All Comments on 'A Blind Date for the Holidays'

This was great.

There is a part 2, Right?

Right?

Please?

Read it one sitting. Best thing i've read in a long time. Thank you.

That was a helluva ride

I’m not sure why this hasn’t got many votes yet! Maybe when more people have time to read to the end. A good story, well worth the time, thank you!

Omg..its really good! Deserve more than 5 stars.

What a wonderful Christmas story :)

Absolutely one of the best stories I’ve read in awhile, had to finish it in one go.

Must agree on can there be more please ?

Great story nice to see you back

This was the most amazing and genuine love story. Superb. Thank you for this wonderful Christmas gift.

Enjoyed the story. Need to brush up on your wines: there is no Saltimboca wine. Saltimboca is an Italian dish that consists of veal that has been wrapped with prosciutto and sage, and then marinated in any light white wine. It is eaten, not drunk.

Fabulous!

Too bad 5 is the maximum number of stars.

There was no foreword to this story and as it had been quite a few years since I had read YKN4949's Double Blind Date I thought it was that story at first. So it took me ages to stop comparing the two stories in my mind, which is a pity I think. other than that, nice plausible, romance.

I read this on and off all day! Better than some full novels. Excellent understanding of what we choose to accept about ourselves and from others.

I couldn’t get past the first page, unfortunately. It was excessive to say the least. She moved and is lonely, talk about blind dates, tangent about family, back to discussing blind dates, talk about dad, she’s lonely because of the move, talk about mom, more blind date, date finally arrives, more inner monologue about family.

I’m sorry but I can’t read 19 pages of repetitive fluff.

I so wanted to give this five stars. But SO many typos and homophone errors. Can't do 4.5, as much as I'd like so 4 it is. I really liked the story though.

terrific story

Wonderful story! I’m in no way qualified to say whether you captured a lesbian romance accurately, but the women seem genuinely human to me. ❤️

Loved it.

Great story.

I rarely do more than vote for stories but this just so good that giving it a measly 5 stars seems wrong...it deserves way more that that

Fantastic!

Hmmm - this story seems to be a little different from most of JoeDreamer's efforts. I'm not sure, but I'm not prone to add it to my "favorites".

I could not put this story down. You're an amazing writer, and the ratio of smut to fluff was perfect. Seriously, you should be writing romance novels professionally.

Wow! Incredible story. I never wanted it to end.

Had its moments, but too repetitious, drawn out and lacked originality. The start brought YKN4949’s Double Blind Date immediately to mind, while the rest felt so stereotypical, which detracted from the romantic moments between the two protagonists. 3 stars.

this wasnt a story , its a damn book lol

I agree with Migbird’s comments. I too thought I had read a close resemblance to this story sometime ago. Those comments mentioned the name of the story and author so I looked at that one quickly. Slight difference ( i.e., characters names and a much quicker resolution) and much expanded story line but accepting that still very good tale.

This was a cute story that I did enjoy, but it really could’ve done with an edit or two. The first page had a lot of repetition - almost too much for me to keep reading. I’m glad I hung in there. I can see what you wanted to achieve by it though, you wanted to build suspense for the meeting of “Billie” and the big reveal, but it was too repetitive unfortunately. The number of typos/spelling errors and clumsy sentences didn’t detract too much from the story, but there was quite a bit of repetition throughout which did detract unfortunately. All this being said, the story was cute and the other things can all be worked on and improved by a decent editor or beta reader. You should consider it, even better if they are a female identifying editor to keep in check some of the slightly more masculine slopes in the storyline.

I really enjoyed this story! Thanks for sharing it.

Would have loved to have more of an ending with the characters family

I really enjoyed this story. The build up, Trish being so torn.. you did great work on the characters, and bringing it all to life. thank you for it!!!

What a great story ! I loved the characters and how well everything flowed .. love wins in the end and that’s all that matters !! Thank you ! 5 stars !

Very good. Please finish. It would be nice to read if the dad will accept Trish and what Billie’s family thinks of their relationship. LOVE THIS STORY

This is an exceptional story and i'm giving it 5 stars, but I do want to express a similar concern to other commenters. You're clearly a skilled writer, but I think most writers hit a stage where an editor is necessary to get the *best* out of their work. I think there are places in this manuscript where you either have no clear idea what you want to do or ALL the ideas. This mostly happens in between scenes. It gives the impression that your process was to write these individual scenes and then string them together. That isn't a bad way to write, but i do think it opens up the possibility of getting lost in those spaces either because you don't really have anything interesting to say, or you feel like you have a bunch of things to say, but no concise way to get them across. In both cases, you end up meandering around until you get to that next critical scene. An outside editor would, i think help with this, as it would be someone who isn't in your mind, seeing all the possibilities at once, who can pair down the rambling and get more cohesion.

