Betty Jay
Autor de The Return of the Boomerang
Sobre El Autor
Créditos de la imagen: In my heart I always cherish the spirit of the old European continent, which is where I was born and raised. I like to unlock every now and again the golden coffer of memories, letting out the cheerful notes of my old guitar. It fills the air with music just as it used to in the past among our group of university friends. I can see our home with its spacious garden all bathed in sunlight, where I used to daydream in wistful solitude for hours, conjuring up image after image, and jotting down rhyme after rhyme… I tenderly recall the prizes I have won throughout my sports career, as well as my mates from those times. Later on, my work at the scientific library and the Institute of Science allowed me to meet yet other strong-willed and kind-hearted people with whom I maintain a close connection to-date. After my husband and I immigrated to Canada along with our two sons, I preserved the living bridge of memories and I often cross over to the other side, with only a telling tear or two in the eyes. I am fortunate to have lived my life under the spell of friendship. I was blessed with some true friends here in Vancouver too where my family currently lives. It has been my Canadian friends that helped me ease the anguish of separation from home. Debby’s smiling face as we play golf or hike in the nearby mountains or gather with her family and friends makes me feel happy and serene. I get the same positive sensation from watching the ocean waves’ play, it is like a recharge. The wise embrace of Canadian wildlife injects me with vigorous shots of life, and when I hear the love-struck song of the nightingale at the break of day I feel that I’m growing wings to fly in artistic endeavor. Why did you choose the romantic genre? Because I only profess the faith of the eternal love of God. There is one universal truth that holds together human relationships, and carries in itself infinite healing power and all the beauty of life. I did my best to create my characters in line with this giant plot. Once you’ve been touched by true love, it opens up bright horizons for you and guides your way here on earth. But such enlightenment always goes through the pain and strife of all life lessons, that happen to us. It is a step-by-step process which usually passes through an initial phase of naïve uninformed innocence and continues right until reaching a revelation about the universal wisdom planted within every person’s life. This kind of transformation is shown in Annabel, the protagonist of the romance “The Return of the Boomerang”. Lisa Hamilton’s character evolves according to the same pattern in the amorous fantasy “Enlightenment” which will soon reach my audience. Thank you all for reading my novels! Betty Jay
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The Return of the Boomerang por Betty Jay
Esta reseña ha sido escrita para Sorteo de miembros LibraryThing.
This book would benefit from some stringent editing, many descriptors are used in a way that does not illuminate the characters. The main character is particularly one dimensional and so uninteresting! It's difficult to even get through this book.
Esta reseña ha sido escrita para Sorteo de miembros LibraryThing.
I received this book from Library Thing to read and review. Up front, let me say that this book is not well written and I had a difficult time reading it. There are numerous grammatical errors and the language is stilted and does not flow well and words/phrases are misused. The author should learn more about common language usage as it pertains to American English, since many of the phrases and of words were awkward and did not fit routine use. Because the book is so poorly written, I found myself often trying to figure out just what the author intended when reading a scene and pushing to continue through to the end. It also did not help that the author sometimes referred to a character, e.g. Bill and Dr. Lee, by both names during the same scene, leaving the reader to try to remember just who everyone was and what their names were. The main character, Anabel, is truly a terrible person, and I often found it difficult to continue reading because she continually acted so rudely and made such terrible comments (feeling such animosity toward a character has never happened to me before). She is arrogant and selfish, and has no real concept of reality, nor does she seem to want one. At her age, she should have received some decent training and education, even if her father did not have much time to devote to this. He is very much at fault for her being the way she is, and I couldn’t quite understand him either, as I don’t know how anyone, even a loving father, could put up with such disrespect and rudeness and allow such poor training. I felt sorry for her friend, Jojo, and decided early on she was a real saint for putting up with Anabel and her “moods”. Nevertheless, Anabel did improve somewhat as the story progressed, but I never did feel any warmth for her.
The concept behind the plot is a good one. The execution is what is lacking. I found the spiritual element in this book was interesting though I have never seen it within any novels I have read that involved “rich” people before this book. In conclusion, the writing just doesn’t flow, the main character is truly unlikable and unsympathetic, and a lot of the grammar and usage throughout the book need lots of work.… (más)
The concept behind the plot is a good one. The execution is what is lacking. I found the spiritual element in this book was interesting though I have never seen it within any novels I have read that involved “rich” people before this book. In conclusion, the writing just doesn’t flow, the main character is truly unlikable and unsympathetic, and a lot of the grammar and usage throughout the book need lots of work.… (más)
Esta reseña ha sido escrita para Sorteo de miembros LibraryThing.
The book's been removed from Amazon, which makes it unreasonably hard to add to my LibaryThing account (hey LT, work on that, because Goodreads is kicking your behind in the ease-of-use department).
But that has nothing to do with this author. And frankly, I'd like to help this author. She clearly has passion for her work.
But this book makes just about every beginner's mistake you can make. It tells, constantly, instead of showing. An example: We're told how the fancy coffee shop has inspirational messages on its chocolate wrappers instead of shown the characters reading those inspirational messages. And of course, what their chocolate wrappers say seems to have no impact on the plot, so why bother telling us about it in the first place then? This is failing prose on multiple levels.
So my (helpful) advice to the writer:
*Learn the difference between "telling" and "showing". Stories should usually "show" important things like how the characters are feeling and who they are, rather than "telling" the reader about them. Telling is boring.
*Use the word "said" when characters say things. Just "said". Or no dialogue tags at all. Look up "said-bookisms" and why they make for awkward, hard to read prose.
