SPELLCHECK NATION: Does SpellCheck have a dark side?
 

Four Short Stories:
Spellcheck Nation :
Does Spellcheck have a sinister side? Can you engage it's darkness to help you stratagize and gain the advantage even though society is screaming that you don't have a chance? Yes. You can. Fiftysomething Holly needs an ally to gain power in a sea of twentysomethings at a high-profile media job. Spellcheck comes through.

What People Pray For:
It is early morning mass. The candles are lit and the priest murmurs the liturgy. After the Offertory and before Communion comes the spot where the congregation can call out favors they want from God. Does it work? Is a miracle possible? What do they pray for? It is not money.

What I Wore For Loss:
A woman reflects on the downfall of her marriage and thrashes around trying to find a way of getting up. Filled with humor and self-reflection, What I Wore For Loss is a life affirming love song to the reclaimed middle-aged woman.

The Obesity Study:
OMG who is running these medical investigations? Are they serious? This is too much to bear. It is too gross. It is damaging to the psyche, the ego, the stomach. BUT: it does pay one hundred dollars. I'll do it.

$0.99 Amazon; Smashwords
Read an excerpt: http://www.kindleboards.com/book/?asin=B0045UA8EO

A few quibbles:

.99 cents is .01 cents less than a penny.
Commas don't work like that.
Neither do apostrophes.
And there's that exclamation point.

/unofficial quibbler

I see that you've edited the $0.99, but there is still at least one errant comma and one unnecessary apostrophe. I think you're also missing a question mark.

Your stories have interesting premises. I do wonder if the writing in the stories mirrors the writing of the blurbs.

Thanks for your comments.

The Spell Checker

Eye halve a spelling chequer;
It came with my pea sea.
It plainly marques four my revue
Miss steaks eye can knot sea.

Eye strike a key and type a whirred
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrung or write.
It shows me strait a weigh.

As soon as a mist ache is maid,
It nose bee fore two long;
An dye can put the era rite.
Its rare lea ever wrong.

Eye have run this poem threw.
I'm shore your pleased two no
Its letter perfect awl the weigh;
My chequer tolled me sew.

Hoots toots. Neil

Nice!

Brilliant! It took me ages to read through it, but it's very funny.

That's what makes me paranoid about the bad blurbs (and worse, bad thread titles!) I see here. They're the first examples we see of the authors' writing. If I were them, I'd certainly want those examples to be letter-perfect, since they're the examples that would make someone download my samples or buy my stories. When people can't get even a hundred-word post right, what are they doing in a hundred-thousand-word novel?

To pick on poor cbaehr's stories, since they started this thread, there's the difference between "it's" and "its". To someone who isn't accustomed to writing, I can see how there's a question of how to spell the sound "itz". But to a writer, to whom written words should be familiar tools, the difference is between the meaning of "it is" and the meaning of the relative of "his", and what it sounds like isn't any part of it. So, when a writer shows me that he's not intimately familiar with words, I get as edgy as I would with a mechanic who isn't intimately familiar with tools. I certainly wouldn't want to take my car to a mechanic who wasn't quite sure what sort of combination wrench he should use (actually, I do most of my own work, but that's another issue), and I'm likewise reluctant to take my reading time to an author who isn't quite sure what sort of word to use.

In other threads, we've seen post icons, excessive caps, reviews in the title (!), and other random ways of making a thread "special". I don't know how it works with other people, but the kind of "special" those are to me is the usage in "special olympics". If an announcement of a book can't stand on its own, it's not going to do any better if its poster comes up with a way to push it forward and make it different from the other posts. That means, to me anyway, that he's thinking more about presentation and less about content. Plus, of course, he doesn't play well with others. He doesn't want me to read the announcements in order; he wants me to look at his first. It's all about him, HIM, HIM!!! That's rude. I tend not to read rude authors. I wonder how MobileRead feels about this? Do we give rude authors more attention, as they expect, or less, as I do?

Wow! I have a thick skin so I don't mind the quibbles. I get upset when I see "their" for "there" Once an editor from Esquire wrote that the "speach" in my story appealed to him. That gave me pause. I see what you mean about reviews in the Thread Title and that is probably true when it is an obscure reviewer. If I ever get a review (as I did with Nothing To Lose) from the Times Literary Supplement I will use it every time. I almost fell down when that review came in. Bottom line, marketing is a daunting task and I am probably a little sloppy at times but your comments will make me straighten up and pay attention. Thanks to all. I have several other books on this forum but now I'm afraid to tell you what they are. Consuelo Saah Baehr

Hi WorldWalker,

I'm intrigued by your signature name. Does it mean you have walked the world? I love walking and often fantasize about walking across a city or across a state. Walking allows me to think clearly and sequentially. I also like that you take the time to criticize in a constructive way. Consuelo Saah Baehr

There's no second upper-case W. It's actually the nom de guerre of a very old D&D character of mine who, when I recycled the character later as an NPC, could travel between worlds by opening a portal and stepping through it -- kind of handy for getting the players into all sorts of trouble. :) It's not a very exciting name, I'm afraid, but it's been mine online since the early 1990s. Most of the other Worldwalkers aren't me, but some are (for those who were there, I'm the CI$ and Nexus one).