarette smoke and Scotch; a bottle was on the bedside table, a half full glass beside it.

Scotch bottle and pouring out another glass, neat.

another mouthful of the whisky

“Where the hell have you been?” Joe Merrick said without any preliminaries. “For Christ's sake Pete, you can't just not turn up at work for three days without any explanation. You do know your job is on the line?” He wrinkled his nose up. “Have you been drinking? I would say you smelt like a brewery, but a whisky distillery might be more accurate.”

“Joe,” Pete said, holding his hand out. “Gi' me that.”

He focused on Joe, to force the memory to fade away.

Heidi! *throws love at*

Okay, so I absolutely adore this piece. Jamie and Pete are great characters, and I choked up a little reading the sweater scene. It was really beautiful--it's just this mundane thing, but when someone you love is completely gone from your life, you really have to search hard (and desperately) to find something they've left behind. You do the drunken, upset character rather well. Even though I haven't quite met Pete, I felt really bad for him and was able to feel the tears come on in the first chapter. That's a mark of a job well done, dahling.

The only thing I would like to chat with you about is Pete's accent. Granted, I know it's probably a huge marker of character for you, and really helps you to get into his "feel" and voice. However, it's something that I'm going to try to wean you away from--I know you're not doing this, but it can't become a stand in for legitimate character development. You have to make his speech sound natural and Pete-like without misspelling words.

Granted, if you want to make this a small element of his characterization, that's okay. I'd recommend reading through Suzanne's God Still Loves You--she uses words like "warsh" characteristic of the American midwest that really help readers to place where her secondary characters are, geographically and intellectually. If that's what you want to mark in Pete, that's okay. But if you misspell everything, your readers (e.g., me, because I'm a freak) spend more time reading Pete's dialogue aloud because they think it's cool to sound Scottish, rather than mulling over what it actually means. People walking around their bedrooms muttering "Och, aye" and reading Pete's dialogue aloud is definitely a mood-killer.


Please PM me if you have any questions or if you simply want to chat about this piece. ^_^ I love it to bits, and would love to hear more from you about it.