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Folks, there's nothing wrong with using software features such as Track Changes in Microsoft Word when you are writing the manuscript. However, when it comes time to submit to a magazine or book publisher, if you send in a copy that has all of those markups turned on...it looks bad. Kind of like showing up for your job interview in a T-shirt and shorts.
Would I personally reject someone based solely upon an oversight like that? No. But it starts you off in a hole that you're going to have to climb your way out of to get me to pass that submission on up the chain. And for heaven's sake, don't make that hole deeper by not adhering to the guidelines which state standard manuscript format.
My advice? Please open up your attachments, and look them over carefully before you attach them to that email and send them off. Look at it this way, would you print out a document, and stick it in an envelope without giving it a once over if you were submitting to a paper only magazine? No? Then do the electronic equivalent. To put it plainly, just because a market accepts electronic submissions does not abrogate your responsibility to make your submission meet the formatting standards set forth by that publication. If you can't be bothered to check the file before you send it to make sure it's in the right format, and that your actually sending the right version, it says to the receiving editors that you don't care about your work. That isn't the message you want coming across. Because there are markets that would reject you out hand for that kind of error.
This all falls under the part of things that are under your control as a writer. No, you can't control whether I'll connect with your story or not. You can't control whether or not I just got a story with a similar theme or idea as yours, and it was so awesome that it makes yours look pale in comparison, and anyway, I sent that on up and Gerard and Hildy loved that one so much they bought it immediately. But you can control how your words are presented on the page. You can control whether you want to take the extra time to double and triple check everything you are sending is correct before hitting the send button. Why make it harder on yourself than you need to?
Tags:
Folks, there's nothing wrong with using software features such as Track Changes in Microsoft Word when you are writing the manuscript. However, when it comes time to submit to a magazine or book publisher, if you send in a copy that has all of those markups turned on...it looks bad. Kind of like showing up for your job interview in a T-shirt and shorts.
Would I personally reject someone based solely upon an oversight like that? No. But it starts you off in a hole that you're going to have to climb your way out of to get me to pass that submission on up the chain. And for heaven's sake, don't make that hole deeper by not adhering to the guidelines which state standard manuscript format.
My advice? Please open up your attachments, and look them over carefully before you attach them to that email and send them off. Look at it this way, would you print out a document, and stick it in an envelope without giving it a once over if you were submitting to a paper only magazine? No? Then do the electronic equivalent. To put it plainly, just because a market accepts electronic submissions does not abrogate your responsibility to make your submission meet the formatting standards set forth by that publication. If you can't be bothered to check the file before you send it to make sure it's in the right format, and that your actually sending the right version, it says to the receiving editors that you don't care about your work. That isn't the message you want coming across. Because there are markets that would reject you out hand for that kind of error.
This all falls under the part of things that are under your control as a writer. No, you can't control whether I'll connect with your story or not. You can't control whether or not I just got a story with a similar theme or idea as yours, and it was so awesome that it makes yours look pale in comparison, and anyway, I sent that on up and Gerard and Hildy loved that one so much they bought it immediately. But you can control how your words are presented on the page. You can control whether you want to take the extra time to double and triple check everything you are sending is correct before hitting the send button. Why make it harder on yourself than you need to?
Tags:
February. A whirlwind of a month. Lots of travel, both for vacation and for work. The whole family managed to catch some kind of stomach bug that's been going all around. My new toy arrived. Snow. Some more snow. Just all kinds of all over the place.
Writing: One new short story first draft completed. Written out longhand. Then entered it to the computer and did a slight edit on the way there. I like it, but I think I need at least one more pass of editing before I can hand off to some early readers for comments. Unfortunately with all the chaotic last minute travel and then being sick, I just haven't had the chance to crack open this story for that edit pass. Perhaps that's a good thing as it will allow me enough distance to turn a more critical eye that way.
Editing: Cleared out my slush pile. Yay. When the magazine opens up for submissions again, I'll be sure to let folks know.
Reading: Due to nice trip up to Vermont, wherein I got to sit most of two 6+ hour car rides as a passenger, I got a heck of a lot of reading done. All of it. Yes all of it, done on my spanky new Amazon Kindle. Two simple reasons for this. One: it really is a great to have a ton of books for travel and be able to chose at whim what you want to read without any forethought, without carrying a ton of extra books. Two: I wanted to put this through its paces to see what kind of sterner stuff its got to it, so that I can post up a review. That'll come soon in its own post. Most of the below are via Public Domain/Project Gutenberg. One is an actual purchase of a current novel.
