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A review by mad_about_books
Witching Hour: Vices and Virtues by Trinity Hanrahan
1.0
I read a lot. Lately, I've been reading a lot of new authors, and I use the word authors pretty loosely here.
If you are writing stories and publishing them yourself just because you can, you need to ask yourself, do I have ANYTHING close to a basic command of the language. Apparently, a number of you don't. You also don't have beta readers or editors who can help you over the rough spots. I get it. You are excited to get those words on paper (virtual or otherwise) you are scribbling/typing away and don't realize that you have made some spelling or grammatical faux pas. It's OK to make mistakes while you are writing. It is NOT OK to publish those mistakes.
Prepositions are words (yes, I know, mostly very little words, but still words), and all words have definitions. You don't even need a dictionary anymore to find out what a word means. You have the entire internet at your disposal. Use it! The word "at" is not synonymous with the word "to." If you don't know what these little words mean, look them up. All the online dictionaries will give you examples of proper use.
I get it. You wrote an outline that is not composed of actual sentences. It is NOT OK to copy lines from that outline without reading them to make sure you have actual, coherent sentences. Again, a beta reader and/or an editor will catch these obvious errors. If they appear in the published work, you wrote it, didn't bother to read it, didn't have anyone else read it, and didn't have it edited. Bottom line, if you don't do these thing, you are not a writer. You're not even a hack.
Once you've got that book published and made available to the public, you offer it to people like me. People who read... a lot. People like me who bother to review what they read. You offer it in exchange for an honest review. You really don't want an honest review. You want someone to feel obligated to give your poorly written and unedited piece a 4 or 5-star review.
It is difficult to throw an anthology on the DNF (did not finish) pile because each story contained therein is written by a different person, and you might just be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. If the gem among the paste is buried at the very end of the book, you will have cheated yourself out of that very experience that makes you read in the first place.
Recording a stream of consciousness and then transcribing it does not a piece of literature make. If you want to make your mark in the world of books, read what you wrote, then have others read it, and finally have an editor read it. If you want your profession to be "author," you have to be willing to do everything needed to make people want to read what you have written. Simply putting words on paper, virtual or otherwise, does not an author make. You may have heard that folks will happily pay good money for Stephen King's shopping list. The reason that bit of farce is accepted is that he has paid his dues to the gods of literature.
I glanced at several reviews on Goodreads and found that most of the reviews are for single stories within the anthology and those reviews rate the book at 5-stars. This gives a lot of credit to what, apparently, was never read.
Along with it being difficult to read an overall bad anthology, it is equally difficult to rate one. Yes, this story was readable, and this one was coherent, and finally one was actually worth reading. How do you rate an anthology fairly? Do you give it one star because overall that's what it's worth? Do you rate each story it contains and come up with an average?
It gives me no pleasure writing a bad review, but when a book is bad and an honest review has been requested, you get a bad review. You can look at other reviews, especially those that give a five-star rating, to see if you want to commit to buying this book for the sake of one, two, maybe even three stories out of the fifteen that are showcased.
If you are writing stories and publishing them yourself just because you can, you need to ask yourself, do I have ANYTHING close to a basic command of the language. Apparently, a number of you don't. You also don't have beta readers or editors who can help you over the rough spots. I get it. You are excited to get those words on paper (virtual or otherwise) you are scribbling/typing away and don't realize that you have made some spelling or grammatical faux pas. It's OK to make mistakes while you are writing. It is NOT OK to publish those mistakes.
Prepositions are words (yes, I know, mostly very little words, but still words), and all words have definitions. You don't even need a dictionary anymore to find out what a word means. You have the entire internet at your disposal. Use it! The word "at" is not synonymous with the word "to." If you don't know what these little words mean, look them up. All the online dictionaries will give you examples of proper use.
I get it. You wrote an outline that is not composed of actual sentences. It is NOT OK to copy lines from that outline without reading them to make sure you have actual, coherent sentences. Again, a beta reader and/or an editor will catch these obvious errors. If they appear in the published work, you wrote it, didn't bother to read it, didn't have anyone else read it, and didn't have it edited. Bottom line, if you don't do these thing, you are not a writer. You're not even a hack.
Once you've got that book published and made available to the public, you offer it to people like me. People who read... a lot. People like me who bother to review what they read. You offer it in exchange for an honest review. You really don't want an honest review. You want someone to feel obligated to give your poorly written and unedited piece a 4 or 5-star review.
It is difficult to throw an anthology on the DNF (did not finish) pile because each story contained therein is written by a different person, and you might just be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. If the gem among the paste is buried at the very end of the book, you will have cheated yourself out of that very experience that makes you read in the first place.
Recording a stream of consciousness and then transcribing it does not a piece of literature make. If you want to make your mark in the world of books, read what you wrote, then have others read it, and finally have an editor read it. If you want your profession to be "author," you have to be willing to do everything needed to make people want to read what you have written. Simply putting words on paper, virtual or otherwise, does not an author make. You may have heard that folks will happily pay good money for Stephen King's shopping list. The reason that bit of farce is accepted is that he has paid his dues to the gods of literature.
I glanced at several reviews on Goodreads and found that most of the reviews are for single stories within the anthology and those reviews rate the book at 5-stars. This gives a lot of credit to what, apparently, was never read.
Along with it being difficult to read an overall bad anthology, it is equally difficult to rate one. Yes, this story was readable, and this one was coherent, and finally one was actually worth reading. How do you rate an anthology fairly? Do you give it one star because overall that's what it's worth? Do you rate each story it contains and come up with an average?
It gives me no pleasure writing a bad review, but when a book is bad and an honest review has been requested, you get a bad review. You can look at other reviews, especially those that give a five-star rating, to see if you want to commit to buying this book for the sake of one, two, maybe even three stories out of the fifteen that are showcased.