Hello Guardian, Before I go any further let me introduce myself. I am a retired English Composition and Literature Teacher from the secondary level here in the U.S. I am reviewing the entire story up to this point and I must say that as far as your imagination is concerned you would rate an excellent plus. Now come the bad part. I am not even going to consider the errors in grammar and spelling in the chapters up to the one beginning with the 90's but from there I began taking notes on your errors that should be nonexistant. You seem confused between your (personal pronoun) and your're (you are) contracted verb form.You need to correct this. Next is the word enclose correct form (inclose) this error occurs frequently. If you are using a proper word program you should check these spellings. The program would also find the error between quest & guest, quiet (silent) & quite (adverb indicating comparasions) YOu also seem to have trouble with past (gone) & passed (going by) Resident equals people where residence equals place where a person lives. There is confusion between effective and affective. Effective = the ability of something or someone to act. Affective is acting upon. Look these up in a dictionary for more meanings. One more error in {I think} the last chapter, you have left out a word in the phrase {layers [of] protection. I really do enjoy the story as it is conceptualized and do hope that you manage to continue to update the chapters as soon as you can as I am eager to see where you go from here. OH, One last comment, stop making excuses for what you write. You are a very imaginative person and nee to indulge in more self appreciation. Carol>clayva10@yahoo.com.USA
Author's response
Hello Clayva
Sorry it took so long to reply to you I have had a busy month.
I am the first to admit that my spelling and grammar isn't the best but I also know that (as I have a Headteacher as a mother) that you will be much hotter at spotting mistakes than the average reader. I struggled for literally years to hold down a beta for my story but I never found one that stayed more than a few months or that had that good a spelling themselves so I am forced to do without, only relying on my own mind and Office 2007 which is even worse at spelling than I am.
I realized the passed/past mistake as well as the quiet/quite mistake (sometimes just a typing error) myself a while ago and when I see the mistakes in chapters that are unpublished I do correct them but as this story is currently on 4 different sites and 2 yahoo groups I am understandably reluctant to go through each chapter on each site as it would amount to almost 400 separate updates if there was one per chapter. I have been re-reading my own story from the start and correcting mistakes when I find them and when I finish a segment I have been updating my yahoo group so the best spellings will be found there but as you rightly pointed out I am not perfect.
The effect/affect is something I didn't understand when I looked it up months ago and still don't entirely to be honest, its one of things that seems just beyond my grasp.
As for the excuses, well I am not an overly confident writer and when I am not happy with a chapter I prefer to let the reader know otherwise I can get reviews saying 'that didn't quite (got it right that time) seem to work' so that is sometimes just a way of dodging that but mainly I work on the theory that when you aim low the only way to go is up and as you have proved my readers do the latter part of that for me.
Thank you very much for the review and I will do my best to eliminate the spelling errors.
Regards
GuardianOfLight