I first heard of my uncle’s marriage from rumors that had circulated from neighbors of friends of friends. I didn’t put much stock in it. It would have been totally out of character from the man I knew. Conor was like a father to me, and had sent money to my parents to fund a private education. I received a public education, with my parents using the money sent to fund expensive vacations, while I was left at home with a babysitter.
Conor had sent letters to me every week telling me about his life, and wishing me well. He always told me how great a man I was going to grow up to be. I only wished to be like him, and not my parents.
My first reaction is that some of the sentence structures were confusing to me. For instance, "I received a public education..."
Have you thought of changing things around a bit to something like "I received a public education, while my parents used the money to fund expensive vacations. I was left home with a babysitter."
I personally suffer from the run-on-sentence disease, so it could be that I'm being overly sensitive.
I also found "He always told me..." sentence tricky. I think the problem is a dangling participle or misplaced referent, but this is the part of grammar that I can't usually name, just notice. Again I think a rewording would easily fix it, or breaking up the thought into two (or more) distinct sentences.
I'm not sure I'm hooked yet, and in a short story under 2k words, I think the early hook is really important. Is there a way to get some forewarning of the pending issue here?
Good luck with this. It seems like a great start.
Karen
This doesn't really grip me, but I think it's close. It just that the MC doesn't seem too interested herself (oops -- himself. Maybe give us a clue on the sex earlier). Whatever tension and struggle is in your story, let's see it here.
You are trying too hard to build sympathy for the MC. IMHO it could have been accomplished with a few short sentences. Then there would be room to introduce plot-conlict.
Is it Uncle Connor?
Send it over.