SquarePeg Books

A new year and a new me, am I right?

Well, not really. It’s still the same old me with the same old problems, hopes, daily resolutions—“today I’m going to be productive and—-.”

We all know the chorus. But there are some glimmers of hope: I’ve got a part-time job that I enjoy, I’ve settled a desk at a friend’s house and I use it (still have a lot of mixed feelings about that), and, ummmm, yeah. We’ll see how it goes.

Anyhoo…

January 6 question – Being a writer, when you’re reading someone else’s work, what stops you from finishing a book/throws you out of the story/frustrates you the most about other people’s books?

I find your lack of accuracy disturbing.

If you pass out on a hill of fire ants because of dehydration in high summer, you’re not getting up again 20 minutes later.

You said in a previous book Grandpa Bob won the Medal of Honor, but in this book, you said it was Grandpa Jim.

You used the word “corticobrachialis” to described part of a human leg.

Your 1970’s private detective smelled cordite upon entering a crime scene.

Your bad guy can shoot a .45 off-hand, while driving at 65 mph with accuracy at a vehicle some 25 feet in front of him, but can’t hit a stationary target less than 5 feet away.

Your story is set in 1300’s France, and your character, a woman of lesser nobility, is upset that Dad sold off the gold-trimmed porcelain dishes.

You state that pure fairies are incapable of giving birth to male children, then state that the only way a fairy can breed is to mate with a human. How is it that there are any pure fairies left if there is no other way to produce fairy babies?

My greatest desire when I encounter things like the above mentioned is to find the author and end them.

But murder is wrong.

So I research. I do crafty things. I write and obsessively fact check everything that I’m not 100% certain about.

I know things still slip through the cracks, but it’s usually pretty obscure stuff, not anything that could be solved by a 10 second search on Wikipedia.

At least, I hope so.

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