The Prisoner of Zenda, by Anthony Hope. Adventure. Romance. Duels. No pirates or giants though. Some wonderful fun characters. It reminds me of what I want in an adventure story where there can be intrigue and romance, and camaraderie. It was an absolute blast, and of course, how can you not just kick back and have fun with a novel with an antagonist known as "Black Michael"? Of course the story is a bit dated, but then I grew up on Errol Flynn movies, so dated movies about dashing heroes saving beautiful women will never go out of style with me.
The Man Who Would be King, by Rudyard Kipling. Also quite the adventure, though a rather different type of adventure. I found though, that the language of this one struck me as more vernacular, and it actually kind of got on my nerves a bit. The bulk of the story is one person telling what happened to another, and you get a kind of broken English effect. It pulled it off enough, but it knocked me out of the story a lot more than usual. I think this might be an issue with being rather used to the modern styles which shy away from these attempts to stick in such vernaculars. It's also a fairly short tale, I think more in the Novelette range.
The Scarlet Pimpernel, by Emmuska Orczy. Again with the political adventure. Yes, I'm straying a tad from my SF&F roots, and yet...this is a kind of seminal work that does have influence over the genre in many surprising ways. It is a sort of precursor to the masked avenger archetype, that will eventually come into a fore in the comic book superhero about forty years later. This one is a great adventure as the others, but a bit more intellectual rather than just bold derring do. Which is of course, what really makes it fun. I'm not sure if I knew somehow before I read this the Pimpernel's true identity, guessed it early on, or its a case that you're supposed to know/figure it out before the characters in the book do. I'm pretty certain it's the latter. In any case, what's masterful is watching the clever manipulations of the hero to outwit the villains. I also loved to read a story where the woman character has some agency. Sure she ends up causing much of the trouble, but she also strives to right that error. And watching the beautiful woman rush to rescue the hero is cool by my book too. Even if, during the course of her rescue, she ends up somewhat falling victim and needing subsequent rescue herself, I felt that she did use wit just as much as she was rescued.
Soon I Will Be Invincible, by Austin Grossman. I'm an old school comic book kid. I grew up with comics in the house, and just always loved superheroes. I mean who didn't want to be Batman, or Spiderman, or Supes? Heck, spent a good decade role-playing superheroes, both as a player and GM. What a blast. Anyway, I'd seen this book out there (and this is the only current book that I read this month) and right away this caught my eye. A novel about the evil genius. Personally, I'm on his side. Oh yeah, there's also all this stuff about the heroes. You know, the big hero group that saves the day. That's nice too, with a bit of realism thrown in to make it not so squeaky clean like saturday morning Superfriends from the 70s. But...that side of things didn't quite catch me the way the evil genius did. It wasn't bad, I think I just have seen enough from the side of heroes that showing the dirty underclothes of the heroes (not literally) just isn't as exciting. Now, the villain...man, he's just fun to hang around inside his head. Watching him reveal his descent into world domineering arch-nemesis of this world's unstoppable hero is gripping and engaging in a way that the alternating chapters from the hero side never quite manages. I really was rooting for him by the end of the book. Overall, I had a blast, perhaps I'll get to see more of Doctor Impossible someday. Hmm....I wonder....Dr. Impossible in '08?
A Study in Scarlet, by Arthur Conan Doyle: Yes Sherlock Holmes. I've never read Sherlock Holmes, and just on a whim decided to grab this stuff and read. I can see why its held up over the years. Holmes is engaging to read about. You want to get inside that head, and see where he's going, and you can't fathom how the heck he could possibly know what he claims to know. Now, I'm the type of person who watches shows like Monk, etc, and I can usually determine the whodunnit by the first commercial break. I've got probably somewhere well over a 75% hit rate. I'm usually pretty good at figuring out things in books too. (Say, the Harry Dresden novels....where I rarely get thrown off the case.) But in this one, I had no freaking idea how Holmes knew and I didn't. A touch infuriating, but in a good way. About the only really strange thing to me, was how halfway through the book, its suddenly a western novel set in Utah. It was so abrupt and bizarre to me, that I actually began to wonder if somehow, the book hadn't been compromised. (It was a free download and all that.) That is until I saw the name of one of the victims pop up, then I realized just what was going on was a flashback. Wow. That part, felt a little too much like one of the sidetrack stories in Les Miserables, which dearly as I love that story, was rife with tangentals that added far less proportionally than their length. Once the action returns to London, the tale got me back, and held on to the finish.
