Fact (mostly):

Reedsy Discovery held a webcast about genre bending featuring Paul Indigo’s Love Deleted. The genres involved are near term science fiction (I prefer speculative fiction) and love story.

The host introduced Jacquelynn Kennedy, the woman who wrote the official review of the book on Reedsy. She went over her review and gushed over the novel. Paul Indigo joined and she interviewed him while hundreds in the audience chat texted questions. Later, Paul answered the questions.

Paul’s enthusiasm for his book was infectious. He was a great guest. He talked about the emerging science of optogenetics and how much he liked, or was intrigued with, it felt like liked, the Cooper Hall character he invented. While the thank you and goodbye messages flicked by, I resolved to read the book.

I should have known better. My friend, former colleague and fellow self-published author turned film maker (him not me), Tony Njedeh also awes me when he speaks about his novels. I read some of his works. They were okay but failed to live up to Tony’s enthusiasm. Much the same with Love Deleted.

Opinion:

After THE END, Paul asks for Amazon and GoodReads reviews, an easy task for those who loved the book. I didn’t like the book from the first chapter. Cooper comes off as a stupid, thoughtless character who shouldn’t be allowed to drive and proves it by crashing into a tress while talking on her cell phone. There is, of course, a reason for this behavior, but that reason comes several chapters later and seems insufficient cause for such irrational behavior.

For those unfamiliar with Reedsy Discovery, it is a site that allows authors an ability to get their latest works off to a good start. As an amateur author, it arranges for site approved reviewers to give my book a first review. My novel, Frontal Lobe Override, received a five star review which I think is overgenerous. As a reader, it introduces me to new writers many of which are well worth reading. I am not an official reviewer. You have to submit several reviews to get approved, and my reviews tend to be very critical, so I doubt they would be good for book launches (you’ll see below).

I bought books discovered on Reedsy and leave my reviews on Amazon.com (I love my Kindle reader app on my tablet). I have left a few positive reviews there. In fact, I grudgingly left a five star review for Grayson Scott’s In the Available Light even though I thought the story telling was deceitful.

My problem here, or at least one of them, is the other authors weren’t featured. They weren’t given a webcast. They were more like me. Before leaving a critical review, I need to make sure the negative review is not a product of envy, jealousy or any other character fault. I almost titled this blog entry Envy Deleted.

As I said, Love Deleted received a lot of praise. The reviews on Amazon, even many four and five star reviews, point out at least one fault. For sure, some are friend reviews. Still, I’m feeling better about writing a critical review. I’ll attribute the ones saying it was beautifully written to friend reviews.

One of the early traits which swayed me against this book was missing quote marks. It seems technical, but at the very least, the author should have hired a proofreader. There is a phenomenon I call “Author’s Eyes.” Author’s know what words come next. Even after letting a long work rest for a couple of months, authors are still in love with their creation. So in love they overlook obvious flaws. They can’t help it.

I kept my college papers for over twenty years. Five years out, I still knew each one of them. If it weren’t for red marks and margin notes, I’d swear they were perfect. Not much changed after another five years. Packing for another move, I gave one or two a read. They were horrible. Professors showed great restraint with their red ink. Perhaps they were saving some for other students. It gets worse after spending months on a hundred thousand word novel (I am a slow writer).

There were several other flaws in novel’s style. Some of those could be explained by a narrative style called DeepPOV where narrative voice merges with a character’s voice. Proponents of DeepPOV deliberately leave internal thoughts un-italicized and many other style cues are eliminated. The operative word two sentences ago is ‘a’ which is why it was bolded. DeepPOV comes in either DeepPOV I (first person like) or DeepPOV He/She (third person like). In this novel, the DeepPOV is mostly third person, but it skips from one character to another, point of view slips or violations. I can’t imagine editors would allow this.

Love Deleted is published by Random Word Media. I googled this. Nothing. Either they are too small to have any SEO (search engine optimization) or this book is really self published. The later is most likely. It best explains the lack of editing and adherence to publishing standards.

I’m feeling better about my review. I am not far from some other Amazon reviewers, and I can not verify the publisher. Still, glowing reviews on Reedsy Discovery. In part, Reedsy Discovery is a service for new authors. There are some some low star reviews, a product of forthright reviewers, but RD never positions itself as a gatekeeper. They do place standards on reviewers. Perhaps one day I’ll apply myself though I would shoot me down so it would be just an experiment, not fair to Reedsy Discovery. Assuming the reviewer was earnest and chose to promote a story she loved rather than act as an editor, then the gushing review makes sense. Frontal Lobe Override received five stars and I know it has problems that simply can not be fixed.

I believe my review is earnest and not the product of envy. I am ready to submit my review.

