Chapter One
“Isn’t it beautiful?” Mom’s voice was airy as she gazed at the old mansion standing in front of us, her lungs gasping for breath after the long, slow paced hike up the driveway. She swung her suitcase in front of her—ignoring the way it caught on the gravel—and plopped down on it, breathing a sigh of relief.
The two-mile long gravel road wound its way through murky forest and over a dry creek before flattening out and leading toward the house in only a couple of minutes. In a car that is.
Our 1962 Thunderbird convertible had only made it past the mailbox before dipping into a muddy pothole and refusing to come out. Mom had just been talking about how fun it would be to hike some trails and then clunk. I blamed her and irony.
So we ended up walking the rest of the way, dragging boxes of paint and pearl white city slicker suitcases that almost screamed as we pulled them along the dirt road. Surprising the both of us – since we thought Missouri was supposed to be flat-- the road became a dusty hill in a matter of minutes and caused Mom to have to use her inhaler. As first impressions went, this one sucked. The road made me hate the house even before I saw it.
Though, now that I looked at the peeling white paint that covered the outside of the house and the thick oak beams that held up the long, bracken covered porch I almost agreed with her. Instead I went with a neutral answer that would satisfy my mom for a while until I figured out how I really felt.
“It has potential.” I smiled warmly at her, wondering how on earth—out of the millions of other houses—she had picked this one for our new home.
“That’s right! We may not be carpenters but we certainly have enough experience to pull her out of the 1900’s and into the 21st century.”
Enough experience indeed! Since I can remember, Mom had bought old, Victorian houses, remodeled them while keeping their antique value and then sold them to the highest bidder.
I had been her assistant ever since I turned eleven. That was after Mom was sure I wouldn’t eat any of the paint she used no matter how much it looked like peanut butter. If the Oceanside house in Maine—the first house I ever worked on—hadn’t changed its paint there was proof of my creative little fingers working all those years ago. An entire room of odd colored daisies painted on the beige walls with thick, shiny paint that made them pop off the walls if the light hit them just right.
And that’s mostly what I did when Mom and I made our rare house calls, painted walls and furniture. We usually didn’t remodel houses ourselves, instead we told other people how to do it using long and tiring conference calls. Once Mom became more popular though, people started asking Mom if she would do it herself.
Of course Mom said she would, there was no way she would turn down a request.
But no one had requested us this time.
When I was younger and still new to my job, I groaned every time someone requested Mom. They didn’t know they were requesting a twelve year old too and that the twelve year old liked to do other things besides paint other people’s houses.
Also I was a little upset that I wouldn’t be making phone calls all day to workers and pretend to tell them what to do even though I was really talking about how much I loved peanut butter on a daily basis. I was a lazy kid.
But once I got older, I started enjoying the busy, secluded one on one time I got with my mom when we worked together on a house. I also became a bit flattered.
It was a strange feeling knowing someone personal requested you even though you’ve never met him or her. Of course, no one actually knew that I worked for y Mom until just a year ago. It was somewhat of a relief to be able to tell everyone why I was so busy all the time.
But I wasn’t busy anymore, I thought sadly as the smile slipped from my face. Mom seemed to notice my distress. She always did.
“Don’t you like it?” She teased, pointing out the cracked window and a broken garden gnome that leaned against the porch steps with her long fingered hand.
“I’ll like it better after I look at it for a while and get past the clashing colors.” I joked; trying to seem at ease though my body had tensed up. I had realized that I would actually be able to take in the house for a while since it was my new home.
It all came crashing down on me again just like when Mom had told me the bad news. The trust fund Dad had left us had finally run out and even if we could get a hundred clients this year we still couldn’t afford the fancy apartment in New York that we had been living in for the past three years.
So, Mom had decided that we would move back to her birthplace and mine—Missouri—and down size a bit on our remodeling so she could get a second job. It had become more of a hobby now. Which sucked big time.
I heard Mom sigh from atop her suitcase and I could tell she was thinking the exact same thing. Though unlike me, she wasn’t going to let it stop her life.
“Come on Ellie, lets get settled in so we can go fix up The Bird before it rains and the upholstery gets ruined.” The sky was turning a very dark shade of grey. So instead of meditating on my loses, I followed her inside, keen to see what secrets the old mansion held.
Thanks everyone for all there reviews! I would like to note that I wrote this chapter on a stray piece of paper, a napkin, my mom's cellphone and a really old wizard memo maker. 
So that could be one of the reasons why some of the stuff doesn't make much sense. I cut somethings out and forgot to put things back. :S Never Forget A Notebook!
Hello! I'm Storm_Bringer!
Interesting story you have here, can't wait to see the fantasy part. 
Okay, to the reviewing.
