FREEVIEW: 'A Desperate Cry' by Lisa Robertson

This review is of a free story, available at the link provided. If you have a free story under 20,000 words available online please feel free to send a link to podpeep at gmail.com, even when general submissions are closed.

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TITLE: A Desperate Cry
AUTHOR: Lisa Robertson
PRICE: FREE
GENRE: horror short story
ISBN: n/a
PUBLISHER: Lulu
POINT OF SALE: Lulu

Providing a free short story makes perfect sense as a marketing plan. When it comes to self-published authors the reader typically has no way at all to know whether the book will be excellent or tortuously terrible. So Lisa Roberston who has a detective novel and poetry collection for sale offers us a short (and I mean very short at somewhat less than two pages) sample to get some idea of her writing abilities.

Unfortunately the story has been poorly edited with stray punctuation marks and awkward phrasing. The story itself is melodramatic without any real plot or greater message. A somewhat unhinged woman waits for her tardy lover and his lack of consideration has bloody consequences. However knowing very little about either character I has no particular feeling about this outcome.

Very short stories need to have a real impact be it beautiful expression, a narrative twist or really any other device. Otherwise they become a few brief paragraphs of "something happened", provoking no particular reaction. This story fell flat for me with its only real virtue being brevity. If this represents the quality of the authors longer works it does not encourage me to purchase them.

Rating 2/10