Note: for this month, I linked to the Kindle editions, just because I've got the new toy. But most of this months stuff you could borrow from your local library.
Writing: One new short story first draft completed. Written out longhand. Then entered it to the computer and did a slight edit on the way there. I like it, but I think I need at least one more pass of editing before I can hand off to some early readers for comments. Unfortunately with all the chaotic last minute travel and then being sick, I just haven't had the chance to crack open this story for that edit pass. Perhaps that's a good thing as it will allow me enough distance to turn a more critical eye that way.
Editing: Cleared out my slush pile. Yay. When the magazine opens up for submissions again, I'll be sure to let folks know.
Reading: Due to nice trip up to Vermont, wherein I got to sit most of two 6+ hour car rides as a passenger, I got a heck of a lot of reading done. All of it. Yes all of it, done on my spanky new Amazon Kindle. Two simple reasons for this. One: it really is a great to have a ton of books for travel and be able to chose at whim what you want to read without any forethought, without carrying a ton of extra books. Two: I wanted to put this through its paces to see what kind of sterner stuff its got to it, so that I can post up a review. That'll come soon in its own post. Most of the below are via Public Domain/Project Gutenberg. One is an actual purchase of a current novel.
The Prisoner of Zenda, by Anthony Hope. Adventure. Romance. Duels. No pirates or giants though. Some wonderful fun characters. It reminds me of what I want in an adventure story where there can be intrigue and romance, and camaraderie. It was an absolute blast, and of course, how can you not just kick back and have fun with a novel with an antagonist known as "Black Michael"? Of course the story is a bit dated, but then I grew up on Errol Flynn movies, so dated movies about dashing heroes saving beautiful women will never go out of style with me.
The Man Who Would be King, by Rudyard Kipling. Also quite the adventure, though a rather different type of adventure. I found though, that the language of this one struck me as more vernacular, and it actually kind of got on my nerves a bit. The bulk of the story is one person telling what happened to another, and you get a kind of broken English effect. It pulled it off enough, but it knocked me out of the story a lot more than usual. I think this might be an issue with being rather used to the modern styles which shy away from these attempts to stick in such vernaculars. It's also a fairly short tale, I think more in the Novelette range.
The Scarlet Pimpernel, by Emmuska Orczy. Again with the political adventure. Yes, I'm straying a tad from my SF&F roots, and yet...this is a kind of seminal work that does have influence over the genre in many surprising ways. It is a sort of precursor to the masked avenger archetype, that will eventually come into a fore in the comic book superhero about forty years later. This one is a great adventure as the others, but a bit more intellectual rather than just bold derring do. Which is of course, what really makes it fun. I'm not sure if I knew somehow before I read this the Pimpernel's true identity, guessed it early on, or its a case that you're supposed to know/figure it out before the characters in the book do. I'm pretty certain it's the latter. In any case, what's masterful is watching the clever manipulations of the hero to outwit the villains. I also loved to read a story where the woman character has some agency. Sure she ends up causing much of the trouble, but she also strives to right that error. And watching the beautiful woman rush to rescue the hero is cool by my book too. Even if, during the course of her rescue, she ends up somewhat falling victim and needing subsequent rescue herself, I felt that she did use wit just as much as she was rescued.
Soon I Will Be Invincible, by Austin Grossman. I'm an old school comic book kid. I grew up with comics in the house, and just always loved superheroes. I mean who didn't want to be Batman, or Spiderman, or Supes? Heck, spent a good decade role-playing superheroes, both as a player and GM. What a blast. Anyway, I'd seen this book out there (and this is the only current book that I read this month) and right away this caught my eye. A novel about the evil genius. Personally, I'm on his side. Oh yeah, there's also all this stuff about the heroes. You know, the big hero group that saves the day. That's nice too, with a bit of realism thrown in to make it not so squeaky clean like saturday morning Superfriends from the 70s. But...that side of things didn't quite catch me the way the evil genius did. It wasn't bad, I think I just have seen enough from the side of heroes that showing the dirty underclothes of the heroes (not literally) just isn't as exciting. Now, the villain...man, he's just fun to hang around inside his head. Watching him reveal his descent into world domineering arch-nemesis of this world's unstoppable hero is gripping and engaging in a way that the alternating chapters from the hero side never quite manages. I really was rooting for him by the end of the book. Overall, I had a blast, perhaps I'll get to see more of Doctor Impossible someday. Hmm....I wonder....Dr. Impossible in '08?
