I really dislike doing this because it seems so much like begging for attention, but I have a story I’ve been working on for years and I would really like some feedback on it.

It’s a sorta-kinda ghost story but in the vein of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting Of Hill House where the frights don’t come cheaply from blood and gore and monsters that pop out at you, but instead some strange creepy occurrences and things that go bump in the night. Sorta-kinda.

I play with some tropes. The story takes place not an old victorian mansion but a modern office building. The timeframe is the worst of the subprime mortgage collapse which is important to the background of the plot.

My main characters are a young gay male couple going through a bad patch due to money problems brought on by the meltdown, and also the spending habits of one of them. That one accepts a part in a cheap reality TV ghost hunter show to make a few bucks, but also he’s a computer geek…I play some with that trope too…and a rationalist with an obsession for debunking what he considers occult balony.

There are also a handful of other characters, amature ghost hunters and reality TV charlitans. And lurking in the background, a bunch of brutal predatory capitalists involved in building this luxury office building that nobody, including themselves, wants to spend the night in after it was completed. Or any other time of day.

What I’d like to know is the writing good enough it doesn’t bore you to tears reading it? Do my characters seem realistic? Is the dialogue convincing? Does the story make you want to read more as you go along? I’ve only finished (somewhat) six chapters of it and it’s hard to keep going without any feedback. And truth be told I’m still working on the middle part. I know what it has to do, not just how to do it.

The first chapter, which I’ve posted elsewhere, and got some Very good feedback on, is only one page. It basically tells you what the story is about. If it doesn’t interest you it’s okay to bail after that. The second chapter is background for my two main characters and why they got themselves into this reality TV thing. If they don’t interest you go ahead and bail there. The third chapter is exposition, as they’re driving to the site, on the history of the building that’s allegedly haunted. Does this interest you? If not go ahead and bail there. Things don’t really start happening until the fourth chapter and maybe that’s a mistake but I wanted to set the stage and lure the reader in.

Comment on this post (it’s the React! link) or email me if you like at bgarrett@pobox.com (the brucegarrett address is whitelisted so I would need to add you first) and I’ll send you the links to the Google Docs.

Otherwise…pointers to a good editor I can hire to look it over would be welcome too.