I noticed that one reviewer Migbird complained that the story was too repetitious. I would agree to a point, but to me that reflected the tormoil the principle character was going through. I think the writer took us through that in the telling.

I think that you did a great job expressing the internal conflicts that are involved in such situations. They keeping rolling around in one's mind. Over and over. And I think you expressed that very well. Major internal conflicts do not end in a few thoughts like a few people feel they should had.

Great read. I fully enjoyed it. Thank you.

One of the best stories I have read on here and could go on a lot more, even brought a tear to my eye, wonderful. Thank you.

What a super grate Read. I couldn't put it down . The romance of it was beautiful .

I would love to know if Is Patricia's family and father accepted the relationship .

It was obvious that a man wrote the sex scenes, didn’t do it for me. And the talking out loud thing was weird and I ended up completely skipping those parts.

I’m sorry, but as a woman, if I were sitting on a couch and had a woman lying between my legs with her back against me, I’d have to have some long-ass arms and flexible wrists to be able to drive 3 fingers in and out of her for any length of time. Also, the sex focused too much on penetration, not enough on other parts of a woman’s body. If you’re a man writing a lesbian love scene, may want to get a female editor.

This was a truly enjoyable read.

What a wonderful story. Could some of the sex scenes have been more realistic if edited by an actual lesbian? Probably, however that didn't stop it being a sweet love story of discovery.

I honestly rarely enjoy lesbian stories written by men, however I enjoyed this one so much I'm going to beg for a sequel! This has legs and I want to know about their future, kids, the brother, their friends, the homophobic parents......

Very good story throughout. I've already read it twice. As Anonymous said, it portrays the internal conflicts very well, with Trish at different times advancing and retreating. Similarly, I view the first page as portraying Trish's mental agitation as she waits for a blind date who is late and may not show. Janet's surprise appearance was perfectly timed. (At first reading I'd been desperately wanting to know exactly what she said to Trish in college.)

I noticed that Trish never got to talk to Arlene about her experience. So here's hoping Samantha and Arlene have a story to tell.

A really good read, thanks.

This was excellent. I saw the word count and almost did not read it. I am glad I decided not to be an idiot. Thank you.

You've developed some great characters. I hope that you revisit them sometime soon.

I'm sorry, but you lost me. I really liked the first pages. Good writing, interesting characters. Clunky dialogue, but I've seen way way worse. I was kinda hoping you would seduce me and keep me invested in the story. When they arrived to bar I lost my interest. You're a good writer and I like your characters, but I feel you could've shortened the story with a least a third. And think about the dialogue too. People rarely say spell out their thoughts or needs to the world, it's more about reading between the lines..

Great writing but sooo much of this could be edited out without harming the story. Rambling on and on. It’s obviously intentional as no one publishes a 19 page story on this website normally, but it didnt serve a purpose as far as I could tell. Consider the reader!

I can see why this placed top 3

The story was a little disconnect and zany. I now know that it was meant to be disorganized up to a point to reflect the personality of the protagonist. I loved it. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I thoroughly enjoyed the story, nice work.

Anecdote, not antidote. I’ll rate the story when I’ve finished.

Tc

Already bookmarked as a favorite. I thought the length was just perfect. Too bad that contest entries are a one-off, I would like to see more of these characters.

Thank you for a. Tender and insightful story.

Resonated with me on a personal and raw level I’m not ashamed to say I shed a tear or two

Love long, conflicted, slow-to-develop lesbian romance. Nothing better. Great characterization, sensational plotting, marvelous work all-around.

If it were a TV series I would send the network letters for season 2, if it were a Christmas Rom-com I would wish next Christmas would come sooner with another movie from the Series, since it's only a nice long story what I can only wish is a second one, with the "Growing Pains" of their relationship, the Engagement and Marriage Episodes can come out in Winter '22 and '23! Congratulations on a very romantic story.

Like the story.....Love to see story about "Sean and Janet"

This is an amazing peace of art !

Bravo!

Oh, such an amazing story

Could well be the best total story ever

This is the best story I have ever read on literotica My niece is Billie who has wakened a few "straight" women until she found her true mate.

