The Good
- This story (thanks to a revised intro) is now solidly and unequivocably involves a faerie--really an ex-faerie--which enabled me to emphasize her "faerie-ness" in ways people seemed to like.
- The end had a "convincing twist." One person used the words "O Henry-like," but I'm pretty sure it was meant in a positive way.
- There was suprise the ending was happy, even "sweet." Not my usual fare, it's true. (Note to self, next story should include some "extreme horror" elements.) ;)
- Folks liked my juxtaposition of worlds where the mundane world of people in a dead-end job mixes with the world of faeries.
- Some narrative problems describing some physical mechanics involving a truck poised on the edge of a bluff, a rope, and the best place to tie...well, I could say more, but I'd be giving away plot.
- I gave some (too) vague hints that the faerie in question had put herself in a LITTLE MERMAID-type situation. But folks needed/wanted more.
- Since I created a setting where the workaday world of grocery-store employees mixes with the world of faeries, some readers needed to know the extent to which the main characters' co-workers were aware of that particular reality. (I kinda, sorta addressed this in a rewrite no one's seen yet.)
- People wanted a little more about faerie mechanics in this little world I've set up, specifically where it relates to a plot point about faerie anatomy.
- There was some lively debate about the ending, the implications of which were strikingly clear to some who read it exactly as I intended, and strikingly unclear to others for whom questions were raised. I admit, I wasn't prepared for that.