3 replies to this topic

[Hasimir Fenrig]

I'd like to present my first fantasy-themed story:

'The Ardor'

It's a sword-and-magic type novel in which romance plays an important part.

I don't want to spoiler much of the content, but the tag line reads like this:

A thief who learns that stealing the wrong thing can change everything.
A warrior on a journey to leave his past behind.
A fallen god yearning to return to the mortal world.

A story about ancient magic, decisions and love.


I want to say thank you to the GA members who regularly post reviews for my story. You're the best!
SInce I'm a real attention whore, I want to encourage more people to comment on the story. If something simply doesn't work for you or you think something is really good, let me know. PLEASE!

[Hasimir Fenrig]

Unfortunately, I have to announce a little delay for the next chapters of 'The Ardor'.

I've submitted my story 'Dumb' to a professional editing service and the commented version arrived yesterday via email. There are tons of errors regarding past perfect, past progressive and (some) dialogue attributions. There are some other things wrong (prepositions, some inappropriate words), but those were expected. I'm currently working through the edited version of 'Dumb', checking and approving the changes.
Though I know my English is far from perfect, seeing the extent of my ignorance red-on-white is giving me the blues (color-pun intended). I've also started to work over 'The Ardor' again. But I'm a little self-conscious now, questioning every use of past perfect and past progressive. Theoretically, I thought I knew how to use these tenses, but in practice, I obviously don't. I already posted an ad for an editor here on GA. Of course, I'll continue my work on 'The Ardor', but I have to admit that I'm a little afraid and would like to get a grasp on these issues before seriously going on.

[sorgbarn]

I almost missed this announcement. Thanks for letting your readers know.

I can understand your feelings about self-consciousness,but still ... oh no! I was actually wondering about it this weekend (since you've been posting almost every weekend since the posting began), but thought it was because of Easter. Now I will have to wait indefinitely to find out what the Ogrushkai Union is like.

Because I'm not a first language English speaking reader it's a non-issue to me. Unless the grammar is particularly bad (and I must say not being able to make the right choice between than-then, mixed tenses, or severe miss-spelling is much more disturbing to me, than the correct use of past progressive, probably because I don't know all teh rules for its use myself).

Don't let this keep you down or take away the joy of writing.

I will so miss Elyran and Maraki.

[Hasimir Fenrig]

Thank you very much for your encouraging words!

I'm already much more relaxed about the situation now. Most of my uses of these tenses weren't actually wrong, but I simply overused them. I can imagine that for a native speaker it can become annoying to read a "rare" tense over and over again.
I used the past perfect to structure the actions in time more precisely, but this isn't actually necessary. Don't let a mathematician write fiction!
The editor even removed some of my "whom"s, which were most certainly correct. A case of hyper-grammar.

At the moment, preparing 'Dumb' for release is consuming much more time than expected. And it's costing much much more money than expected. I'm quite sure I missed a license, permit and/or a clearance certificate by the Queen of England, the Pope or the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Quite an endeavor for something I'm doing 'just for fun'. If someone has some valuable hints for self-publishing a kindle book, I'll be glad to listen.

I'll re-work the existing chapters of 'The Ardor' while waiting for the final edit of 'Dumb' and, as soon as it is uploaded to amazon, will resume work on 'The Ardor'. That's a promise!