Hi Hogank. I see you're open to some constructive criticism. Good. First, I think the idea at the core of this is interesting. I especially like the scene where the protagonist eats her husband's pink slip - I think because it is both so absurd, unexpected and also very real. I did have some issues with the lack of a hook. There is a fair amount of detail about how these two people go about the beginning of their day, I think too much and it doesn't compel me to go on. Instead I began wondering where the story was going to begin. You need a hook and a little edge - it is in some sense about a housewife smoking crystalmeth right? Why don't you have the story start with her either smoking it or trying to score some from a fellow member of the PTA? That might serve to both ratchet up the tension and hook the reader with your portrayal of this world of the domesticated wife who happens to be steeped in drug culture. I think you need some heat in the beginning. Also, many of the paragraphs read rushed to me and, for lack of a better description: run-on-ideas. Don't be afraid to break up the paragraphs a little. This seemed to get worse in those paragraphs describing the shopping and meeting the woman in the grocery store. Again, good ideas here, but I think it could take polishing.

Hi Christine. I liked your story very much. I especially like the dual aspect of the two infernos - the one on 9/11 and the wildfire one. Marion confesses to having taken advantage of an opportunity the first inferno gave her just before nearly having her life taken in the second. Nice narrative irony. I suppose my only criticism (I'm a writer too), is sometimes I found the omniscient narrator a bit too expository. For example, the line where Abby squeezes Marion's hand near the top of page 13, describing Marion as being reasonable. It may serve to let the reader make such conclusions instead of the narrator "telling the story." Let the reader draw such a conclusion through the action and dialogue. It is tempting to let an omniscient third-person narrator end up telling the story. Sometimes you can't get around it, but I find it diminishes the story for the narrator to feed me things I should be able to ascertain myself. Oh, I also lost a house to a wildfire though that was back in California and the fire didn't travel quite as fast as the one you described, but I do relate to your characters' plight. Well done.