Re: writers rant

On 8/7/14 2:48 PM, Jette Goldie wrote:
> On 07/08/2014 19:10, Sibyl Smirl wrote:
>> Okay, I guess I'm free from the guideline not to say anything
>> negative. I'm feeling negative at the moment.
>>
>> I'm just finishing (78%) a Kindle Cozy Fantasy (ghosts) Feline (LOTS
>> of cats) Mystery, "A Spirited Tail", Leighann Dobbs. It's got _all_
>> the factors to make this kind of series book a runaway success! Not
>> just the aforementioned, but the detective is a middle-aged female
>> bookstore owner, with a misspent youth as a crime reporter, and a cop
>> boyfriend who won't tell her anything (or much, anyway) about his
>> cases, with whom she's occasionally frolicking in bed, but doesn't
>> know him very well, and wonders whether she's "falling for him". Oh,
>> and her sister is the Police Chief (who wants her OUT of Police
>> Business), and her sidekick experiments with herbal teas, occasionally
>> with disastrous results, or opposite results to those she intended,
>> but is forever confident about getting the personality alteration she
>> wants, and sneaking them into someone's tea without asking them
>> whether they want their personality altered. The protagonist also
>> occasionally converses with ghosts, and has two, Franklin Pierce and
>> Robert Frost, regularly haunting her bookshop. "Lincoln's Doctor's
>> Dog" was a piker, with only three sure-fire reader-attractants! (oh,
>> there's also a bereaved Golden Retriever)
>>
>> This detective, and the young cub cop, and an elderly woman who knew
>> the "mysterious stranger" (female) character way back when, can none
>> of them figure out why, in the course of fifty years, a woman might
>> change her surname! (Well, I might be maligning the elderly woman:
>> she just says, "A different name? How odd!"). Personally, I don't find
>> it either odd or inexplicable. The usual reason why women have
>> different surnames than those they had fifty years ago seems fairly
>> obvious to me! Of course, one of my cousins changed her surname five
>> times in fifty years. I myself wear a different name than I had at
>> nineteen.
>>
>
> Under Scots law women do not lose their surname on marriage.

US women don't have to, either, but most of us choose to -- those who
bother getting married, anyway, which seems to be fewer every year. It
still bothers me that _none_ of the three who mentioned "Why would she
change her name?" even considered that she _might_ have gotten married
and done so. Turned out that the different name was a stage name.

>
>> She uses the word "snuck" (which Mark Twain also used, but in his case
>> he was humorously pointing out the ignorance of the character speaking).
>>
>
> We use "snuck" in Scots English.

I've noticed that a lot of fiction writers use it too, including this
one. But I always get the implication of "ignorance" whenever I see it.

>
>> And the capstone of irritations: this detective has not Clue One about
>> the use of apostrophes!
>>
> along with about 80% of people, including professional journalists these
> days ;-)

See above. It's one of the many small symptoms of the world going to
hell in a handbasket

But what really did bug me most was the "Piled higher and Deeper" of all
those characteristics of the "Cozy Cat Mystery". I still can't think of
even one that she missed.


--
Sibyl Smirl
I will take no bull from your house! Psalms 50:9a
mailto:polycarpa3@ckt.net

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