Anyway, decades late: Ms. Ore, thank you for making my undergrad years a lot more pleasant through your alien trilogy. Wore my copies out, and it's still one of favorite multispecies societies.
Not to derail the conversation, just thought I'd add some positive feedback for a change.
Now, where did I put my hammer and tongs for dealing with this difficult issue?
]]>Ditto. Also Gaia's Toys. And Time's Child. And others. Occasionally I would find out you'd written something new, and it would be a great few hours reading it.
It wasn't until last week that I found I had somehow missed Outlaw School and now I have that great feeling of something to look forward to again.
]]>Judith: awesome post. Thank you.
I've been thinking about all the comments, especially those from other writers. I put my thoughts on my own blog, because they are too long and personal for here and because I think maybe this conversation has run down and my timing is off.
If you're interested, here's my personal take:
]]>This thread has given me so many people's books to check out. Mind you, since I'm still working my way through the list of interesting web-comics from a comment thread a couple of months ago it will be a long-term effort.
]]>I've been aware for a little while that I don't read enough women authors, but haven't been exploring new authors recently.
As a result of this bundle, I finished reading Forgotten Suns by Judith Tarr yesterday and thoroughly enjoyed the more fantastic space opera style.
I think Forgotten Suns could definitely have done with a copy editor, and possibly a regular editor (though I'm not so good at judging these things). I guess lacking these things is just a side effect of publishing with such a small outfit.
Recommendations for which author in the bundle to try next are most welcome.
]]>Having been with the "big outfits" for decades, I can assure you that no book has ever been published without errors. (We still remember the ROUGE QUEEN debacle of the Eighties.)
The formatter, Vonda N. McIntyre, has a book in the bundle as well. It's one of my favorites.
]]>The most common issue for me was what I perceived as missing words, rather than misspellings or homonyms.
As for structural oddities, SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS Aisha's brother believes that the new interns are MI/Corps infiltrators, but that's not mentioned at all at the time of Aisha and Rama's return to Nevermore. SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS
I didn't mean to offend with my comment.
]]>Your post hit a number of popular diminishment points: assumption of bad or no editing, accusation of bad or no proofreading, dismissal of publisher. The fact it was more thoroughly edited and more extensively revised and rewritten than all but a handful of my major-publisher publications, and has fewer errors than most of them (today in fact we're going through the publisher-formatted ebook of a newly reverted title and oy oy scanner-trainwreck OYYY), is irrelevant. It, and I, must be cut down to size.
For future reference, when dealing with small press ebooks, notably Book View Cafe, it's quite easy to correct errors. Just send a note to customer service. Many times they'll make the corrections quickly and send you a new copy.
Also for future reference, it's not a good idea to take authors to task for errors on major-press publications. There is no recourse there.
]]>I think my first comment here annoyed you, and I think I understand why. I apologise for that comment and for my misunderstandings within it.
I absolutely did not intend to denigrate yourself or Book View Cafe and I am sorry that you felt/feel like I did. I will endeavour to be more careful in my expression and will try to spot unconscious bias in my judgements of women authors.
I would like to emphasise that when I said I thought the text could have done with an editor, it was solely with respect to the structural oddity I mentioned above, not some wider criticism of the text (and I don't even know if such oddities are the realm of copy editors, hence my original hedging).
Anyway, I shall stop digging.
I have since finished Linda Nagata's Memory and thoroughly enjoyed that, too.
]]>Meant "like you did".
]]>In a ms. of almost 150K words, revised multiple times and heavily rewritten three times (the editor is a stone-hearted bitch and I love her and curse her in equal measure), a continuity glitch may happen.
Or there may be a loose end that gets tied up in a sequel. :)
You missed a bigger one: what happened to the gang at Starsend. But that's definitely a driver for the next book. Along with SPOILER and EXCISED FOR SPOILERIFICITY and REDACTED.
]]>