Shameless plug for my work friend's debut novel ...

... which was published last week.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Taint-Jude-Nicholas/dp/1999716604/ref=la_B0717517BG_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1495653031&sr=1-1

She's also a Bond appreciator (bless her, she recently bought me a secondhand copy of the '06 reprint of You Only Live Twice. Of course, I already own it (the Penguin Classics print) but it was thoughtful of her nonetheless and I have found another home for it).

That said about her Bond fandom (and before FM suggests it ;) ), probably no point in telling her about this place ... she doesn't even do Facebook. She is on Twitter and Instagram, but primarily for novel-promoting purposes.

Ha! Damn.

Sounds interesting though. Might have to get myself a copy.

:)

FieldsMan my friend, I offer my thoughts just in case you were going to make a purchase (granted, they are based on being only 70 pages into a 354 page novel) about 2 niggles with it which might well bug you too.

First of all, although the lead character is an American teenage girl who is narrating in the first person and therefore talks about cherry soda, cell phones etc ... she also uses the non-US spellings of words like color, center and gray. Once I noticed this, it became a 'cannot be unseen' thing and I found it pretty jarring. Raised this with my friend, she said that it was a case of 'not wanting to argue with the computer'. I thought of saying 'But ... don't word processors have an American dictionary setting?', but held my tongue.

Also (and I haven't had the heart/nerve to mention this yet) ... I guess self-publishing also means self-proofreading, because in those 70 pages I've noticed about 13 typos so far. Some small (like missing/misplaced punctuation), some pretty major (missing words). The combo of these 2 things does have the effect of 'throwing me out' of the story, unfortunately.

I will persevere, but I really don't know if I'll finish it :/ .

Odd. Isn't it the writer's duty to embody the character through prose?

Indeed.