Bad reviews and negative feedback on my work don’t bother me in the least
bit. I’m not so egotistical to think
that I’m going to write a book that will be universally loved by each and every
person who reads it. People have varying
tastes and that is exactly how it should be; the world would be an extremely
dull and lackluster place if we all had the same opinions. The being said, I want to clarify something
about The Seven Habits. In doing so, I’m
not defending myself or my writing but my editor.
Some people have commented that the editing is inconsistent due
to frequent changes in verb tense during Bosley’s narrative, sometimes even switching
tenses multiple times in a single sentence.
However, this does not in any way reflect on the skills of my
editor. I had written Bosley’s chapters
that way intentionally and advised Permuted Press and the editor of this
upfront… and I would have fought tooth and nail to keep those inconsistencies
in place if I had to.
What you have to keep in mind is that Bosley is
dimensionally unstable. At any point, he
can be spontaneously pulled through the Eye of Aeons with no control over where
he ends up. It might be hundreds of
years into the past or future, it may be a matter of just a few days, hours, or
minutes. For him, time is no longer
linear. It does not go from Point A to
Point B to Point C and so on, but is more like a young child’s crayon scribblings
on a wall. He’s pulled through time so
often, in fact, that it’s taken a toll on his memory (which depends upon time
being measured in a linear fashion).
For a person like Bosley Coughlin, he can never be entirely
certain whether something he is talking about has already happened, is
happening, or is yet to come. As the
author, I made a stylistic decision to throw the rules of grammar out the
window in his chapters. The way a person
talks is a subtle reflection of the way that person thinks and I wanted his
narration to embody the confusing mess his mind had become. Personally, I don’t see this as being much different
than the way he uses archaic words and phrases as naturally as he does modern
slang.
I tried to keep the tense changes as subtle as possible, but
if this decision completely grates on your nerves, blame me… not the
editor. She did a wonderful job on this
book and I would love to have the opportunity of working with her again.
That is all.
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