Destiny Quest: The Legion of Shadow review

Cover for Destiny Quest #1 - The Legion of Shadow

I talked about gamebooks a few months back here, and mentioned the title Destiny Quest by Michael J. Ward. I’ve been slowly making my way through the adventure, and I’m finally ready for a verdict on this book’s Plot & Gameplay. So, what is it? Read on!

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Authors Acting Badly

A review of a book came across the Twitter-sphere today. That in itself isn’t remarkable. What is remarkable is the response of the author of the book.

The short version is that the reviewer said he liked the story, but that it had grammatical errors. The author took this the wrong way, and ended up giving the reviewer a piece of her mind. She claimed that he had the wrong version (it appears he didn’t) and more. When it came down to it, though, she insulted the reviewer and the other commenters. She demanded that the review be taken down, as well as told commenters to… well… “Go Away” in not so nice terms.

I feel sorry for this lady. In one day, she has managed to destroy her reputation. This whole fiasco went viral on Twitter. She won’t have much luck in the future. And in truth, the real troll in the whole thread of comments was her. There were some others (as you will get when something like this happens), but the majority were people telling her to be quiet for her own good. She should have listened to the criticisms. They are given for a reason. As the reviewer said, the story was good. It was the grammar that made it hard to read.

So, to my family and friends, please destroy my pens, paper, computers and whatever else if I ever do that. It is not professional, nor useful in the long run.

Scrivener for Windows

I’m done reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, but I need to do my writeup. I am planning 2 blog posts for that. Maybe more if I feel like expounding more. Today, I want to talk about Scrivener, though.

I heard of Scrivener when I did NaNoWriMo in 2009. It looked interesting, but as it was only for Mac, I couldn’t do anything with it. I may be in IT, but I haven’t been able to justify getting a Mac yet.

Then, as NaNo 2010 was gearing up, I heard that there was a Windows Beta starting. Great! Except that I do most of my writing on a Dell Mini 9 netbook with Ubuntu Linux. As NaNo progressed, I noticed that they had a Linux version! Great! But I didn’t want to take the time to figure out how to get it to work during NaNo, so I waited till afterwords. As I look back on it, I wish I had noticed that Linux port from the start. Its features make it a lot easier to work in for writing, as compared to Word or OpenOffice.

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