Not a big fan of that the lesbian happily ever after thing but gave it 5 stars for the excellent writing job.

Enjoyed the story a great deal. It was very well thought out and had a couple twists that were pretty clever. I just could not get past some improper word use and grammar issues.

Didn’t enjoy,

Thank you for writing a beautiful lesson about the meaning of love.

that was a truly lovely romance, and I thoroughly enjoyed the story. it was well paced too and kept my interest piqued till the end.

on the technical side, there are many spelling/grammar mistakes that, while they don't detract from the story, they do somewhat sully the reading experience.

I'd be happy to read more, perhaps a 2nd story from Janet's POV (setting up Trish&Billie, dating others, 'finding' Sean?), maybe a 3rd from Samantha's (attempts at reconciliation with parents? good stuff with Arlene and kids) ? A sort of friends-and-family series where each story covers a significant event in a person/couple/family's life?

Anyway, thank you for sharing. Greatly appreciated the read.

Wonderful. One pass through for typos and this would be damn near perfect!

Wonderfull romance and lovable characters. I really enjoyed following the fears and needs unraveling without giving too much away till the end arrives . Keep writing

Well written.

Loved the story. I do not know if you had a proof reader or not but there are more than a few things that jumped out at me. Billie and Trish talking on the phone and the reference is made to the look Billie gives Trish. Several times you started to say I then decided on We but you left the I there(so the you had I we at the beginning of the sentence ). There were others you used memorized when the word you were likely to want is mesmerized. Trish talkind about talking to her mother the day before when it was several days (she talked to her Sunday and the scene was Friday). Despite these things I loved the story and would love to read more with this cast of characters. Thank you for writing this story. 5 Stars

A great submission! A few little typos and some rather over-long parts don't really detract from the interest and sexiness of this story.

Deeply satisfying, well written and edited. Believable angst.

excellent story and character building but a lot of it can be paraphrased or cut out completely. i think some parts were unnecessarily repetitive, i get that that’s the wishy-washy nature of trish but it was hard to keep up with at times. also, being 19 pages i feel like 1 month is way to quick to have met, reconsider your sexuality, come out to your parents, and fall in love. it’s possible but the person trish is, it didn’t feel too realistic. besides that the story was amazing!

Welcome back Joe Dreamer, I still remember Daphne’s Crush being the first of yours I read, almost 16 years ago! This does you proud as well, thanks for your efforts

Good story...but proof read, proof read, proof read. Very distracting.

Really enjoyed your writing, but as others have said, you do need an editor.

To hell with the spelling mistakes. You only see them if your looking for them. Makes no difference how incredible this story is anyway. Loved the characters so much. I already miss them. Read this so many times and will read so many times in the future. This story never gets old. Thank you for sharing this beautiful romance.

Thankyou very much for writing such an an excellent story. A very believable plot. You have taken the time and effort to create an in depth character in Trish who we probably all love and would love to know. I must say though that she starts out as a not very likable person.

She is too self centred, too fearful, too insecure. Her every word and action is dictated by fears from her past. While that makes it almost impossible to like her it does make it extremely easy to identify with her.

I am not suggesting she is not loveable. Just not likeable. I can not see why a person like cheerful personable person like Janet would be Trish's friend for so long. She is just too weird. Maybe I am merely projecting.

There are a lot of comments about your story being too long, too repetitious or too wordy.

Readers know how long a story is by the prominently displayed word count, or by the number of pages displayed at the bottom of the page. So why the complaint?

Using repetition is the simplest most effective way of emphasizing and developing a point when writing. Think of how often repetition is used in song writing. We all accept it there. So, why the complaint?

In this story when something is repeated the author is saying "this is important to the development of Trish."

The author has very successfully used a lot of writing to fully expose Trish's inner workings to a degree that is rare on Lit.. ( For the word writing you could also substitute it with many words. Words like effort, time, thought, care, hard work, agonizing over getting just the exact right word or phrase. Blood sweat and tears. All of this was done freely for us to be entertained and to enjoy at no cost to us.)

Trish's inner thoughts and self dialogue really expose her inner core and create a strong empathy in the readers for her. The only way literary characters become more than 2 dimensional cardboard cookie cutout cartoon characters is if a talented writer takes the time to write lots of carefully strung together words that builds a mental image in the readers minds of who this character is, what are they experiencing, what they feel. What they think.

