Scott and I connected on LinkedIn after a discussion about the professed death of LinkedIn groups. To that effect, I made an offer to anyone who would like to guest post on my blog, and Scott was the first to take me up on that offer. Since I told him to post about anything, he decided to let everyone know that God School will be free on Amazon for a limited time.

18-year-old Ev Bannen was just hoping to get admitted to college. He never expected to be recruited to a school for gods, where he’ll be spending his days building up his strength, learning to answer prayers and getting an education in religion alongside aspiring god of money Jaysin Marx, the lovely but troubled Maya Brünhart and anger-prone ginger Daryn Anders. But the organization of evil gods, Zero Grade, has plans to unleash hell on earth, and Ev and his friends soon become targets. What’s more, someone close to Ev is not who they claim to be, and their betrayal may doom mankind forever. Ev steps up to save the day, but does he even stand a chance in hell of defeating a legendary deity?

Second edition published June 2018. It fixes the errors in the original.

Download God School from Amazon

You may have noticed the snippet at the end of the blurb about fixing errors….

The truth is that every writer’s every project is prone to innumerable errors, and as I have written copiously myself about this very subject, I’m happy to reiterate; your spelling and grammar software can not replace a human editor. Here’s what Scott has to say on that same topic.

Imagine going to the Amazon page for your books and seeing reviews about how your work needs to be edited before release. How would it make you feel? Would it make you question your writing skills? Well, it certainly didn’t make me feel so good. But it did kick my butt into gear and set me on the path to being a great proofreader.

But let’s rewind a bit. More specifically, let’s go back to 2010 when I self-published my first novel, Mirai: A Promise to Tomorrow. I was so proud of that book. And you know what? It sucked. Nobody liked it. I don’t even like it.

However, it was a necessary learning experience. It taught me valuable lessons I would need for my next novel, The Game Called Revolution. That one ended up being much better received. I would go on to publish seven more novels… and on none of them would I use SpellCheck. I was so confident of my proofreading ability, I thought I didn’t need them. Well, you saw the above reviews. Obviously, my skill wasn’t up to snuff.

Then, last year, I left a stable job and couldn’t find a new one. I was burning through my savings at an alarming rate, and something needed to be done. It was around May 2018 that I found Caitlin Pyle’s online “Proofread Anywhere” course, and I realized I could become a proofreader and live the self-employed dream.

Caitlin’s course taught me the in’s and out’s of proofreading, and it came with numerous exercises to hone my skills with. Now I have real confidence in my abilities and am ready to put them to work for clients. I founded Proofread Excelsior LLC last year, primed to tackle the challenge of growing my own company.

But you may be asking yourself, “Why do I need a proofreader? I’ll just use SpellCheck.” Take a look at the following picture of my current WIP.

 

I proofread that after I ran multiple spelling and grammar programs. It’s proof positive that you can’t rely on them. You need a trained human eye on your work.

Now, I’ve seen people make the argument that “I’m an indie author and so my work doesn’t need to be held to the same standard as mainstream books. That’s not what it’s about.” Let’s say your book is poorly edited but you publish it anyway. You’ll surely get fans that don’t care about the shoddy work. But your book won’t go on to become a classic. It won’t achieve the success it could have had. It will die in obscurity.

It’s all about respect. You need your writing to be as polished as possible so people take it seriously. And, really, you’ve got to be able to take pride in what you do.

I agree with Scott on the fact that all work needs to be properly polished before release, but I have also found that many people who call themselves “editors” can’t read or write their way out of a paper bag, so for all of you out there who want to know how to find a good editor, I have one piece of advice: Go through my editing and free resources tab.

I also want to stress that proofreading and editing are two different animals. Proofreading is the means by which another reader finds technical errors in a written work. Editing is the artful ability to transform a sequential account of events into a story worth reading.

Nevertheless, proofreading is paramount because your mind will see what it expects to see, and your software just won’t do the job right, so be sure to drop by proofreadexcelsior.com

Thanks, everyone for reading this guest post by Scott Kinkade. Don’t forget to check out his books on Amazon!