Hi Snark,
I'm new here too, and the lack of response can drive you crazy, so I thought us new guys should stick together.
First, I'm an amateur, so you have to take what I say in that light. I thought your piece was better than my first attempt. The opening pulled me into the story within a couple of paragraphs.
I know with mine, I wanted my characters plausible, and plot logical, so I added things to the story to explain the character or plot, and the result was draining on the drama. A couple of times with yours I felt less detail would have the kept the pace of the story faster. There were several paragraphs on putting on a body harness, and I would have been happy with, "She put on the body harness," and then gotten on to the good stuff. Several paragraphs I skimmed, impatient to get to more action.
I know with me I have a different perspective when I'm writing at home, and when I view a story on the Web. At home I get into the detail and love it. I pat myself on the shoulder and say, "Oh yeah, I covered that well." I just lap up drama in the detail. When I'm on the Web, I want stories that have a lot of drama. So I've found myself in a battle between the drama I love at home in the detail, and the need to produce a fast pace that keeps readers attention on the Web. My second piece had less talk and more action, and I thought that was better. It got better reviews (3 - Wup Dee Doo!, and 4 reader emails, and 1 forum member email on the story. Over 10,000 downloads and 8 responses. Jesus.) I figure it was because I kept the pace faster (just a guess because of low response rate). (In fairness though, I've got say I have a long piece up -9 chapters- and that a lot to ask anyone to read.)
So I'm always in battle between detail to be logical which I love at home, and the need to keep the pace moving. I've got a 3rd story in the works, using 2 chapters to set the story up, and I hate those 2 first chapters. I can't seem to get them to suck people into the drama. I read your's starting paragraphs and thought, "He's doing a better job than I am at it." The formula I'm going to try to use is keep plot and character detail low, but allow detail into the action sequences.
I liked your action sequence with the movie shoot, and I found your ending a good way to wrap the story up.
So there you go! As one person who doesn't know what he's doing to another person just starting out.
Overall, I liked it. Beginning and end especially, middle not so much.
Good luck and I'd like to see another.
TG (Thomas_g50)