They continue adding to this description until the reader actually starts both identifying with and recognizing the character that the authors are creating as someone they know from their own lives. That is when characters come alive. That is when Trish's pain reaches out from the page and grabs you and you become invested in the story. Rather than a mere spectator watching from the outside, you feel for Trish. You feel with Trish. You identify with Trish.

We all were really hoping Trish would get to the almost inevitable conclusion in this story. A long and happy life with her one true love, her soulmate Billie.

Trish talking to herself in the mirror is a expert piece of penmanship. The author exposes so much to the reader of Trish's frailty and why she is like she is. It reminded me of the brilliantly funny and equally enlightening Gollum/Sméagol dialogue in The Lord Of The Rings.

I think after reading about Trish's antics with the mirror most of us would identify with Trish and her "stupid" actions, but very few would be brave enough to admit doing something similar, and even fewer would care to document it.

I think that rather than being too long and wordy that YOUR story is too short. I think that, (oops sorry) no, I wish that you could have spent the same number of words on Billie's reactions, thought patterns and emotional responses to Trish's irrational and unpredictable actions and words.

Develop the theme of how Billie felt about being toyed with and messed around by this weird girl named Trish, who she had fallen hopelessly in love with.

I also wish there was more words spent on Trish's meeting and ongoing relationship with Billie's family.

And since this is a Christmas tale where we all get our wishes, I also wish there was more words spent on Trish's rift with her family. They are very precious to her. Did the relationship between Trish and her parents heal? Did her Mum and Dad settle their differences concerning their daughter? Was Trish able to live her life with the love and support of her parents as well as her future wife?

A R W

The talking to herself in the mirror is a brilliant piece of penmanship. I think most of would identify with it, but very few would be brave enough to admit it, and even less would care to document it.

I thought I would read the 19 pages in small, enjoyable chunks - I was wrong !

This delightful, if intense at times, story had me totally hooked from page one, and I read all 19 pages in one session. I was very glad that I did - I found it entrancing - a brilliantly woven story. Well done.

Thoroughly pleased with your Gift to readers like myself that are familiar with your work

It is an amazingly entrancing story, not my first read but glad to be back. I may have been anonymous first time round but I love your storytelling ability.

Excellent. I do not care about spelling errors. I am dyslexic ans my spelling suukes. I do believe someone can have a life change in a month. I have seen it happen. I turned vegetarian in literally 24 hours. I had not planned it, or given it a ton of though. I just decided to do it cold turkey (or tofurkey). I proposed to my wife, who I had only hung out with a few times, and chatted with on the phone for about 3 weeks. We were pushed together by a matchmaker want to be mutual friend. We have been together over 2 decades. I don't think such quick changes are typical, buy they are poss8ble.

First time reading this. I generally shy away from lesbian stories written by males on Lit. Honestly, I only read it because of the word count (hoping that many words somehow represented "substance").

But compared to some of the other male writers writing in this category, the writer wisely confined his sex scene details to relatively conventional lovemaking, making it read true—though with a male rather than female slant. But not in any way offensively so. So many male writers of lesbian stories are writing male fantasies of lesbians. And it always shows. They are writing for male readers who share that same male fantasies.

But Joe did not do that. In fact, he wrote (not intending to denigrate Lit at all) a powerful romance that had little to do with actual sex. So many stories here start with sex, but only sometimes get to the romance. This went the other way around, and perhaps not to the tastes of certain fragments of the Lit audience (as some comments seemed to imply).

Much has been said here about "the story", but I thing most comments really mean the story behind the story ... or what you might call "what really happened". And that behind the scenes story we created for ourselves as we read was heartwarming, even the "loss" of her father.

What struck me harder than that was the actual presentation of the story, how it started in a recognizable situation (the date) but with so few details that we didn't really see any of the story behind the story. But we thought we understood it enough to grab our attention. Too many writers want to start off with a detailed background, almost encyclopedic in nature, before the first meaningful scene. Joe didn't.

And *then* he pushed to presentation of the story forward, not backward with awkward flashbacks (another frequent tool of less skilled writers), carefully weaving in a background, naturally winding it around the story moving forward. And yet managed to do that without the "oh I forgot to mention" kind of presentation that appears too often. It was very natural.

A lot of Joe's tastes in stories (based on a scanning of all his work here) fall pretty far outside my usual interests here, but he is so skillful in presentation that I will probably take a look at some of those, *hoping* he's done a similarly good job of *not* dwelling on the less interesting (to me) aspects of some of those genre's and producing a quality story that *might* be argued belongs in multiple genres (a failing of Lit, in my opinion, since we cannot post something in multiple genres, in fact, why are there genres at all, aren't tags enough?).