A Study in Scarlet, by Arthur Conan Doyle: Yes Sherlock Holmes. I've never read Sherlock Holmes, and just on a whim decided to grab this stuff and read. I can see why its held up over the years. Holmes is engaging to read about. You want to get inside that head, and see where he's going, and you can't fathom how the heck he could possibly know what he claims to know. Now, I'm the type of person who watches shows like Monk, etc, and I can usually determine the whodunnit by the first commercial break. I've got probably somewhere well over a 75% hit rate. I'm usually pretty good at figuring out things in books too. (Say, the Harry Dresden novels....where I rarely get thrown off the case.) But in this one, I had no freaking idea how Holmes knew and I didn't. A touch infuriating, but in a good way. About the only really strange thing to me, was how halfway through the book, its suddenly a western novel set in Utah. It was so abrupt and bizarre to me, that I actually began to wonder if somehow, the book hadn't been compromised. (It was a free download and all that.) That is until I saw the name of one of the victims pop up, then I realized just what was going on was a flashback. Wow. That part, felt a little too much like one of the sidetrack stories in Les Miserables, which dearly as I love that story, was rife with tangentals that added far less proportionally than their length. Once the action returns to London, the tale got me back, and held on to the finish.
Note: for this month, I linked to the Kindle editions, just because I've got the new toy. But most of this months stuff you could borrow from your local library.
February. A whirlwind of a month. Lots of travel, both for vacation and for work. The whole family managed to catch some kind of stomach bug that's been going all around. My new toy arrived. Snow. Some more snow. Just all kinds of all over the place.
Writing: One new short story first draft completed. Written out longhand. Then entered it to the computer and did a slight edit on the way there. I like it, but I think I need at least one more pass of editing before I can hand off to some early readers for comments. Unfortunately with all the chaotic last minute travel and then being sick, I just haven't had the chance to crack open this story for that edit pass. Perhaps that's a good thing as it will allow me enough distance to turn a more critical eye that way.
Editing: Cleared out my slush pile. Yay. When the magazine opens up for submissions again, I'll be sure to let folks know.
Reading: Due to nice trip up to Vermont, wherein I got to sit most of two 6+ hour car rides as a passenger, I got a heck of a lot of reading done. All of it. Yes all of it, done on my spanky new Amazon Kindle. Two simple reasons for this. One: it really is a great to have a ton of books for travel and be able to chose at whim what you want to read without any forethought, without carrying a ton of extra books. Two: I wanted to put this through its paces to see what kind of sterner stuff its got to it, so that I can post up a review. That'll come soon in its own post. Most of the below are via Public Domain/Project Gutenberg. One is an actual purchase of a current novel.
The Prisoner of Zenda, by Anthony Hope. Adventure. Romance. Duels. No pirates or giants though. Some wonderful fun characters. It reminds me of what I want in an adventure story where there can be intrigue and romance, and camaraderie. It was an absolute blast, and of course, how can you not just kick back and have fun with a novel with an antagonist known as "Black Michael"? Of course the story is a bit dated, but then I grew up on Errol Flynn movies, so dated movies about dashing heroes saving beautiful women will never go out of style with me.
The Man Who Would be King, by Rudyard Kipling. Also quite the adventure, though a rather different type of adventure. I found though, that the language of this one struck me as more vernacular, and it actually kind of got on my nerves a bit. The bulk of the story is one person telling what happened to another, and you get a kind of broken English effect. It pulled it off enough, but it knocked me out of the story a lot more than usual. I think this might be an issue with being rather used to the modern styles which shy away from these attempts to stick in such vernaculars. It's also a fairly short tale, I think more in the Novelette range.