Not My Cup of Tea

Paul Indigo launched an author series webcast on Reedsy. It was supposed to be about writing across genre’s, in this case speculative fiction and love story, but it soon became a lovefest for this book. Paul is an engaging guest. Enthusiasm for this book, his writing, was infectious. After the last chat message farewell flicked by, I decided to read this book. It was so highly praised.

I should have recalled Snap!’s lyrics: This one is real so believe the hype (Don’t believe the hype is a sequel). Solutions to all life’s problems lie in popular music lyrics.

The introduction of optogenetics and it’s application to the lead character may account for the story’s popularity. Here the book delivers something fresh, mostly unknown and speculative. If you google optogenetics, you will discover that there are human trials underway. It is real, fascinating and troubling. I’m surprised the FDA would approve this technology given its potential for abuse. Oh well, if they didn’t, the Europeans will, not to mention China. In the book, the ethics of tampering with the human mind get a mention, but I felt they were mostly skirted. More books should be written to delve into the possibilities, and human dramas, that could come from it.

I didn’t like this book from the first chapter. It fell into a common writing evil: It withholds critical information from readers. Withholding information is not a hook; compelling stories are. As I said, it’s common, no reason to stop reading.

The book centers on Cooper Hall, sound engineer extraordinaire, wife of a musician, mother of college boy, youngest of two sisters. In the webcast, the author said he was intrigued with this character. I don’t see it. For the first three quarters of the book, she is more cold than cool, more hot head than passionate. Early in her teens, she cuts her hair short and prefers to wear cargo pants and tee shirts. After that, she dates, and becomes overly heartbroken when her teenage boyfriend cheats on her. For the next twenty-five years, she seems to be in a state of arrested development.

Her boyish appearance hints at gender identity issues, but the novel never goes in that direction. There is an attempt to explain it as covering up femininity. Throughout the novel, men are attracted to her, but sitting here in a Starbucks, four women have passed by who exceed Cooper’s physical description, so not buying it. Leaving character discovery up to readers is endemic of good writing. For me, another reason comes to mind. As youths, girls are on a parity with boys. Differences emerge at adolescence, the age when Cooper makes her persona/fashion choice. Although she falls in love, marries and bears a child, something in Copper’s brain prevents her from progressing. After the optogenetic treatment, her femininity slowly blossoms. The problem with this is theory is that all the men attracted to Cooper, including her husband, may have pedophilia issues which are not even mentioned in the novel. Well, that’s my theory; you’ll have to read the book to see for yourself.

Reviews get the genre wrong. This is a Comedy of Miscommunication. For three quarters of the book, it is a Tragic Comedy-of-Miscommunication, but then builds to a happier ending. The problem is readers must slog through so much fertilizer to get there.

I do not expect a British writer to adhere to the Chicago Manual of Style, but there must be a British equivalent and it must cover formatting titles of books, movies and songs. I’m sure I’ve seen internal thoughts italicized in British works. Writers, trying to achieve DeepPOV, often ignore style cues in the belief they distract readers from the characters train of thought. DeepPOV comes in two flavors: I, sort of like first person; and He/She, like third person. There is no DeepPOV omniscient. In this novel there are several places employing DeepPOV He/She techniques but switching from one character to another, in the same chapter, without a separator or other indication of POV change. Where I come from, that’s called “head hopping” and is consider a point-of-view violation in any form of third person narration including DeepPOV He/She.

The constant head hopping is not the worst written decision. This author chose to use excessive repetition for the first three quarters of the novel tapering off in the last quarter though still too much repeating for my taste. Perhaps the repetition is meant to reflect character’s mental states, and at first it may have had that effect. The first time, but it kept repeating to the point of annoyance. Repetition from Cooper as she tried to come to grips with what she saw. After the third time, annoying. Repetition from Harriet, her sister, annoying. More repetition Cooper. Repetition repetition repetition. We get it already. Annoyance. Yeah there’s some variation. It’s pointless annoyance.

Apologies for the mimicry. If you didn’t like the above paragraph, you may not like this book. When I took TV production classes in college, the professor oft said problems with lighting are not solved by adding more lights. They required redesigning the lighting. It’s hard to believe that editors allowed all this repetition. There is also too many details thrown into the narration. Extraneous detail should have been weeded out.

While reading, I marked the occasions where quotation marks seemed more left out be error than omitted. I read this on kindle. The Kindle locations are 29, 61, 84, 229, 483, 491, 530, 451, 549. I made a bunch of other notes about other usage problems, but the missing or misuse of quotes should be enough to prompt another proofreading at least in the Kindle edition.

** Amazon did not immediately post the review. I have ran afoul of their review guidelines in the past. They will not allow reviews of one thing (the book) to contain promotion of another thing (Reedsy Discovery), so I reworded that section. Quoting rap lyrics was also not a good thing, so deleted. Also gone is the pedophilia speculation. That probably raised red flags.