Turing Evolved - Science Fiction - Full Novel

[DavidKitson]

Originally Posted by Spock96

David,
First off I would like to say. Great Job on this book! I was referred to it and downloaded it. I didn't know if I was going to like it at first but you just blew me away with how in-depth you made the characters and the plot twist at the very end was a bit confusing but it was just...WOW! It kept me up till 5am the other night. Now this book is one of my all-time favorites. I have also read Military Diorama, hoped for a bit more info about how it all began but you can be limited with a short story.

I would love if you could right another one in this series. You sir are an amazing story-teller! It's been ALONG time since I got so absorbed into a book like this one did. I'd give it a 100 out of 5.
Best of luck in your future endeavors!
Spock96

Thanks for that. I'm really glad you enjoyed the story.

Well, the Second Revsion is presently up on Amazon and now I have to go through the meatgrinder to get it ready for Smashwords again, something I am not looking forward to.

The Kindle Edition ( Which I called amazon edition.... I guess I am not quite used to this yet ) is also now formatted correctly, thanks to the KDP team who suggested saving it as HTML prior to uploading it -

Also thanks to APK and Josh - I really appreciated the help in locating some more errors. Yes, the book is still full of problems and now I am even getting corrections regularly sent to me by the KDP ( Kindle Publishing ) team with corrections And I think it just went on sale in the UK once again, because my sales jumped about 350x, sales being "download for free"...

I am still working on the follow up story... Work committments over the past 5 months have absolutely exhausted me. I love writing but when I am tired, my muse goes to bed before I get to the keyboard Work is starting to even off a little bit now, but the next story is still moving slowly - more than I anticipated.

But at least there is a (hopefully) better version up now with hundreds of corrections... The longer I leave this, the easier editing becomes

Regards
David

[ApK]

Glad to hear the revision is up, David!
Thanks for the acknowledgement. I would have liked to do more, but it figures that as soon as I found a worthwhile way to spend the furlough time from my last job, I'd get a new job, and have little free time!

[Spock96]

Originally Posted by DavidKitson

Thanks for that. I'm really glad you enjoyed the story.

Well, the Second Revsion is presently up on Amazon and now I have to go through the meatgrinder to get it ready for Smashwords again, something I am not looking forward to.

The Kindle Edition ( Which I called amazon edition.... I guess I am not quite used to this yet ) is also now formatted correctly, thanks to the KDP team who suggested saving it as HTML prior to uploading it -

Also thanks to APK and Josh - I really appreciated the help in locating some more errors. Yes, the book is still full of problems and now I am even getting corrections regularly sent to me by the KDP ( Kindle Publishing ) team with corrections And I think it just went on sale in the UK once again, because my sales jumped about 350x, sales being "download for free"...

I am still working on the follow up story... Work committments over the past 5 months have absolutely exhausted me. I love writing but when I am tired, my muse goes to bed before I get to the keyboard Work is starting to even off a little bit now, but the next story is still moving slowly - more than I anticipated.

But at least there is a (hopefully) better version up now with hundreds of corrections... The longer I leave this, the easier editing becomes

Regards
David

So looking forward to the next story.
I would also like to thank you for this book it has re-opened my imagination and now I'm back to writing hoping someday to get something published.
Yes, it's a book kinda of like this one.

[kacir]

Originally Posted by DavidKitson

... and now I have to go through the meatgrinder to get it ready for Smashwords again, something I am not looking forward to.

I am willing to help you with that. I helped to prepare file for meatgrinder for one writer.
I really enjoyed the book.

[DavidKitson]

Originally Posted by kacir

I am willing to help you with that. I helped to prepare file for meatgrinder for one writer.
I really enjoyed the book.

I may take you up on that. I made the changes, but I used Open Office since I don't have Word at the moment...

I'm just awaiting to see what Smashwords say post review, but for practical purposes, the new manuscript is now up on my page.

And available for download

Regards
David

[kacir]

Originally Posted by DavidKitson

I may take you up on that. I made the changes, but I used Open Office since I don't have Word at the moment...

