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The paperback had a really cool cover. 'Superbly crafted dark fantasy', it said. I was hooked.
If only I hadn't tried to read the damn thing...
Isabella’s rage gave her strength and she bit down hard and took off part of Peter’s tongue. Then she snatched his hand from under her dress and kicked out and up with both legs to get Peter off her. Isabella was now free from his grasp and he was reeling in agony, holding his bloodied face. She lifted a rock and with all the strength she had left to muster, she bashed in Peter’s skull and then spat on him in disgust…
…Isabella left the body and slowly walked up towards the castle. She should have gone home but something urged her to continue to her planned destination.
Dracula went over to Peter’s body and drained whatever blood was left. He then raced up to the castle so that he would get there before Isabella.
Isabella knocked on the door and Vlad opened it.
“What’s wrong?” he asked her, mocking concern.
“I was attacked,” Isabella said, gasping for air, “Attacked, who attacked you?”
“I think his name was Peter.”
“Was?”
“He’s dead. I killed him.” Her words were not laced with any sign of remorse.
“You killed him?”
“Yes.”
“You murdered him? You ended the life of a human being?” Dracula said, trying to act self-righteous.
“Yes I have and I will end another human being’s life by the end of the day.” Isabella said with venom.
“Does this walking corpse have a name?”
“Natasha. She’s my half-sister. She told Peter to kill me!” Vlad turned from Isabella and smiled to himself. He liked this woman. Then he faced her again with a look of feigned concern, “I’ll walk you back to the village.”
“All right.”
From page 41 of ‘Vrolok’ by Nolene-Patricia Dougan, published by AuthorHouse 2006
I have taken care to ensure that the punctuation in the above passage is exactly as it appears in the book.
The blurb on the back describes the author as ‘the new Anne Rice’.
Hmm…
Here’s another gem from page 164:
Isabella had not seen Kit since he had been so rude to her and she no intention of seeking him out. But, one night in November, 1593, he decided to seek her out.
And on page 350 we find this:
“Let’s rush them,” Driscoll shouted. “There are only three of them.”
“Four,” Isabella shouted back. Driscoll started to laugh when he saw Isabella holding a shotgun. One of the others started to laugh and said.
“There is still only three…women can’t shoot for shit.” Isabella without a moment’s hesitation shot the man through the skull. All the men including Tom and Wyatt were shocked by Isabella’s actions and the accuracy of her aim. The initial reaction to this event was a stunned silence, but then laughter emanated from Nicolae and Tom.
‘Vrolok’ was purchased by Sunderland City Libraries from Bertrams in 2010 at a cost of £15.49.
Makes you think, doesn’t it?
Comments
Dear Goddess
I can't believe that got published. I am at a loss for words that could truly describe how horrible that is, and I know a lot of words. I've written rough outlines that are better structured, have better punctuation, and are more interesting. The worst part is that they thought to compare that to Anne Rice's work.
*hugs*
Amethyst
Don't take me too seriously. I'm just kitten around. :3
Wow.
Just... wow. Suddenly my works look much better to me, for some reason.
Nicki, how about we throw a "so glad we aren't that shit-tastic" party? We can invite everyone here.
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If you appreciate my tales, please consider supporting me on Patreon so that I may continue:
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I can safely say there isn't
I can safely say there isn't a single author on here who would be left out.
Ah yes....
…Isabella left the body and slowly walked up towards the castle. She should have gone home but something urged her to continue to her planned destination....
And you wanted to close the book but something urged you to continue to delve into the banality. Isn't a destination always 'destined?' And someone got paid for that. Yes, indeed; it does make me think. Could Tom have merely laughed, or was it imperative that the laughter emanate? And in 1593, did anyone at all 'shoot for shit?" Perhaps, "Nay," the comrade of Driscoll uttered. "Women hath not the means to operate a weapon in a manner that might doeth manure justice!"
Love, Andrea Lena
I Didn't Delve For Very Long
I stopped reading very shortly after page 41. The other two examples were chosen by opening the book at random.
Well ...
... what do you expect? It is Sunderland City Libraries :) Now Derbyshire County Libraries of course ...
Robi
Well...
If the bar is that low for Sunderland, maybe we should flood it with our own submissions. Then we could ask why the crap we don't get published, when tripe that makes a third grade history textbook look good was?
Or worse, we could get published, then we would be in the same company with that 'author'....
I don't know, which is worse, joining that island, or getting voted off it?
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If you appreciate my tales, please consider supporting me on Patreon so that I may continue:
https://www.patreon.com/Nagrij
Would we be this harsh if
Would we be this harsh if Nolene-Patricia Dougan was an author who posted stories here and managed to get something published and make a few dollars, pounds, or euros?
Kris
{I leave a trail of Kudos as I browse the site. Be careful where you step!}
Speaking for myself here.
Probably. I'd likely couch it in nicer terms, but let's be honest. It's bad, plain and simple. It managed to get published and sell, and I applaud that. But that doesn't change the fact that it's bad, does it?
I'm currently not aware of any writer on this site that writes like this. If I was, I would say so, and I would critique them directly.
