First Author has agreed!

Yippee!!
An author has agreed to let me be a beta reader for them! I am looking forward to this SO much!

Now to work out logistics like reading and editing formats ... and here's hoping my hardware keeps supporting me as faithfully as it has been ... I use a mobile for most of my posts, fb, G+ and LinkedIn interactions, but the screen is far too small to read PDFs on!

Please keep your fingers crossed for my laptop, all! ;)

Frequent Offenders

Here's a couple of recently / frequently read vocabulary errors:

Viral for virile (he filled me with his viral seed really does not have good connotations, guys, honest!)

Peek, peak and pique:
to pique is to prick ... He piqued my interest
to peek is to peep or sneak a look
to peak is to reach a summit or high point, so I peaked at him through my fingers or I sneaked a quick peak at him, is pretty meaningless, I'm afraid!

More as I get time (anyone want a run-down on the old apostrophes, your, their and its lists?)

Quality Mark for Indie Writers

Just found this! 

Compulsion Reads provides a Quality Mark for independent writing.  Those of you who have seen the sort of errors that occur in many indie books will want to know about this initiative!  Thanks to Eva Marie Paullliere for getting this endorsement, which brought it to my attention.

Note:

I can help you qualify for the Grammar criterion for free, but YOU need to come up with the engaging story, etc!

Writers - want a link to your site?

Want me to link to you?

Email me, and if I like your work (I judge on content only, no remarks about your English, I promise!) I will post a link to it here.

Free Proofreading for Erotica / Fantasy / Romance

Hi, writers and readers, all!

I just had a great idea ... I am a (former, unfortunately!) UK math(s) teacher who loves to read, but is currently long-term ill and unable to work.  This leaves me with LOTS of time to read, but not a lot of money!

Math(s) teachers are sticklers for accuracy in language (far worse than English teachers!).  We catch the errors not spotted by word program(me)s, or by writers proofreading (who tend to see what they thought they wrote, not what is actually on the screen)!  As a result, I often find myself mentally rewriting a lot of the romance, erotica and fantasy I buy on Amazon, as I read it (I will provide regular anonymous examples as I read, for those who are interested, with the reasons for the corrections, eg 'taut' skin instead of 'taught' skin - a common culprit - look up both in a dictionary and you will see what I mean!)

Sooo ... I thought up a great way to get lots of reading material and provide a useful service in return ...

Writers:

How about ... you send me your novel before it is published (I get free reading) and I return it with any errors I spot, marked with alternative ways to say it (you get free anonymous language editing).

Readers:

How about ... you email your fave authors a link to this blog and I proofread their work for them.  (You get to read their next work a bit quicker 'cos they didn't have to take the time to proofread for English errors as well as story errors; also, maybe they can go over to voice recognition if that works for them!)

Any takers?

email me and I will get in touch privately.