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.
]]>I find it amusing the the Sad/Rabid supporters (I like puppies too much to call them that) keep claiming that the results support their views. Umm, No They Don't. It shows that the S/Rs don't have the influence that they and their flunkies imagine they do. Twitter conversations seem to go something like: flunky: It shows the awards are controlled by the Elites! "Elite": Did you vote for what you wanted? f: Err, no. "E": Then please STFU.
I'd be tempted to say: You keep using these Words; I do not think they mean what you think they mean.
*And if I had a dollar for every white guy I've met who claimed to be part Native American... I usually hear it as "I'm a quarter Cherokee". The only one I've taken seriously was a former boss who was half Cherokee, I met her father so yeah that was true.
]]>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.
]]>Hoooookayyyy.
]]>Someone I know once made the comment that Kinsey's sexuality spectrum is often used to invalidate bisexuality. That in response to telling people she is bisexual, she is often met with the response that 'we're all a little bit bisexual' or 'sexuality is fluid' – which ultimately turns into pressure for her to identify as either straight or lesbian. She also complained that talking about sexuality as a spectrum treats bisexuality as being 'half-way' between being straight and gay, rather than as a sexuality which has something of an independent identity.
You admitted that there are problems with Kinsey's methodology. I think perhaps one of the reasons his conceptualisation of sexuality as a spectrum hasn't been thoroughly adopted is because we still don't have a very good picture of sexuality, and that its acceptance presents problems for people whose sexualities are not a good fit for his spectrum.
More to the point, I'm not sure how your argument applies to the gender of characters and authors. In the current state of literature, characters tend to be cis unless the author is making a point of a character being non-cis, let alone specifically non-binary. While for placing authors on a 2D spectrum by their gender and sexuality? At best that reads to me as being fairly invasive. At worst it demands a completely unethical level of disclosure on the part of authors. Can't we just take authors at their face value, and go by their preferred pronouns in the absence of any definitive statement as to their gender?
]]>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.
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