"Mom had just been talking about how fun it would be to hike some trails and then clunk. I blamed her and irony." I liked this part. Funny! 
Hate it how irony works against you.
"Pearl white city slicker suitcases" This sounds kinda weird, too much adjectives. Maybe its just me... Perhaps you could change it to "pearly-white".
Of course, no one actually knew that I worked for y Mom until just a year ago. My, not y.
"Long fingered hand." This sounds odd.
“I’ll like it better after I look at it for a while and get past the clashing colors.” I joked." Comma not period after colors.
"I heard Mom sigh from atop her suitcase." Atop her suitcase? Is she standing on it?
That's it i found! Overall its pretty good, just re-read your writing like Mars said. PM me when you put the second chapter out or have any questions.
-Storm_Bringer
SimplyPersnikety wrote:Chapter One
“Isn’t it beautiful?” Mom’s voice was airy as she gazed at the old mansion standing in front of us, [s]her lungs[/s] gasping for breath after the long, slow paced hike up the driveway. She swung her suitcase in front of her—ignoring the way it caught on the gravel—and plopped down on it, breathing a sigh of relief. If she's swinging it, she can't be sitting on it. Change the 'swung' to 'dropped' or something, I'd suggest.
The two-mile [s]long[/s] gravel road wound its way through murky forest and over a dry creek before flattening out and leading toward the house in only a couple of minutes. Either 'a murky forest' or 'murky forests'. In a car (comma here) that is.
Our 1962 Thunderbird convertible had only made it past the mailbox before dipping into a muddy pothole and refusing to come out. I like this line. Mom had just been talking about how fun it would be to hike some trails and then clunk. I blamed her and irony. I don't get these last two sentences, really. What does 'clunk' mean here? The car brake down?
So we ended up walking the rest of the way, dragging boxes of paint and pearl white city slicker suitcases that almost screamed as we pulled them along the dirt road. Surprising the both of us – since we thought Missouri was supposed to be flat-- the road became a dusty hill in a matter of minutes and caused Mom to have to use her inhaler. As first impressions went, this one sucked. The road made me hate the house even before I saw it.
Though, now that I looked at the peeling white paint that covered the outside of the house and the thick oak beams that held up the long, bracken covered porch I almost agreed with her. (By now we've almost forgotten the initial question since you delved into this flashback. Is there any way for you to remind us of what she asked so that we're not scratching our heads here?) Instead I went with a neutral answer that would satisfy my mom for a while until I figured out how I really felt.
“It has potential.” I smiled warmly at her, wondering how on earth—out of the millions of other houses—she had picked this one for our new home.
“That’s right! We may not be carpenters but we certainly have enough experience to pull her out of the 1900’s and into the 21st (spell out: twenty-first)century.”
Enough experience indeed! Since I can remember, Mom had bought old, Victorian houses, remodeled them while keeping their antique value and then sold them to the highest bidder.
I had been her assistant ever since I turned eleven. That was after Mom was sure I wouldn’t eat any of the paint she used no matter how much it looked like peanut butter. If the Oceanside house in Maine—the first house I ever worked on—hadn’t changed its paint there was proof of my creative little fingers working all those years ago. I think this sentence can be disregarded, actually, and the paragraph seems to work better without it. An entire room of odd colored daisies painted on the beige walls with thick, shiny paint that made them pop off the walls if the light hit them just right. This is a fragment, first of all, and second, it doesn't really make sense to cram it here. While the image you painted is nice, this is simply off-topic to this paragraph and, to me, it seems like filler.
And that’s mostly what I did when Mom and I made our rare (thought they were frequent?) house calls, [s]painted[/s] painting walls and furniture. We usually didn’t remodel houses ourselves, (Semi-colon here, not comma) instead we told other people how to do it using long and tiring conference calls. Once Mom became more popular though, people started asking Mom if she would do it herself.
Of course Mom said she would, (And semi-colon here, too. Might want to brush up on the differences between commas and semi-colons.) there was no way she would turn down a request.
But no one had requested us this time.
When I was younger and still new to my job, I groaned every time someone requested Mom. They didn’t know they were requesting a twelve year old too and that the twelve year old liked to do other things besides paint other people’s houses. In the past two paragraphs, you've used the word 'request' way to many times. Consider rephrasing most of them so we don't keep seeing that one word over...and over...and over again.
Also I was a little upset that I wouldn’t be making phone calls all day to workers and pretend to tell them what to do even though I was really talking about how much I loved peanut butter on a daily basis. (You loved peanut butter on a daily basis? That doesn't make sense, dear. You either love peanut butter, or you don't; there's nothing 'daily' about it.) I was a lazy kid.
But once I got older, I started enjoying the busy, secluded [s]one on one[ /s]one-on-one time I got with my mom when we worked together on a house. I also became a bit flattered.