I work in OpenOffice.org as well, but as the last step I load the file into MSWord and do the last fine tuning there - to make sure I have doc file as close to a perfect MetGrinder material as possible. It is not difficult. The formatting guide they have is very good. I wish more people stuck to the rules laid there ;-). Like my coworkers.

You can have Windows 2000 with MSWord 2000 in a virtual machine and it is much snappier and better than <shudder> MSWord 2007 </shudder> on Vista on better machine.

Just let me know when you want to begin.

[DavidKitson]

Originally Posted by kacir

I work in OpenOffice.org as well, but as the last step I load the file into MSWord and do the last fine tuning there - to make sure I have doc file as close to a perfect MetGrinder material as possible. It is not difficult. The formatting guide they have is very good. I wish more people stuck to the rules laid there ;-). Like my coworkers.

You can have Windows 2000 with MSWord 2000 in a virtual machine and it is much snappier and better than <shudder> MSWord 2007 </shudder> on Vista on better machine.

Just let me know when you want to begin.

Yep, Smashwords has rejected the new manuscript based on the formatting of links - Seems Word is different from Open Office there -

So I'll take you up on that if I can -

Can you PM me an address to send the current document to?

Thanks
David

[caleb72]

David - do you think this is of a quality sufficient for review from someone who is likely to be pretty harsh on errors? Or do you think I'm better off waiting until revision 3?

[DavidKitson]

Hi Caleb,

It will be a while before a third revision comes out - I am still incapable of editing my own work so unless I find a professional editor or collect a lot of reader edits, it will be this way for at least a little while.

It's not perfect. But it is greatly improved over the original and has a lot less errors. It's had quite a few people go through it and there have been several hundred corrections throughout.

When I checked the last corrective advice from Amazon they were all picked up so I guess that gives an idea of where it presently is at. So I assume the glaring errors should be all addressed.

But I won't be able to get a comparative idea of the present quality until I get my next review that is critical of errors. They are the only yardstick I have to go by at the moment.

On the other hand, if I start reading at a random point, I can usually find errors for about 1 to 2 pages before they vanish from my sight again... And I'll usually find a few on every page. I just found the first mis-word of the new revision... Though it was in a less heavily edited section of the book and it took me 5 pages this time to find the first mistake.

I live in hope that one day I may gain enough e-book readers to make a serious p-book publisher look at wanting the print rights and that they might cover editing of both editions. In fact, that already happened, but the publisher was too small to hire their own editors. It was a serious publisher, but the conditions and returns made it un-viable for me to hire my own editor.

I apologise if this isn't a complete answer. I guess the simple version is "This book is much, much better, but it's still not perfect."

The very latest revision is, BTW, uploaded onto Smashwords and available on Amazon. It will take a couple of months before it filters through to all the other channels.

And that's the problem with completing small updates. If I change one word and re-upload, it has to go through a week-long approval process again and during that time, distribution stops. Kindle is much faster so I will probably just keep updating the Kindle version with the smaller updates.

Regards
David

[Spock96]

Originally Posted by DavidKitson

Hi Caleb,

It will be a while before a third revision comes out - I am still incapable of editing my own work so unless I find a professional editor or collect a lot of reader edits, it will be this way for at least a little while.

It's not perfect. But it is greatly improved over the original and has a lot less errors. It's had quite a few people go through it and there have been several hundred corrections throughout.

When I checked the last corrective advice from Amazon they were all picked up so I guess that gives an idea of where it presently is at. So I assume the glaring errors should be all addressed.

But I won't be able to get a comparative idea of the present quality until I get my next review that is critical of errors. They are the only yardstick I have to go by at the moment.

On the other hand, if I start reading at a random point, I can usually find errors for about 1 to 2 pages before they vanish from my sight again... And I'll usually find a few on every page. I just found the first mis-word of the new revision... Though it was in a less heavily edited section of the book and it took me 5 pages this time to find the first mistake.