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If you appreciate my tales, please consider supporting me on Patreon so that I may continue:
https://www.patreon.com/Nagrij
I wonder
I wonder how the story would have turned out if she had an editor to help her like most of the rest of us do.
better easily.
But I don't have an editor either....
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If you appreciate my tales, please consider supporting me on Patreon so that I may continue:
https://www.patreon.com/Nagrij
Actually...
...the book is carefully aimed at its target market, female readers of "Gothic Women’s Fiction." Marketing beats editing nine times out of ten, and women buy most of the books sold, sixty percent of the market by most estimates, but this fails to take into account the fact that many women "pass on" their books to friends and relatives once they’ve read them. As for me, she had me at: "There is still only three…women can’t shoot for shit.” Isabella without a moment’s hesitation shot the man through the skull.
I like Isabella already.
The language in the excerpt leaves a little to be desired, but you might want to look up item 49: How Can You Tell a Cultural Philistine? on the Web, a portion of a weblog by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a fascinating writer of enormous multilingual erudition who refuses to be "edited" as a matter of principle. He’s rather famous in the financial world as the author of The Black Swan..
Editing is all very nice, and I’ve made my living at it from time to time, but one has to admire his fortitude.
II
I just had to withdraw a piece from publication. The copy editor wanted to “improve” the sentences. I pulled it out immediately upon hearing claims that she represented the “general public”, with the assumption that she knew what the “general public” needed –not realizing that she was talking to an empiricist who despises impressions (based on anecdotal evidence) & pompously stated superstitious. There is an expert problem with copy editors particularly when they are self-appointed representatives of the “general public”. (“Advice” from book editors reminds me of Warren Buffet’s comment about people in limos taking stock tips from people who ride the subway). Fooled by Randomness was not copy edited (with close to 200 typos in the hardcover edition). My next book (post-TBS) will NOT be edited. An edited text is fake. Really fake. It is as shameful as ghostwriting.
Raw literature used to resemble speech, in its messiness, idiosyncrasy, (& charm). Spelling was only made uniform very late, by printers, not by authors –which explains the idiosyncrasies of medieval authors.
Mind you, most publishers don’t share his opinions, or not exactly, but still....
By the way, firearms were invented in the tenth century of the common era, and the first firearms using any sort of projectile could easily be described as shotguns, whatever the technical term might be, and the "proper" term might well be Chinese, not English. Transylvania is just the sort of place one might find a Chinese influence, and if not, who cares? Dracula probably wasn’t quite as bad, in cultural context, as he’s usually made out to be either. It’s certainly true that muskets, cannons, and other artillery, were fairly common on medieval battlefields.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_firearm
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Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
Editor? What Editor?
My beef was with this.
Driscoll started to laugh when he saw Isabella holding a shotgun. One of the others started to laugh and said.
“There is still only three…women can’t shoot for shit.”
The phrase 'started to laugh' is used twice in as many sentences. The dialogue should not be on a new line, and certainly not after a full stop.
This suggests to me that an editor hasn't been anywhere near this passage.
Probably not...
...but the "rules" of sentence structure are very new. In the time of the real Drakula*, the notion of actual sentences was still a little vague in many places. See my blog.
The real question for any writer is this: Are there people who talk like that? Do real people use repetitive language? Or are we all glib wordsmiths whose prose flows like honey down the page, whose very paragraphs stick to one’s fingertips like treacle on a hot Summer’s day?
In my own experience, there are countless pundits on TV, much less politicians, who seem barely to have escaped grammar school, and whose thought processes can at best be described as "muddled," if not downright deliberately obfuscatory.
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* The title was an honorific referring to holders of The Order of the Dragon, a military distinction having nothing to do with vampires.
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Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
I like having an editor. Well, I SAY I like having an editor...
But what I really mean is that I like having a friend who reads my work and tells me where they feel it could be improved, then tosses it back to me to do with what I will.
Jill, I love ya, and I'm sure I've left in or not added plenty of things that made you tear out your hair upon reading my final work, but it had to be done! :)
As far as spelling/syntax/punctuation and the like, though, I find an editor to be most handy. I like to think that, in the grand scheme of things, I'm a decent enough writer. I make mistakes, much like anyone. Sometimes they're glaringly obvious, and other times they are far more subtle, or even things that don't turn out to be mistakes until much later on. These are the kinds of things I'm more than happy to have an editor for.
What I like most about my editor? She doesn't just change things: she edits in such a way that I can see every time she changes something, and often I get an explanation as to why she changed it in case I don't know or might have forgotten (which I am prone to, on both accounts.) This means that her edits aren't simply her changing my story, but telling me how and where changes are needed so that I can keep from making the same mistakes in the future. Brilliant!
Sadly, I fail to make use of my editor as much as I should. PFH has only recently received her critical eye (and much too late for its BC version,) and often when I start a story I will simply post it as I write it, leaving little to no time for an editor to even glance at it (I am rather fond of making last minute changes in the BC posting window, too, so there are some elements in my stories on BC that are completely absent from the source text files.)
Editors: a good 'un can make any writer better. Or, in my case, at least tolerable.
Melanie E.