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The Retirement Plan - ALL 31 CHAPTERS - Please critique

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Areanor
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Posted: Sun 27 Feb , 2005 12:32 am
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The Epilogue?

I don't know if I got it...

It's a dream, isn't it? A night-mare hawthorne has. He dreams about the scene that he imagines to happen years later. 'cause at the funeral he has white hair and wrinkles, but when he wakes up and looks into the mirror he has black hair and a smooth face.

I liked the twisting. And I thought about it and considered if that night mare could be true. Then I thought - well, it's the FBI. The first thing they would have done is to delete Aitkin's user rights - including his password.

Hell, they should have - if they are half as efficient as the computer geeks of the bank I'm working at. The day after I left for parental holiday, my account was cleared and I couldn't get access anymore. AND my boss had told them I was going to work some hours while on holiday!

long report, Rodia. I'll type mine up later, just wanted to say that about the epilogue.

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Rodia
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Posted: Mon 28 Feb , 2005 2:56 pm
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I had the luxury of the only published copy:P I made notes on the margins, so it was easy to go back and type them up.

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yovargas
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Posted: Tue 12 Jul , 2005 5:25 pm
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How long did it take you to write this, Steve?

If I could get a printed copy, I'd love to read it (don't have a printer unfortunately...)


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Lidless
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Posted: Wed 13 Jul , 2005 1:49 am
Als u het leven te ernstig neemt, mist u de betekenis.
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Well back in 99 I took a sabbatical for a year and got bored pretty quick.

One day I was driving home when I had the idea for the book. By the time I got home, I'd worked out the first chapter and the epilog (which, btw no one has gotten the twist yet - I need to work on that). Then it took another eight months filling in the gaps - including a week of research in Washington.

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Eltirwen
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Posted: Wed 13 Jul , 2005 4:09 pm
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I think the epilogue is a dream, or more appropriately, a nightmare.

My main reason for believing this is that Hawthorne sees Vandersmissen as his age at the time of the investigation, not older. He can imagine himself as an old person, since he's seen his father (even though he's adopted), but cannot imagine his friend old, therefore the friend made the videotape all those years ago. I really don't think a journalist could keep the secret all those years. And if he'd ever run out of projects to do, he might have gotten cocky, done it again, and gotten caught.

And really, the assistant AG explanation is much less far-fetched. I have difficulty believing that a man who throws himself in front of a bullet for pure friendship, and does not exploit that situation in his own need years later, could perform such horrifying acts merely to further his own career.

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Lidless
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Posted: Thu 14 Jul , 2005 4:56 am
Als u het leven te ernstig neemt, mist u de betekenis.
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If you read the last paragraph, you'll see that Hawthorne is still 39. Also, the last word is all capital letters.

What the epilog is trying to say is that it is not beyond the realms of fantasy that Vandersmissen did it. Hawthorne's dream, since people sometimes wake up inspired (Paul McCartney's Yesterday, for example), could be the brain mulling over a problem and see the jigsaw differently.

In the end the reader doesn't know.

Glad you made it to the end.

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