All Comments on 'Boowie'

I don't normally read Romance stories, preferring the Loving Wife and Mature categories, but I enjoyed this story and feel you did a very good job. Keep up the good work.

Very sweet! I enjoyed it a lot. 5*

[19.01.24]

Top Tier!

11/10!!!!!

Takes me back to’Nicole’s Swing’, a true tearjerker, and one of the all time best JB44 offerings. Thanks very much.

Great story enjoyed reading it, thank you for sharing

This was great. It could have been a much longer story. But I’m selfish. I always want more of good things. 5 stars for a sad, yet uplifting story.

As I expected, very interesting characters and a good story. 5* from me

A lovely story, sir.

Loved the story ! Van we get a follow-up? Feels like the garbage king / queen / Prince potential series !

A new JB44 story is enough to make my day.

Way too short, but I loved it. Five stars. Thanks Jimbob44.

I enjoyed this short story and gave it 5 stars.

Sometimes the good guy does win! Very enjoyable story. 5 stars of course.

I great little short story.

Great story! Torn between wanting it to go on and see where they go from here, and it was a perfect place to end. Which means you wrote it perfectly. Please keep up the great work, you are very talented and it is a pleasure to read your creativity.

Short, but very good. Nicely done.

⭐⭐⭐ for effort. But character inconsistency, incomplete story and a plot that slides all over the place prevent a higher score.

This was a good one. Thank you

Just getting started and it ends - WTH? 3.6*

This short story presents a number of items that immediately put it at a significant disadvantage in this contest: there's simply not enough space to develop disparate elements in order to justify a high score to start with.

***

This is probably one of the first times I've read a story this short, and also read a disclaimer that somehow because it's self-edited that grammatical errors are accepted under that policy. That is simply unreasonable; there are several things like misuse of semicolons in place of colons and word repetitions that could be eliminated with a careful reading. While on the one hand, the grammatical errors aren't super frequent.. but they add up to enough to detract from the story flow. It's true that a grammar error here or there is not going to kill a story; however, too many will make the reader have to stop.. and that's something called a hard stop. That has to be addressed, and that's something that can be easily rectified by having one or two people volunteer to read. Also as I said, the length puts you at a serious disadvantage, because one element can get developed pretty well- - yet other elements can get seriously neglected--and that's what happens in this story. For example, we find out nothing about Xi Yu, Cherie's mother, except for her name and being born in Korea; we discover the father is Norwegian, and aside from being a very unsympathetic and unlikeable fellow, we see he's a skinflint.. but we really don't know a lot of his motivations, how he got to that point in life, what might have led him to be so unlikable.. I think you should see the difficulty with that. While we see that Cherie is probably the jewel of the family in some ways because of her extra consideration and her sweetness, where did that come from and how did it develop? Did she have some grandmother or other relative in the picture that fostered this? Did her mom secretly spend lots of time with her to foment this development? Did perhaps Cherie make a conscious choice to develop this on her own, because her older brother was such a butthead? All these are things that need to be answered in some way, and that's up to every author to address in whatever way the author deems fit. However, no character should ever get used for free. It's like I've seen in some submissions of stories in general where somebody will elect to use a character of a certain race that is obviously going to speak a different language.. but guess what? There's zero effort to provide any of that character speaking in that language, nor any traits obvious to a person of that class, and that seriously deducts from a story score- - because as I said, no character should exist for free. Returning to the father, it's actually discoverable by Google searching to see Norwegians are generally very sociable and very approachable, being the direct antithesis of a Finn for example. That's why there had to be some amount of development of the father's backstory. The one character you obviously focused on the most is Billy, and how he got to be so loathed by the school's athletes; you also reveal how talented he is as an artist, and how generous he is as a person. In fact, you greatly humanize his character from how he responds to both his sister Julie suffering, but also the suffering in that hospital. On that basis, you succeeded incredibly well. However, you even introduced the idea of a caste system in the school, which while not being unheard of nor is it unacknowledged, it's something that when you introduce that you need to explore... what you partly did.. however, the assumption is by what Cherie states, that it needs to be turned on its head- - and in fact - broken completely. Sadly though, we never see that other 2/3 of the piece the puzzle as to how that's addressed and/or resolved. Unfortunately, even the ending appears as an afterthought, where Cherie has a marvelous idea to take Billy a pizza, and even gets to kiss him, feeling a spark.. but with Rodney calling her a b word, and not knowing really where anything stands except that she wants Rodney to leave her completely alone what are we left with? We're left with a story with the one bright shining star revolving around Billy; we get a promising glimpse of Cherie and her lovely attitude; however, we received no indications that any of the items remaining will be resolved positively, negatively or at all. Given these exceptionally limiting factors and developing the story, the best I can rate this effort is a 2.

⭐⭐⭐⭐ Following the creole speak does not make a pleasant read IMO. Other than that...

Wow - this reads like your apprentice submission to the Hack Writer's Guild for admission. You know, the Guild whose pledge is, "We proudly promise to leave no tear unjerked, no stereotype unexpounded, and no cliche unexploited." Their Mission Statement is, "To boldly go where lots of people have gone, plenty of times before." You can (and should) do better. Average, or slightly below average writing. 2.5 stars. BTW - blaming the weaknesses of Autocorrect for your writing errors is lame! Take an online Remedial Writing Course r buy a second -hand Style Manual if you need to, but stop introducing stumbling blocks into your writing. Writing errors break the flow of your story and cause an intelligent reader to wince and shake his/her head, while gritting teeth. Too many of them and I just move on to another, more careful, writer.

