Bloopers, Blunders and OMGs

I decided to set up a dedicated page for readers to point out “Bloopers, Blunders and OMGs”.  This also includes continuity errors .  I not only have a special spot for it but I actively encourage you to point these things out.  I try to make changes immediately (assuming it was an error and not the main character just being wrong).  I am not sure this is going to as convenient as a forum, since the comments will be hidden/nested under my posts.  Don’t despair, I do read and update.  When I do I will comment back.  I should probably put up a notice if I rev the book.  That way each version can have its own comments.

6 thoughts on “Bloopers, Blunders and OMGs

  1. Okay, I am pretty much testing how this will show up on the page. WordPress tools aren’t always clear…

    I got an e-mail from Amazon’s “Kindle Quality Notice”. Despite its scary title, it appears that it’s a way for readers to leave feedback to the author for corrections. Neat, but a bit confusing format. Also, I use the Kindle app and I never saw any means of doing this. Perhaps it’s only for the Kindle hardware platform. I copied and pasted this below. The corrections are submitted anonymously but I would like to thank whatever nameless person submitted this for helping me make this a better book.

    “Hello,

    We’re writing to let you know that readers have reported a problem in your book:

    Error Category: Formatting-Others; Kindle Location: 881; Errored text: may might. ; Context: unless they were willing to use explosives.  Which they just may might.  Damn.  Now I didn’t want to leave my home where; Comments: “which they just may might” should be “which they just might”
    Error Category: Formatting-Others; Kindle Location: 2289; Errored text: he; Context: a man of principle and wanted justice or revenge… or he what he had now dwarfed what I had taken from; Comments: “or he what he had” should be “or what he had”
    Error Category: Typo; Kindle Location: 2441; Errored text: the difference the difference; Context: at this statement. “He guards you and doesn’t even know the difference the difference between fairies and elves?” “I am not truly an elf,”; Comments: “even know the difference the difference” should be “even know the difference”
    Error Category: Typo; Kindle Location: 5172; Errored text: citied; Context: the entire world with no real pattern.  It was the citied highlighted in blue that worried me.  These were the cities; Comments: It was the citied highlighted” should be “It was the cities highlighted”
    Error Category: Typo; Kindle Location: 5677; Errored text: me; Context: the tiny Liberty Bell replica.  This brought a smile to me face, which in turn seemed to annoy the vampire assassin; Comments: “a smile to me face” should be “a smile to my face”

    This will not affect the availability of your book. After you’ve made the corrections, please upload your revised content through the Book Content section of your KDP Bookshelf. If you have further questions, please reply directly to this email and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can.

    For more information about specific book errors (including why some errors are more critical than others), see our Help page: https://kdp.amazon.com/help?topicId=A1MMQ0JHRBEINX

    For a complete guide to building a book for Kindle, see the Kindle Publishing Guidelines: https://kindlegen.s3.amazonaws.com/AmazonKindlePublishingGuidelines.pdf

    Thanks for using Amazon KDP.

    Best regards,
    Amazon KDP http://kdp.amazon.com

    Thank you.
    Amazon.com”

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  2. Okay, that was educational. Now I see that every reply will be nested under my entry. This is not a Blog type page either, where I add entries and each one has comments. I’ll see if this page is even used before I make a decision on how useful it is… or isn’t.

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  3. Well, I better get to taking notes on those errors Grammarly missed. For starters, I am fairly certain that you meant “…a dribble [of] his blood…” in chapter 1 sentence 3. Not “… a dribble if his blood…”

    I also took some notes on a few errors I noticed in the previous two books. Unfortunately, I am woefully disorganized and have misplaced said noes. Maybe once I find them again I can send them before I inevitably drop it in some dark crevice, couch cushion, or endless to-be-read pile.

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  4. Ok, I finished my first look through the new book and caught a few errors. To be fair, I probably would have noticed more if I could stop laughing anywhere in the first half and if I were not sleep deprived for the second part. However, I reserve the right to shift blame to you for writing such engaging characters and dynamic plots. It is absolutely no fault of mine that I refused to sleep until I finished the book.

    Anyway, the most common trend I found was excluding a comma between sentence clauses and before conjunctions, but that happened often enough that it might as well be a stylistic choice rather than an error. If you want I could start listing the specific sentences, but it likely won’t be prudent.

    On page 17, “… I glanced {to the side at Beth was still} looking at the dragon with a subdued shiver.” has a bit convoluted wording in the area I marked with curly braces.

    On page 21-22 “After all, small portals opening for a few minutes in random location[s], but limited to the ten worlds[,] was still better than…” Just forgot a comma and an “s” after “location”. Alternatively, if a verb like “being” was inserted before “limited”, a third comma would be unnecessary.

    On page 43, the second paragraph of chapter four “I did get some looks from the crowd I was passing through[,] as well as a few people I send flying.” The “send” should probably be replaced with “sent” so that verb tenses agree, but the comma is only a suggestion.

    Page 44 “Once I flipped the man over[,] it was clear from the…” I don’t want to type the entire sentence on the off chance this comment is public, but the conclusion is never identified. Something is clear, but that something is never stated. Plus, the sentence in itself is a very long fragment. There is a prepositional phrase (the noun in the phrase doesn’t count) followed by a verb followed by an object (technically an object with many full clauses that serve the same purpose as an adjective).

    Page 224 “The[y] were actually lucky I was in my adult form.”
    I think you forgot a letter (sorry for the long gap, I became engrossed).

    Page 304 “It wasn’t that far away as the dragonflies.”
    I am fairly certain you meant “dragon flies”. Don’t listen to the Grammarly, it is lying here.

    Page 442 “Truly[,] … in their illusionary skill[s].” Again, don’t know if others will see this.
    The comma after truly is not completely necessary, but I do recommend changing “skilled” to “skills”.

    There were more I spotted, but these are the ones I had the presence of mind to write down. Knowing your books, I am very likely to read this again with more meticulous attention. It is very hard to resist the urge to guzzle up every sentence without taking more time away than is necessary to eat, breathe, and avoid sleep.
    Again, definitely not my fault.

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    1. Thanks for sending me the errors to fix. It seems no matter how many I fix there are more but my goal is to minimize them enough that they don’t distract from the story. As I mentioned in my blog, I swear they lobotomized Grammarly. It used to be far more useful… or it seems that way. But the dragonflies is definitely its fault (whistles innocently).

      People definitely can see the published bloopers so there is a danger of spoilers but if they are reading this page they have likely already read the book or they just want a good laugh.

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