AF - Gutierrez Cartel

do you have a friend (preferably 1st language English) who can work through your manuscript ? I am only up to chapter 3 of your work, but enjoying it. I could offer some help with grammar, but it may take me some time to get through it. Email me if you would like some help. Juliet

Windrose, Your concepts are interesting, I think, but there is a tendency for you to stuff a whole bunch of information into one paragraph without really explaining any of it. Then the next paragraph goes on to new information without connecting it to the previous paragraph. When reading your work, it's almost like you make an assumption that the reader will know -exactly what you're talking about-: names, places, physical appearances, etc., but often the characters haven't been defined enough to make any sense of who they are or why they're in your story. Then, they become confusing. Some of your characters are described physically, but I struggle to feel connected to them. You are clearly a very prolific writer; I would suggest that you have a friend read your stories -out loud-, not to you, but to another friend; it's always difficult to hear flaws in your own stories because they're already in your head- *you* understand what you are saying, but do others? I suspect that the command of English is not the trouble; if you live in the Maldives, English is probably in fairly regular use; the problem is that it's written almost in *dialect*, which to most readers comes across as sounding a little awkward. I'm not going to suggest that you try to change the cadences of your stories to 'British English', if you don't want to (there are many very good stories written in the native 'voice' of a country or place), but I would highly recommend that you go back over your many stories and work on the -characters- in them. The reader can't feel sympathy for people who are not clearly defined. I hope this helps.