All Comments on 'Life Less Lived Ch. 14'

Thanks for your story it was a very enjoyable read. Also thanks for expending the amount of work necessary to complete a project like this. Plus your timely posting of all the chapters made it just that much more enjoyable. Thanks.

I almost finished this in 2015 and again in 2017, but couldn’t find an ending that I was happy with. This story started as long ago as the winter of 1991. Anyway, I had the first 12 chapters pretty well finished when I picked it up again a couple of weeks ago, just needing a tweak or two, but I still hadn’t got the ending. So I published the first 12 chapters at daily intervals. The 13th was pretty well set in my head so that wasn’t a problem. As a male writer, I set myself a difficult task of having 6 threads lead by strong women: 1 Marina obviously, 2 Rebecca playing a role as a red herring, 3 Sophie who provides a deja vu element which draws Marina into protecting the teenager, 4 Lady Barbara who ties in the relationship between Daniel and SandRock, 5 Patience appears to be helping Sir Phil but even from the outset seems to have her own agenda and is the link with the real hidden enemy, and lastly 6 Lauren is a link with WWAG. Minor femails were Tracie, the niece, another deja vu for Marina, and Ginny the second sister. In the end I decided on a quiet ending through Lauren to show that the larger 'family' have already been thanked by the Medcalfs and now it was Lauren's turn.

It started very slowly, the many backstory threads meandering in countless seemingly unrelated directions. I thought I had a notion where it might lead, but I was completely wrong. Excellent job of keeping tiny details either hidden, or obscured to be unrelated to anything pertinent. About the only thing I suspected, was that Daniel wasn’t Marina’s rapist; that was fairly clear by his manner and interactions.

Page-Turner claimed an inside accomplice to Sands re: the environmental protest; but that in no way pointed at her being a mastermind who’d lost control and didn’t know it. The really surprising thing about her, is how — as a brilliant, and very well-educated young woman — she embraced an admitted sexual predator, and worked on his behalf. Why? It made little sense.

Then setting-up for tragedy through the fire, it seemed as though Barbara and Marina were casualties. Amazing job building them as strong characters, despite less than brilliant public personae. Equally amazing is how their strength fit the characters: Marina with decades spent thinking on her feet, raising 5 younger siblings, always living hand-to-mouth; and Barbara the fairly gifted beauty, yet strong enough in her convictions to hold her husband at-bay for 3 years. Excellent job there.