One of the pervasive problems of the self-publishing (or “indie author”, if you prefer) era is that many such works are crying out for editing and proofreading that their authors are not providing before publication. Author Jeff Carlson has an idea to help remedy the problem. He writes:

By now, everyone knows [[[The Frozen Sky]]] was self-published. That means it didn’t receive the benefit of a professional copy editor parsing through each and every sentence. The book did receive the benefit of several professional writers providing their eyeballs. But this is how those conversations did not go:

New York Times Bestselling Author: “Jeff, I really like this book.”

Jeff: “Wow. Thank you.”

NYTBA: “I’d be happy to endorse it. The main character is great. Love the action. Love the aliens. There are also about ten typos you should fix.”

Jeff: “Yeah, would you please read through my 450-page manuscript again and tell me where they are?”

Aha ha ha.

Most of the gaffes are extra or missing words in sentences. When I churn through my first draft, my fingers can’t always keep up with my brain. When I rewrite and edit, my brain can’t always keep up my fingers. If there’s an extra word, my brain ignores it. If there’s a missing word, my brain supplies it. So. Here’s a new Name Game contest challenge.

Please email me at jeff [at] jverse [dot] com. The first two people who can identify five or more gaffes in The Frozen Sky will earn the right to name a future character after themselves or a friend. What I need is the meat of each gaffey sentence in order to locate ‘em and kill ‘em.

Here is one such mistake I’ve already identified:

“It might help them can make sense of us,” Koebsch said.

Obviously the word “can” can’t be there.

Who else can help me!? If you do, as your reward, you might find yourself inside Europa’s catacombs having your face ripped off by a freaky ice monster…