It was a strange feeling knowing someone personal requested you even though you’ve never met him or her. Of course, no one actually knew that I worked for my Mom until just a year ago. It was somewhat of a relief to be able to tell everyone why I was so busy all the time.
But I wasn’t busy anymore, I thought sadly as the smile slipped from my face. Try this: But I wasn't busy anymore, I thought sadly, the smile slipping from my face. Mom seemed to notice my distress. She always did.
“Don’t you like it?” She teased, pointing out the cracked window and a broken garden gnome that leaned against the porch steps with her long fingered hand.
“I’ll like it better after I look at it for a while and get past the clashing colors.” I joked; (comma, not semi-colon) trying to seem at ease though my body had tensed up. I had realized that I would actually be able to take in the house for a while since it was my new home.
It all came crashing down on me again just like when Mom had told me the bad news. The trust fund Dad had left us had finally run out and even if we could get a hundred clients this year we still couldn’t afford the fancy apartment in New York that we had been living in for the past three years.
So, Mom had decided that we would move back to her birthplace and mine—Missouri—and down size a bit on our remodeling ('cut down a bit on our remodeling', perhaps?)so she could get a second job. It had become more of a hobby now. Which sucked big time.
I heard Mom sigh from atop her suitcase and I could tell she was thinking the exact same thing. Though comma hereunlike me, she wasn’t going to let it stop her life.
“Come on Ellie, lets get settled in so we can go fix up The Bird before it rains and the upholstery gets ruined.” The sky was turning a very dark shade of grey (you could ass some lovely imagery here, methinks, instead on this drab description of dark grey.). So instead of meditating on my loses, I followed her inside, keen to see what secrets the old mansion held.
But don't worry, I'm just really picky that way. I can tell this is to be continued as a larger peice-- right? Because, if not, the following is entirely irrelevant. But this doesn't strike me as one-shot. And! It says Chapter One in the title! Hehe. Moving on!
Description:
Characterization:
As a first chapter
'Allo Persnikety! I hope you don't mind if I review this for ya?
...
Didn't think so.
Let's go! *dives into The Marble Horse*
Mom’s voice was airy as she commented on the old mansion standing
Blurgh. For some reason I don't like commented on. It's such a weird verb, and I think gazed or looked would work just as well, since you're not doing a traditional tag (...," she said. is what I mean by a traditional dialogue tag).
road wound it’s way
Quick grammar tutorial:
It's = contraction of "It is"
Its = possessive form of it.
So, no apostrophe there! If you're ever confused about this, what I always do is read the sentence as if there were no contraction: the road wound it is way? That makes no sense! So it must be the other one.
That was if you were driving
Eep. Try and avoid second person. It's weird and can easily be fixed, like blah blah in a car or whatever.
rest of the way dragging boxes of paint
Insert comma between way and dragging. That will separate the actions.
be flat--, the road was became
Ditch the comma and the was.
paint walls
Painted. Watch out for tenses, they're tricky and refuse to stay consistent sometimes.
butter on c daily basis
On a. It always helps to read the work a couple times before you post, just so you can catch these inevitable typos.
I got with my Mom when we worked
If you use Mom as a name, it's capitalized. But here, the possessive makes it a noun, which means it gets a lower-case m.
But I wasn’t busy anymore. I thought sadly as the
That period needs to be a comma!
“Come on, lets get settled in so we can go fix up The Bird before it rains and the upholstery ruined.
Let's and the upholstery gets ruined.
As I mentioned, I think you would have caught most of these during a read-through, but I just wanted to make sure! :]
So! This is a prologue? It reads more like a first chapter, I think. I'm kind of against prologues in general, because they're not usually necessary unless the author wants to do some weird foreshadowing or there is background information that absolutely must be known. And in those cases it's usually better to write them after you write the body of the story, I think. So I'd consider making this into a first chapter, and then, if you find you need a prologue, you can come back and add one.
As for the thing, whatever it be, I like this beginning. I've already got a clear picture of the characters...though I wish I knew the narrator's name. It would be easy to slip that in somewhere. And you did a good job with descriptions-not too much, but enough to give me the basic idea. And so the only real suggestion I can give you here is to rearrange some things.
It feels kind of jumpy. E.g., you start out with the house, which is good, and I assume they're moving in, but then I realize they're only remodeling it, but then, wait, they are moving in! And remodeling it? That was a little confusing. I think you should come right out and say it, like at the beginning, something like and we looked at our new home. Or whatever you want to do. Just so we have that in mind through all of the talk about what Mom does for a living, you know?
Otherwise, I quite like this and I'll be interested to see it continue. Romance fantasy is my favorite!
Good luck editing. -Mars
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