If you like science fiction, Jonathan Eli is giving away a free copy of his book “The Last Cabbandeum” at Smashwords to the first five people who comment on any post on his blog.

http://jonathanelibooks.blogspot.com

I just started reading Blood Lust by Zoe Winters. I’ve already read the three novellas, each one a great read by itself. But this time, I’m going to read them all together. I won’t have to wait on the next installment…just go right into the next one. I love these novellas and I’m excited about getting into Zoe’s world again. After all, she’s the reason I’m writing. 😉

Also, if any of you are Science Fiction fans, you might want to try the novel by a new author, Jonathan Eli. It’s called The Last Cabbandeum. I edit Jonathan’s books for him, so if there are errors, it’s my fault I didn’t catch them. LOL. If any readers see errors, I hope they’ll let us know so we can fix them.

I’ve been reading so many different types of books lately. Everything from young adult to paranormal romance to murder mysteries to horror. And I’ve found a lot of authors that I’ve never heard of, most of them indies. (I find a lot of them on Zoe’s blog.) I know that most people kind of stick to the genre they like best, but I think readers cheat themselves by not dipping into a different kind of book now and then. So take a chance. If you like paranormal romance, try a murder mystery. If you like horror, try science fiction. Just please don’t ever ask me to read any more “classic literature”. My life is too short to be bored to tears. LOL

I’ve thought about trying to find a couple of serious crit partners, but I’ve decided against it. I already have two, one who is an avid reader and the other who is a fellow author, but sometimes they are too close and might not have a critical enough eye. They love me too much! :0) But the critical eye thing is why I wouldn’t make a good partner for an author trying to make their book the very best it can be. Because when I read, I want to be entertained. I want to be barely able to put the book down. And that’s my main criteria for a good book. I don’t want to get hung up on every little, teeny thing that other people might see as something that should be changed. I just don’t want to get bored. So I would probably be too easy on the author’s work. If I like it and it takes me away for awhile, I don’t care if it isn’t perfect. And I think most readers (who aren’t writers) feel that way. And even though I’m a writer, I’m not so critical of other people’s work. I know of an indie author who a lot of the other indies say is SO good. And she’s done well. But after reading the first book in the series, I’m thinking that I really don’t want to read more. After I got about halfway through the book, I started getting a little bored. If other authors say her writing is good, then maybe it is. But I don’t really like it that well. I HAVE to be entertained. That’s why I don’t like most classic literature. It’s kind of the same way with movies. If the critics don’t like it, I probably will. They don’t look at entertainment value, they look at picky little things that normal movie goers couldn’t care less about.

After saying all that, I do want to make it clear that I AM very critical of misspelled words, glaring grammatical errors, and terrible punctuation. There’s really no excuse for a lot of that. If you’re not a good proofreader, hire someone to do it for you. In fact, when I read some of the indie work, I feel like saying, “I wish you had called me! I would have only charged about $30 to proof this.” Now, I’m not saying I always catch everything. Sometimes you are too close to your work and miss things. (Or maybe you’ve proofed someone else’s work and it had so many errors it was hard to catch them all.) But I’ve only been made aware of about 3 errors in my books (there may be more that no one has caught or said anything about; I hope people will tell me so I can fix them). Even traditionally published books have that many or more. But some of the books I’ve read recently have 4 or 5 errors in EVERY chapter. One author, after getting a bad review for so many errors, stated that she actually had paid someone to edit. If I ever edited a book and it still had errors, I would drop everything and make corrections free of charge until it was right. I would never charge for editing it again if it was my fault it didn’t get caught in the first place. And I hope the author I referred to went back to her editor and demanded the corrections.

Whew, it seems like I digressed. All this was sort of part of the same thought, but it kind of came across disjointed. That’s ok. It’s just my blog and I can ramble if I want to. LOL