The Scarlet Pimpernel, by Emmuska Orczy. Again with the political adventure. Yes, I'm straying a tad from my SF&F roots, and yet...this is a kind of seminal work that does have influence over the genre in many surprising ways. It is a sort of precursor to the masked avenger archetype, that will eventually come into a fore in the comic book superhero about forty years later. This one is a great adventure as the others, but a bit more intellectual rather than just bold derring do. Which is of course, what really makes it fun. I'm not sure if I knew somehow before I read this the Pimpernel's true identity, guessed it early on, or its a case that you're supposed to know/figure it out before the characters in the book do. I'm pretty certain it's the latter. In any case, what's masterful is watching the clever manipulations of the hero to outwit the villains. I also loved to read a story where the woman character has some agency. Sure she ends up causing much of the trouble, but she also strives to right that error. And watching the beautiful woman rush to rescue the hero is cool by my book too. Even if, during the course of her rescue, she ends up somewhat falling victim and needing subsequent rescue herself, I felt that she did use wit just as much as she was rescued.
Soon I Will Be Invincible, by Austin Grossman. I'm an old school comic book kid. I grew up with comics in the house, and just always loved superheroes. I mean who didn't want to be Batman, or Spiderman, or Supes? Heck, spent a good decade role-playing superheroes, both as a player and GM. What a blast. Anyway, I'd seen this book out there (and this is the only current book that I read this month) and right away this caught my eye. A novel about the evil genius. Personally, I'm on his side. Oh yeah, there's also all this stuff about the heroes. You know, the big hero group that saves the day. That's nice too, with a bit of realism thrown in to make it not so squeaky clean like saturday morning Superfriends from the 70s. But...that side of things didn't quite catch me the way the evil genius did. It wasn't bad, I think I just have seen enough from the side of heroes that showing the dirty underclothes of the heroes (not literally) just isn't as exciting. Now, the villain...man, he's just fun to hang around inside his head. Watching him reveal his descent into world domineering arch-nemesis of this world's unstoppable hero is gripping and engaging in a way that the alternating chapters from the hero side never quite manages. I really was rooting for him by the end of the book. Overall, I had a blast, perhaps I'll get to see more of Doctor Impossible someday. Hmm....I wonder....Dr. Impossible in '08?
A Study in Scarlet, by Arthur Conan Doyle: Yes Sherlock Holmes. I've never read Sherlock Holmes, and just on a whim decided to grab this stuff and read. I can see why its held up over the years. Holmes is engaging to read about. You want to get inside that head, and see where he's going, and you can't fathom how the heck he could possibly know what he claims to know. Now, I'm the type of person who watches shows like Monk, etc, and I can usually determine the whodunnit by the first commercial break. I've got probably somewhere well over a 75% hit rate. I'm usually pretty good at figuring out things in books too. (Say, the Harry Dresden novels....where I rarely get thrown off the case.) But in this one, I had no freaking idea how Holmes knew and I didn't. A touch infuriating, but in a good way. About the only really strange thing to me, was how halfway through the book, its suddenly a western novel set in Utah. It was so abrupt and bizarre to me, that I actually began to wonder if somehow, the book hadn't been compromised. (It was a free download and all that.) That is until I saw the name of one of the victims pop up, then I realized just what was going on was a flashback. Wow. That part, felt a little too much like one of the sidetrack stories in Les Miserables, which dearly as I love that story, was rife with tangentals that added far less proportionally than their length. Once the action returns to London, the tale got me back, and held on to the finish.
Note: for this month, I linked to the Kindle editions, just because I've got the new toy. But most of this months stuff you could borrow from your local library.
Writing: One new short story first draft completed. Written out longhand. Then entered it to the computer and did a slight edit on the way there. I like it, but I think I need at least one more pass of editing before I can hand off to some early readers for comments. Unfortunately with all the chaotic last minute travel and then being sick, I just haven't had the chance to crack open this story for that edit pass. Perhaps that's a good thing as it will allow me enough distance to turn a more critical eye that way.
Editing: Cleared out my slush pile. Yay. When the magazine opens up for submissions again, I'll be sure to let folks know.
Reading: Due to nice trip up to Vermont, wherein I got to sit most of two 6+ hour car rides as a passenger, I got a heck of a lot of reading done. All of it. Yes all of it, done on my spanky new Amazon Kindle. Two simple reasons for this. One: it really is a great to have a ton of books for travel and be able to chose at whim what you want to read without any forethought, without carrying a ton of extra books. Two: I wanted to put this through its paces to see what kind of sterner stuff its got to it, so that I can post up a review. That'll come soon in its own post. Most of the below are via Public Domain/Project Gutenberg. One is an actual purchase of a current novel.