The young lady has seen the light, a good boy turning out to be a good man....................5 stars

I hate you for always bringing a tear to this old redneck's eye. But seriously, great story, as always. Your tales are always heartfelt, if not always heart warming. (Hey just like in real life, there is not always a happy ending.

Great story. Would live to see their story continue...

JB44 YOU ASSHOLE!!! I hope you're happy. My morning was going just peachy and then you have to take me into a children's cancer ward. You bastard. I don't need crying in my coffee to start my day. I was all set to give you a huge ration of shit for the repeated use of "smirk" to the point of creating nausea. Actually, you still need to knock that shit off. Do you even know what the word denotes? Anyway, except for that issue, an above average effort.

I too would have loved this to be a longer read, quality like this is getting rather rare. I am amazed that there appears to be pollen in the air in the middle of winter. Another winner.

Hopefully there will be more stories with Cherie and Billy. Enjoyable story.

During lunch, Cherie and Rodney sat at the 'Elite' table. - should have left this out as it really destroyed Cherie's credibility as a nice person.....

Love this one. Don't like all your stories, but love your world.

Bowie is the real angel here. Great story.

This is a _perfect_ story. (dammit, dammit, dammit, I got something in my eye)

Please accept my apologies for only 5 stars.

Very sweet!

Thank you!! K

Sometimes the simplest of stories are the best ones. As always, a fantastic piece of literature.

I think there's some pollen in the air even though it's 30 degrees and there's 5 inches of snow. Wonderful story, thank you.

Damned allergies! 5*

That was really touching. I don’t know how you fit so much story in so few words. Thank you.

The preamble reads as though the original author was unable to submit the story, but another person used his ID to do it. Better editing of the story would have helped it, but under these circumstances it is understandable this did not happen. Blessings to you all.

Hey man, leaving your readers wanting more ain't a bad thing, ya know? I was wanting that story to go on at the end. Always enjoy a new one from JB44.

Nice little story here, JimBob. You accomplished a lot in a moderate amount of space – developed the sweetness and empathy of Cherie, and the compassion and sincerity of Billy. We also quickly felt the obnoxiousness of Rodney – we’ve all known creeps like him. I do not feel the length of this story should disqualify it from a high score, as one commenter suggested. The notion that the length should dictate the quality is nonsense, in my opinion. The short story is its own artform, different from the novel. It must be quicker, more succinct. Some of the best short stories written are 5K words. In fact, flash-fiction is sometimes a mere 500 words, and writers who do it well can tell a nice story in that amount of space.

***

Your story is a snapshot, and you fully resolve what you set out to achieve (what the whole story was building toward, if you will), and that was the coming together of Cherie and Billy. Obviously, you could have developed all of these characters more deeply if your fleshed it out another 10K words, but why? In my opinion, you successfully provide adequate motivation for the main characters, and their behaviors are believable (I like to use the phrase “my opinion,” as that’s all it is – I don’t speak from a place of authority or pontificate about the craft of fiction writing, as some here do). Spending extra time further developing the backgrounds of all of the characters here is in my opinion unnecessary, in the context of this story. Again, you provide solid motivation for behavior. You resolve the most important part of your story – the romantic coming together of Billy and Cherie. The other matters, like the situation with Rodney, can be left up to the reader. We can infer from the ending that he’s on the way out. No need to spoon feed it to us. The semicolon issue is a matter of style when it comes to your dialogue, and is not distracting, in my opinion (although commas and/or periods might flow a tad better). Nice job with this.

Another great story, thank you.

The lack of an ending dropped it to four stars for me. I'll raise it if there is a part two.

One of your best stories! Since J Landry is a celebrated graduate of UL Degarde, maybe you could write a story about him.

5

Beautiful heart wrenching story.

Thank you.

Wieluczka

Well written as usual and it the true sad part of the hospital The short life of so many sick kids that truly are angels because they still smile and want to play if they were free!

Please do keep writing for your enjoyment and I will keep reading for my entertainment.

Perhaps JB's best story. Everyday people in everyday situations living everyday lives, told with an economy of words. Very few here can write this well. Five stars.

You keep writing for your enjoyment so we can really enjoy them!

Great story with real human kindness. Rodney a typical asshole who will be a beer belly loser after high sports fizzle. Might be a chapter 2 & 3 in the future?

I'm 30 years old and my childhood nickname is what I'm still called today. It's Boogie pronounced Boo-jee. My cousin thought that was what I was supposed to be called when I was born and have heard it all my life

Please do continue with your enjoyment, but stop placing such faith in spell check. Some glaring errors took the gloss off it, believe it or not having to read the same sentence twice to make sense of it is a bummer.

Wow, blindsided me with this one— nicely done, it hits a lot of emotions. I’m pulling for Billy and Cherie. They probably won’t stay together, but they each deserve some love and respect and happiness.

Still waiting for a part 2 to this wonderful story

Can’t help it. Jues rit bt reel folks.

LOVE slap-hapy-papy #9