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Last post Author Topic: Sci-fi novel now available from DC member kyrathaba!  (Read 430255 times)

4wd

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@4wd:

Missing quotes:

“Thanks for the ‘UT’, buddy.” He set his cup on the table, then slid the data chip across the table. “You keep that damned

safe, S-man. We’ll talk later. Door, open for guest to exit.”

I'd missed that one in my own review of the Prologue. Had prematurely congratulated myself that the Prologue had no errors, LOL. Thanks, 4wd!

Don't open that can yet, you got one but missed the other  :)

“Thanks for the ‘UT’, buddy.

kyrathaba

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Chapter 10 combed. Going to dad's to clean his gutters. Then I have to do some push-mowing. Should be able to get through Chapters 11 and 12 this afternoon, then the remaining three chapters this evening.

Remember, the current upload only shows manuscript reviewed and edited up through Chapter 8. When I get this process finished, I'll upload the fully reviewed manuscript, and then continue writing, starting with Chapter 16.

kyrathaba

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Don't open that can yet, you got one but missed the other  smiley

“Thanks for the ‘UT’, buddy.”

Thanks, 4wd. Corrected it.

kyrathaba

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Chapter 11 combing completed...

kyrathaba

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Chapter 12 combing completed...

kyrathaba

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Chapter 13 combing completed.

kyrathaba

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Chapter 14 combing completed.

kyrathaba

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Chapter 15 combing completed. Preparing uploads...

kyrathaba

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Okaaaaayyyyy... I'm done with my halfway-point full read-through. I've uploaded the manuscript in the OP, and it's available as online HTML.

Now I'm ready to start working on Chapter 16. What would you like to see resolved in Chapter 16, just out of curiosity? (not promising I'll do it): what from the most recent chapters is most gripping you? Has most piqued your interest? I have several ideas for the next few chapters, but would love any reader ideas.
« Last Edit: June 25, 2013, 05:14 PM by kyrathaba »

Perry Mowbray

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Again, let me stress how incredibly helpful your beta-reading has been! Literally scores of problems found and fixed. No wonder so many self-publishers flop. I can't understand how anyone could bypass betareading/proofing.

I can't remember where or when I heard it, but I'm pretty sure it was an author on the radio quoting another author, who said "The only difference between a good book and a great book is the number of times it gets rewritten."  :)

Perry Mowbray

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I found the couple or so days of not having updates let me put it aside and then start looking at it afresh....onto chapter 3 later :)

I'm going to end up knowing this book better than my all time favourite: The Stainless Steel Ratw

Agree... it's amazing how you get caught up in the flow and get carried over, sometimes missing things. I even get amazed at the different things I picked up going back and reading it aloud to Sandi.

kyrathaba

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I even get amazed at the different things I picked up going back and reading it aloud to Sandi.

Yeah, that's trick I've read about several places: reading aloud. When we read silently our mind tends to fill in missing words, but not so much when we read aloud.

4wd

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The 'go under' feels redundant coupled with immersion but it's a 50/50 thing, maybe:

Corrected to:

once we go undergo immersion,

I think it should be: once we undergo immersion,

I even get amazed at the different things I picked up going back and reading it aloud to Sandi.

Yeah, that's trick I've read about several places: reading aloud. When we read silently our mind tends to fill in missing words, but not so much when we read aloud.

It's the difference between flying over the potholes compared to hitting every single one  :P

kyrathaba

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^ My correction had an error in it :)

kyrathaba

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Will appear as "once we undergo immersion" when I upload next .zip containing Ch. 16.

Perry Mowbray

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The 'go under' feels redundant coupled with immersion but it's a 50/50 thing, maybe:

Corrected to:

once we go undergo immersion,

I think it should be: once we undergo immersion,


I've now re-read that sentence a dozen times and I'm pretty undecided... undergo / go under just isn't doing it for me ;) Makes it sound like anesthetic. What do you think about something like:

'And if our experiment fails, we won’t know it: once the process of immersion starts, either Sethra’s theory proves out, or else we just lose consciousness and never know it when we die.'


kyrathaba

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what do you think about something like:

'And if our experiment fails, we won’t know it: once the process of immersion starts, either Sethra’s theory proves out, or else we just lose consciousness and never know it when we die.'