The Prisoner of Zenda, by Anthony Hope. Adventure. Romance. Duels. No pirates or giants though. Some wonderful fun characters. It reminds me of what I want in an adventure story where there can be intrigue and romance, and camaraderie. It was an absolute blast, and of course, how can you not just kick back and have fun with a novel with an antagonist known as "Black Michael"? Of course the story is a bit dated, but then I grew up on Errol Flynn movies, so dated movies about dashing heroes saving beautiful women will never go out of style with me.
The Man Who Would be King, by Rudyard Kipling. Also quite the adventure, though a rather different type of adventure. I found though, that the language of this one struck me as more vernacular, and it actually kind of got on my nerves a bit. The bulk of the story is one person telling what happened to another, and you get a kind of broken English effect. It pulled it off enough, but it knocked me out of the story a lot more than usual. I think this might be an issue with being rather used to the modern styles which shy away from these attempts to stick in such vernaculars. It's also a fairly short tale, I think more in the Novelette range.
The Scarlet Pimpernel, by Emmuska Orczy. Again with the political adventure. Yes, I'm straying a tad from my SF&F roots, and yet...this is a kind of seminal work that does have influence over the genre in many surprising ways. It is a sort of precursor to the masked avenger archetype, that will eventually come into a fore in the comic book superhero about forty years later. This one is a great adventure as the others, but a bit more intellectual rather than just bold derring do. Which is of course, what really makes it fun. I'm not sure if I knew somehow before I read this the Pimpernel's true identity, guessed it early on, or its a case that you're supposed to know/figure it out before the characters in the book do. I'm pretty certain it's the latter. In any case, what's masterful is watching the clever manipulations of the hero to outwit the villains. I also loved to read a story where the woman character has some agency. Sure she ends up causing much of the trouble, but she also strives to right that error. And watching the beautiful woman rush to rescue the hero is cool by my book too. Even if, during the course of her rescue, she ends up somewhat falling victim and needing subsequent rescue herself, I felt that she did use wit just as much as she was rescued.
Soon I Will Be Invincible, by Austin Grossman. I'm an old school comic book kid. I grew up with comics in the house, and just always loved superheroes. I mean who didn't want to be Batman, or Spiderman, or Supes? Heck, spent a good decade role-playing superheroes, both as a player and GM. What a blast. Anyway, I'd seen this book out there (and this is the only current book that I read this month) and right away this caught my eye. A novel about the evil genius. Personally, I'm on his side. Oh yeah, there's also all this stuff about the heroes. You know, the big hero group that saves the day. That's nice too, with a bit of realism thrown in to make it not so squeaky clean like saturday morning Superfriends from the 70s. But...that side of things didn't quite catch me the way the evil genius did. It wasn't bad, I think I just have seen enough from the side of heroes that showing the dirty underclothes of the heroes (not literally) just isn't as exciting. Now, the villain...man, he's just fun to hang around inside his head. Watching him reveal his descent into world domineering arch-nemesis of this world's unstoppable hero is gripping and engaging in a way that the alternating chapters from the hero side never quite manages. I really was rooting for him by the end of the book. Overall, I had a blast, perhaps I'll get to see more of Doctor Impossible someday. Hmm....I wonder....Dr. Impossible in '08?
A Study in Scarlet, by Arthur Conan Doyle: Yes Sherlock Holmes. I've never read Sherlock Holmes, and just on a whim decided to grab this stuff and read. I can see why its held up over the years. Holmes is engaging to read about. You want to get inside that head, and see where he's going, and you can't fathom how the heck he could possibly know what he claims to know. Now, I'm the type of person who watches shows like Monk, etc, and I can usually determine the whodunnit by the first commercial break. I've got probably somewhere well over a 75% hit rate. I'm usually pretty good at figuring out things in books too. (Say, the Harry Dresden novels....where I rarely get thrown off the case.) But in this one, I had no freaking idea how Holmes knew and I didn't. A touch infuriating, but in a good way. About the only really strange thing to me, was how halfway through the book, its suddenly a western novel set in Utah. It was so abrupt and bizarre to me, that I actually began to wonder if somehow, the book hadn't been compromised. (It was a free download and all that.) That is until I saw the name of one of the victims pop up, then I realized just what was going on was a flashback. Wow. That part, felt a little too much like one of the sidetrack stories in Les Miserables, which dearly as I love that story, was rife with tangentals that added far less proportionally than their length. Once the action returns to London, the tale got me back, and held on to the finish.
Note: for this month, I linked to the Kindle editions, just because I've got the new toy. But most of this months stuff you could borrow from your local library.
.
