"College Reunion" by Deidre Ng. Deidre did something that I strongly recommend. She *revised* her story before she reposted it. What I am going to do in this review is read both versions and try to detect what improvements occur in the revision. If this doesn't work or if I think it will become incredibly boring to readers, I'll just zap out these sentences.
The first version, unfortunately, earned a rating of 10. Unfortunately, because I didn't see how she could improve on it. I was hoping that she would get a 6 and really improve it through revisions, and we could use this as a lesson to budding authors. The punctuation of this first version was a little rough - it would earn a D in format and an A in content from a good English teacher with hormones. But I was so attracted by the content that I chose to ignore these errors, because they didn't really distract me; and I am not under the delusion that the forte of either Ng sister is punctuation anyway (although I have heard that on her own word processor Tammy uses the Spanish upside-down exclamation point, because it's more of a turn-on than the traditional Anglo version). On the other hand, it would be polite for her to proofread and correct the errors.
What she did well in the original version of this story was maintain sexual tension. I guess the story would be better if I knew the reason why it was appropriate for her friend to open the door and immediately start sexual foreplay with her friend. Is this something the two women had done before, perhaps when they were roommates in college? Had they always been attracted and only now chosen to act upon their attraction? Had one or both of them previously been involved in a heterosexual relationship? Answers to these questions could make the story even better. We'll see.
I have now read the second version, and the improvements were outstanding. In retrospect, now that I've seen the improvements, I should have giving the original a lower rating; but it *was* pretty good compared to other stories. I would have to change my rating scale to reflect this improvement. The grammatical errors are gone, but in addition she has improved the *content* of the story by answering questions like those I raised in the previous paragraph. It has to give an author a warm feeling inside to achieve this level of improvement. (Of course, a warm feeling inside seems to be a chronic phenomenon for Deidre, if you know what I mean.) With Deidre's permission, I am going to repost the original version at the same time I post this review. The value of this will be that authors interested in improving their own writing can compare the two to notice the improvements. If you want to read only one version of a good story, you should find the revision, which was posted a few days ago as "Sisters Ng: College Reunion by Deidre Ng." The first draft was good sex. The second was a good story, plus even better sex.