Right. Time to drop my funsy side and be serious.

Your writing with Valdez had a marked improvement over the time, something that was fine tuned no doubt as the character grew. Sure it has its light moments, that everyone loves, but also serious ones. One can truly see that the 'Valdez joi de vivre" does fade when she deals with the cheating by Loyola or life does not go her way. I actually feel the sadness taking place.

I love the description routine you do at the beginning in almost every post of your stories, well thought out, with excelent vocab, better than mine no doubt, setting up the scene so that our imagination can actually picture it.

Only miff I have and this is an opinion only, is that the off coloring of the description and actual dialogue doesn't work that well to split and organize visually the story.

First post in Amidst the Sand is my top fav.

<3