I live in hope that one day I may gain enough e-book readers to make a serious p-book publisher look at wanting the print rights and that they might cover editing of both editions. In fact, that already happened, but the publisher was too small to hire their own editors. It was a serious publisher, but the conditions and returns made it un-viable for me to hire my own editor.

I apologise if this isn't a complete answer. I guess the simple version is "This book is much, much better, but it's still not perfect."

The very latest revision is, BTW, uploaded onto Smashwords and available on Amazon. It will take a couple of months before it filters through to all the other channels.

And that's the problem with completing small updates. If I change one word and re-upload, it has to go through a week-long approval process again and during that time, distribution stops. Kindle is much faster so I will probably just keep updating the Kindle version with the smaller updates.

Regards
David

I would buy it if it came out in pbook form.
Alas I'm stuck in my story.

[DavidKitson]

OK, some feedback on the next edition...

Turing Evolved is original, engaging and the pulls you along, making it difficult to put down the book and to deal with real life. I enjoyed every moment of reading it and hope that the author will consider writing more books in this universe that he has begun creating. Since the book is written from the point of view of the main character I'd like to see some of the peripheral characters more thoroughly developed in some prequels and sequels.

When I started reading Turing Evolved I didn't know what to expect. I give many of the new sci fi books on Kindle a try, so finding this at $0.99 with some good reviews made it easy to take the risk and I was delighted. I am a huge fan of Asimov's Robot novels and while I found this book to be in similar vein, Kitson manages to pay homage to Asimov without ripping him off. David Kitson has given us a fresh look at AI robots and tells a good story. He has a lot of potential as a sci fi author so I intend to keep my eyes open for his future books.

Like many of the self-published works on Kindle, this version could stand a good proof-reading by someone who is not overly familiar with the story (i.e., not the author - it's too hard to see mistakes when your brain knows what you meant to type). I didn't find the typos overly distracting but I know that some readers do.

This one was posted on Amazon today and given that they paid for it, I'm guessing it's the new version. A rather insightful reader too.

I still got five stars ( a generous reviewer ) but they mentioned the proofing So yes, I'm still collecting corrections

But this version is still a HUGE improvement on the last -

Regards
David

[TheSFReader]

David, it seems the Smashwords version is not yet up. If you'd send me a latest version (epub), I could take a look with a critical eye, and report you any mistake I find (theSFReader at gmail dot com)

[ApK]

Originally Posted by TheSFReader

David, it seems the Smashwords version is not yet up. If you'd send me a latest version (epub), I could take a look with a critical eyend may find a few other mistakes... (theSFReader at gmail dot com)

What's an eyend?

[TheSFReader]

A proof that I am not a good editor (or that I wasn't working as such when commenting )

[JustForFun]

I read Turing Evolved on two evenings last week and really enjoyed it. Indeed, I enjoyed it so much that I made a little donation.

There were some editing issues which I noticed, mostly in the second part, but only one grated on my nerves. All in all, I have read ebooks with worse editing.

Using the epub (second edition I think) from Smashwords, this are the problems I noticed and remember:

• The protagonist is more than once refered to as "mister Colson" by one person.
• The chapter headings aren't marked as headings (h1 or h2), so on my reader the (automatic) table of contents was useless and the headings weren't formated correctly. The table of contents is also not useable in Sigl, so it may not only be my reader but the epub itself.
• I can't find it at the moment, but here was one sentence during the battle which seemed wrong and didn't really make sense to me. It was the only time I had to stop and try to understand what the intended meaning was.
• There were at least two instances of a doubled word, which looked like a correction without deleting the mistyped word.
• Some punctuation and mistypings
  • Chapter 9: “Yeah., that was some ride the other day wasn’t it. I’ve been trying to find out what was going on,” he said. (Not sure, but shouldn't the first sentence end with a question mark and also have a comma before wasn't?)
  • Chapter 11: “Private server?” I asked?
  • Chapter 20: "If that **** **** thinks that he’s a better f***** pilot that me"
  • Chapter 20: “I’ll keep than in mind,”

I don't know, which of this problems were already known to you. Perhaps a public errata would help others to send you corrections. As it is, people may think that the problems they noticed are already known.