Great continuity in the plotting, extremely strong characterization, and rides the emotional wave to a somewhat truncated, but acceptable ending. I enjoyed the work very much, five stars worth.

Now, I'm compelled to remark upon the comment of okami1061 below. The second sentence "I generally shy away from lesbian stories written by males..." expresses a sentiment that I find regrettable. This site is overflowing with stories about heterosexual sex from the male's point of view, and gay male stories, written by women, and many, if not most are fine reads. The point, is though, that if you don't read them without prejudging based upon a self-generated stylistic bias, you won't know for yourself. People work very hard on these stories, and offer them to you free, and if, while reading one of them, you find the sex scenes unrealistic, then for fuck's sake, just skip over it and judge the work on the rest of the tale.

Thanks, I really enjoyed it, it was quite the journey and similar plot to another story I read on this site, but this is a much longer one. I would like follow-up story or atleast a longer ending/epilogue.

Thanks for sharing!

Beautiful

Enjoyed it

Fantastic story.

Ababsolutely wonderful. I loved it from that first meeting. I was able to visualize faces from the descriptions and thoughts and that would help me to see them in these conversations they had . It was really great. Top 5 story for me. I Will be reading it again soon.

I almost quit on the story half way through the first page as I found Trish's interminable introspective navel gazing to be quite irritating but I decided to cut her, and the writer, some slack and carried on with the story. Leaving aside the unlikely premise of the tale, it would take a very brave friend to set up a blind date between a seemingly straight woman and a lesbian, I came to thoroughly enjoy the story and I found the characters to be sympathetically portrayed. I even began to empathize with Trish though that was not easy. But all in alll a good tale well told, there were a few minor typos but they did not detract from the story, so five stars from me.

This story was absolutely incredible!!!

Loved it all, started it just over 24 hours ago, different name attached, then it disappeared. Fortunately found it again as it is worth all 19 pages, thanks so much will certainly look at more of yours.

Very good. Better than I expected. The typos were a little distracting. Please work on editing. The bad part was the ending. It seemed incomplete. What happened with her parents? And Billy’s? Such a story may end with ‘And they lived happily ever after ‘ But even that needs a little setting up.

Oh irony. I found this story because of a plagiarism thread in the story feedback forum and my first thought on reading the opening pages was "I've read this before". As others have commented, I spent most of the first few pages comparing it to YNK4949's "Double Blind Date".

Taken on its own merits, the opening page was a slog of introspective backstory. Things that could have been revealed in other ways along the story, but frontloading them felt draining. The sex scenes were ok and as others have pointed out were clearly written by a man. The mechanics of the first scene on the couch had me shaking my head. Things like this are why I am hesitant to read lesbian romance by male authors.

I will say that Trish's struggles with her orientation were well done as well as the conflict and prospect of losing her family. I thought those aspects were right on point. Lots of incorrect word usage (homophones mostly) and missing words. This story had the potential to be great but fell short.

Wonderful, I really enjoyed it !

I do like a long story.

Now I'll check out your other stories.

Rapier

I read this story the first time 5 months ago, once I scrolled down far enough to see that. And there were a LOT of comments in those intervening months. That says something right there. So many others read it, too, and found it necessary to comment on this wonderful story.

Sometimes upon rereading a story, my opinions will change, usually because of having read things in between. This time, my comments from 5 months ago still apply; it's still how I feel. Minus one thing:

For me, there is one true measure of a great story: How many times I'm willing to read it. I have read some (printed) books as many many times. One series comes to mind that was a one-book-per-year sort of story and each time, I reread the entire story to get to the new book. That first book got read over and over, more than 20 times. The story was that good.

I don't know if I will read this one 20 times, but my second reading has me thinking that might be possible.

This was one of the best stories I've ever read. If there was a 10-star rating, this work would DEFINITELY deserve it.

Joe, I have followed your works for many, many years. You out did yourself with this one, but I can agree with many of your other readers. Can we please have a nice follow-up? This was a very beautiful read.

Lovely to read again.

Great story, realistic characters and a storyline that mostly moves along smartly, although I suspect where I thought it bogged down slightly with our protagonist fluctuating between denial and acceptance of her sexuality, will flow more naturally when I read it again. If I’ve got any criticism it’d be the apparent lack of a proof/beta reader to iron out the glitches, which whilst not damaging the story, prevent it from looking polished. Many thanks for writing and posting, cheers Ppfzz.5⭐️