Looking for beta readers for a SF short story

I thought I posted a plea for help here last night but I can't find it anywhere today, so I'm issuing a new one.

Basically, I'm looking for a few beta readers for a short story I wrote. The genre is science fiction, and it's pretty long as far as short stories go, but I wouldn't call it a novelette.

If you want to read it, just PM me or post to this thread. Thanks.

A renowned Alaskan paleontologist goes missing. Within a week, his son receives a phone call from a man who claims to know what happened to him. Now Jesse Gardner must travel back to the Cretaceous in the dead of a North Slope winter to find his father--a task which would be easier if he could take his human body with him.

Thanks, I'm just looking for people to read it and tell me what they think. There isn't any area in particular that I'm looking for help with, I just need people to tell me if anything is "off."

I sent an earlier draft to the Writers of the Future contest last quarter and got a personalized not saying I should resubmit in the next quarter. I just want to make sure it's as polished as possible when I send it in again.

Well, they said that I was in the top 10% for the quarter. I think they asked everyone who made it that far to resubmit, so I'm definitely not alone. And, having read the last 4 anthologies from this contest, I know it's going to be really stiff competition.

None of my favorite stories have come from the Writers of the Future Contest but there are a lot of good, memorable stories. If I were pressed to list my Top 20, there might be a couple in there, maybe "Meeting the Sculptor," "God Loves the Infantry," and "Magpie."

I sent you an email using the AW "Send Email" form, Nicole. It wouldn't let me attach anything, but if you reply to it, I should be able to send an RTF. My email address is [email protected]. You could just PM me or email me with your address and I could send you the story.

Thanks.

You're not an idiot. A beta reader is basically just a reader; anyone who didn't come into contact with the term through a message board like this would probably not know it.

Writers give their story to beta readers so they can give a general response to the story. It's like beta testing a coputer application--you work through all the bugs before you ship it out.

Gonzo said:

Thanks alaskamatt, I thought it may be something like that but didn't know the terminology or where it originated from - like to know what words mean before I ever use them - don't want agree to something and wake up 24 hours later in Bangkok with a guy called Didi cuddling me...

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Yeah, that would be pretty rough. I promise my story won't do that to you.
If you want to read it, just send me an email with "Feral" in the subject line, and I'll send you the story as an .rtf file (my address is [email protected] or [email protected]).

Annie O., the same thing. I either can't send attachments using the AW send email form or just haven't figured it out.

Thanks.