Done.

kyrathaba

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Time to hit the hay. Got about 1400 words into Chapter 16. I imagine that Chapter 16 will be available sometime tomorrow for download or online viewing.

Perry Mowbray

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What would you like to see resolved in Chapter 16, just out of curiosity? (not promising I'll do it): what from the most recent chapters is most gripping you? Has most piqued your interest? I have several ideas for the next few chapters, but would love any reader ideas.

That's a difficult question to answer... there are lots of irons in the fire, and I imagine that it'll take careful pulling together to make the most of the different strands?

I also like being surprised :)

4wd

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Chapter 3:
He set the TCPI to the left of the rack of vials, and added the power cells to the same plastic rack that held the chemical vials.

Seems to be a duplicated reference, a little rearrangement maybe:

He added the power cells to the rack that held the [chemical] vials and set the TCPI down to its left.

He took the now empty vials and the plastic rack, and a few other scraps from his project and...

He took the now empty vials, the plastic rack, and a few other scraps from his project and...

Chapter 4:
He’d restored the Shaft’s cameras to proper functioning upon learning that Administrator Mephord intended to remove from his post.

He’d restored the Shaft’s cameras to proper functioning upon learning that Administrator Mephord intended to remove him from his post.

Sethra, Byron and Zuzana now stood on a circular platform of heavy-gauge aluminum mesh flooring that surrounded the Infrastructure Pole. The mesh flooring almost completely filled...

I'll go with Perry on this, I don't think the first occurrence of the word flooring is necessary since you've already described that it's a platform and what it's made of and it's also referenced as flooring in the next sentence.  If you were to keep the first occurrence I think you could change the second to: 'The platform almost completely filled...'

“And if we checked those units, we’d find the same thing we’re seeing here,” said Sethra. They won’t have been properly maintained, despite what our robotic video logs tell us.”

“And if we checked those units, we’d find the same thing we’re seeing here,” said Sethra. They won’t have been properly maintained, despite what our robotic video logs tell us.”

Beneath him were writhing, scaled tentacles, each easily fifteen feet in length and a foot across where they met beneath his torso.

We'll get you Americans converted to metric eventually, even if it's only one person at a time  ;)

Beneath him were writhing, scaled tentacles, each easily [four|four and a half] meters in length and thirty centimeters across where they met beneath his torso.

The alien, which had taken Michael Covington’s identity several years ago, almost danced upon his tentacles, so pleasurable were the psychic emanations of terror pouring off of Eddie Hasser.
He snaked closer to Hasser, who had run out of breath, and was leaning forward,...

I'm wondering, once you've specifically identified it as an alien, should references to it then become genderless ?
Those are the only two I could see in that paragraph, everything else was 'it' or 'the alien'.

There was a deafening crash, and the entire platform rang with the impact and dropped almost a third of a meter, canted at a shallow angle.

Should that be catwalk ?  To differentiate it from the references to the platforms above, just wondering.

There was a deafening crash, and the entire catwalk rang with the impact and dropped almost a third of a meter, canted at a shallow angle.

Chapter 5:
There were loud murmurs of approval, even a few people clapped their hands.

There were loud murmurs of approval, a few people even clapped their hands.

The other, a short-duration but high-energy beam, probably a laser in wavelength. That would have drawn so heavily and quickly on the power cell that tremendous heat would have been generated.

The wording seems to suggest the two sentences should be one:

The other, a short-duration but high-energy beam, probably a laser in wavelength, that would have drawn so heavily and quickly on the power cell that tremendous heat would have been generated.

Perry Mowbray

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OK, I'm re-reading from 'revised thru Ch15'

Prologue
Paragraph 9.4: "One thing’s for sure: unless the aliens are evolved into pure energy, or they have metabolisms much, much more hardened to radiation than ours" Should that be 'have evolved'?

