Sunday, February 10, 2013
New Story: "Glaze"
My latest short story, "Glaze," is about a high school art student from earth who wins a full-ride scholarship to the Martian Art Institute. I wrote this one using a technique I heard about somewhere, not from start to finish but rather scene by scene. The story was inspired by my son, also a high school art student, who soon will face challenges similar to the main character.
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Dr. Gordon was kind enough to allow me to read an advance copy of “Glaze.” I actually am
ReplyDeletenot into the fine arts scene at all, and might even have a negative bias against it, and even so the story for the most part hit the mark with me. I think Dr. Gordon uses just the right amount of art technical details to keep the story moving without boring a layman. I found the general premise (which I will not reveal here) to actually be fairly original.
Seeing the name of the “Martian Institute of Art and Design” in the opening few sentences set
off my "cheesy" alarm and thereby affected my early-on suspension of disbelief--that was an
early flag for me, whether justly or not. Overall, however, I thought the treatment of the school on Mars and everything thereof was quite good, and a few paragraphs later I was more than
rescued back to be interested and fully engrossed. The transitions were quite good--nothing was choppy--and the author manages to span time and space nicely. I thought the ending, while being a good way to end the story thematically, lacked a bit of a punch. The story built me up to actually caring about the outcome, and in the end I DID still care about the outcome, but I didn't get quite the payout I was expecting.
Overall, the story kept me involved and engrossed throughout, and I did enjoy it. While I think Dr. Gordon’s style is different from mine, I found myself wishing I could emulate some of what he did here.
-Erik B. Scott