Paragraph 9.5 "Today is Thursday, June 7, 2283. As I write this, I have lived 260 meters beneath the char-broiled surface of good old planet Earth for 2,558 days, 10 hours, 8 minutes and counting." I think it should be 'charbroiled' as WikiPedia seems to suggest that char-broiled refers to a brand? I guess the concept is "having the food slightly charred in texture"?

Paragraph 9.5 "My implant tells me this. I know it’s accurate because it is self-contained and shielded..." Is there confusion what 'it' is referring to? Either 'My implant' or 'this'? The information is accurate, tho' the implant is self-contained & shielded.  :-\ I've read this numerous times before and not had a problem before, it was just now I connected 'accurate' to 'this', which then didn't make sense of the 'self-contained / shielded'.

Paragraph 9.10 "It was a play on words, as most beverages now were mostly if not entirely composed of water recycled from the compound’s waste management units." I would add punctuation here: 'mostly, if not entirely, composed', not sure if that's right or not?

Paragraph 9.10 "Sethra made it a deliberate practice to not think about its contents." does he mean 'origins | contents' origins'?


kyrathaba

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Thanks, 4wd and Perry. Your corrections have been implemented, and uploaded as "4wd_Perry_26June.zip" in the OP. I've also updated the online HTML version.

Perry Mowbray

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Chapter 1
Paragraph 10.2 "Sethra tuned out, as he frequently did in these weekly meetings, and accessed his implant by sending the sound of subvocalized words transmitting through the bones of his face, where they were picked up, filtered, and recorded by his implant." Is 'sending' the right word? i.e. sending where? Should it be 'subvocalizing his words, which transmits the sounds through the bones of his face, ...'??

Paragraph 10.4 "The old man isn’t looking so hot, himself Sethra decided." Should that be 'The old man isn’t looking so hot himself, Sethra decided.'

Paragraph 10.6 "And administrator, a goodly fraction of the remaining survivors are either children" Should that be 'And Administrator'?

Paragraph 10.6 "I’m telling you, you’re plan is too little, and much too late." Should be 'your'

Paragraph 10.6 "If those surviving four hundred don’t include the best of our medical staff, then I’d give us no more than nine months from today before we’re dead in the water, maybe a couple or three dozen unlucky ones still clinging to life but unable to help themselves or anyone else!" I'd add the punctuation 'life, but'

Paragraph 10.8 “Resume dictation. Dr. Hasser has his head on straight, and the Administrator has his head in the clouds, perhaps saying hello to the aliens, if they’re still up there, and politely and charmingly asking for their help in ‘Project Moving Deeper.’” Should be ‘Project Moving Deeper’."

Paragraph 10.8 "The oversized data flatscreens mounted high up, one in each quadrant along the curving wall. Showing diagrams of the whole compound, camera views of designated locations on five-second intervals, environmental readouts." Would that run better as one sentence? 'The oversized data flatscreens mounted high up, one in each quadrant along the curving wall, showing diagrams of the whole compound, camera views of designated locations on five-second intervals, environmental readouts.'?

Also: I think flatscreens is generally written 'flat-screens' or 'flat screens'?

Paragraph 10.19 "They were engrossed in what they had come to call their ‘post-meeting therapy session.’" "Should that be ‘post-meeting therapy session’."?

Paragraph 10.20 "We’ll have to reassign all droids from non-essential Core duties, to help shore up our weak human work contingent." Would that read better as 'to help shore up our weakened human workforce.'

Paragraph 10.27 "constantly sending telemetry back to the home planet" Does he mean 'sending telemetry back home'?

Paragraph 10.27 "Do you really believe that some race of aliens were able to totally and completely surprise us?" Should that be 'was' for the singular 'race of aliens'??

Paragraph 10.31 "If these aliens were sophisticated enough to slay a quarter of the population with a long-range electronic virus they bathed the planet in before they were even all the way in-system, then there was no need for a nuclear strike." Just a little clumsy reading it out... how about 'If these aliens were sophisticated enough to slay a quarter of the population with a long-range electronic virus, then there was no need for a nuclear strike.'



kyrathaba

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Thanks, Perry. Implemented, and will be reflected when I upload a zip containing Chapter 16.

kyrathaba

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Chapter 16 written. Manuscript re-uploaded to OP.