An actual quote from the book:
"Jojo, did you really think I will complain to the manager? You know I was not going to do it. You looked so bored; I just wanted to cheer you up. Wasn‟t it cool?" kept laughing Anabel.
"Kept laughing" is not a synonym for "said". For one thing, you do not "laugh" words. Also, use contractions more often in dialogue ("wasn't" instead of "was not"). It was the lack of contractions that tipped me off that the author wasn't a native English speaker. I know some wonderful writers who have learned English as a second language, but they work very hard to write fluently. This story is *not* written fluently!
Another quote:
"Michael, I can't believe that in this desolate seascape it is actually you and not the ghost who left our party without a word! I am so glad to see you are alive and healthy and happy," the young woman shouted with a familiarity, which made it clear she knew Michael.
This is redundant in 3 ways: we are shown that the woman knows Michael's name by the way she uses it in speaking to him. We are then told she shouted "with familiarity" (that is, she's familiar with Michael, she knows him). And then we're told this "makes it clear that she knew Michael." No, duh. We get it.
"Shouted" is okay instead of "said" here, because it shows the volume with which she is speaking, but the fact that the author almost never uses the word said (or when she does, she adds on needless adverbs and explanation of the dialogue) makes it one more straw on the poor camel's back.
This poor camel of a reviewer gave out at that "kept laughing" dialogue tag and skimmed the rest of the story. There wasn't much plot, anyway, just a narration of events in almost unreadable prose. But I am coming here to review, first off because I received a free copy in a LibraryThing giveaway in exchange for a review, and secondly because I feel this story *could* have had promise if the author had just worked harder at it.
For all I mock the way dialogue is handled, some of the actual things the characters say show some interesting attitude--like the heroine's opening lines to her friend, "You get no memories from sleeping" to explain why she's waking her up so early. It shows the character's vivacious, but selfish side, so well! And "You are so sulky in the morning; it makes it so exciting to wake you up." This could have been such an interesting heroine in a story interestingly told. But alas, it wasn't.
Ms Betty Jay: Take some writing lessons (or just read a few books or web pages on writing--writing-world dot com is very handy), and maybe in time you'll have an ebook you can sell for $2.99, rather than $0.99 and even that being too much to charge for an awkward and confusing first draft. If you put as much effort into the craft of writing as you have in promoting what you've written, you may have something worth the effort of promoting.
Given you've removed the book from Amazon, maybe you could even rewrite it and upload an improved version!… (más)
But that has nothing to do with this author. And frankly, I'd like to help this author. She clearly has passion for her work.
But this book makes just about every beginner's mistake you can make. It tells, constantly, instead of showing. An example: We're told how the fancy coffee shop has inspirational messages on its chocolate wrappers instead of shown the characters reading those inspirational messages. And of course, what their chocolate wrappers say seems to have no impact on the plot, so why bother telling us about it in the first place then? This is failing prose on multiple levels.
So my (helpful) advice to the writer:
*Learn the difference between "telling" and "showing". Stories should usually "show" important things like how the characters are feeling and who they are, rather than "telling" the reader about them. Telling is boring.
*Use the word "said" when characters say things. Just "said". Or no dialogue tags at all. Look up "said-bookisms" and why they make for awkward, hard to read prose.
An actual quote from the book:
"Jojo, did you really think I will complain to the manager? You know I was not going to do it. You looked so bored; I just wanted to cheer you up. Wasn‟t it cool?" kept laughing Anabel.
"Kept laughing" is not a synonym for "said". For one thing, you do not "laugh" words. Also, use contractions more often in dialogue ("wasn't" instead of "was not"). It was the lack of contractions that tipped me off that the author wasn't a native English speaker. I know some wonderful writers who have learned English as a second language, but they work very hard to write fluently. This story is *not* written fluently!
Another quote:
"Michael, I can't believe that in this desolate seascape it is actually you and not the ghost who left our party without a word! I am so glad to see you are alive and healthy and happy," the young woman shouted with a familiarity, which made it clear she knew Michael.
This is redundant in 3 ways: we are shown that the woman knows Michael's name by the way she uses it in speaking to him. We are then told she shouted "with familiarity" (that is, she's familiar with Michael, she knows him). And then we're told this "makes it clear that she knew Michael." No, duh. We get it.
"Shouted" is okay instead of "said" here, because it shows the volume with which she is speaking, but the fact that the author almost never uses the word said (or when she does, she adds on needless adverbs and explanation of the dialogue) makes it one more straw on the poor camel's back.
This poor camel of a reviewer gave out at that "kept laughing" dialogue tag and skimmed the rest of the story. There wasn't much plot, anyway, just a narration of events in almost unreadable prose. But I am coming here to review, first off because I received a free copy in a LibraryThing giveaway in exchange for a review, and secondly because I feel this story *could* have had promise if the author had just worked harder at it.
For all I mock the way dialogue is handled, some of the actual things the characters say show some interesting attitude--like the heroine's opening lines to her friend, "You get no memories from sleeping" to explain why she's waking her up so early. It shows the character's vivacious, but selfish side, so well! And "You are so sulky in the morning; it makes it so exciting to wake you up." This could have been such an interesting heroine in a story interestingly told. But alas, it wasn't.
Ms Betty Jay: Take some writing lessons (or just read a few books or web pages on writing--writing-world dot com is very handy), and maybe in time you'll have an ebook you can sell for $2.99, rather than $0.99 and even that being too much to charge for an awkward and confusing first draft. If you put as much effort into the craft of writing as you have in promoting what you've written, you may have something worth the effort of promoting.
Given you've removed the book from Amazon, maybe you could even rewrite it and upload an improved version!… (más)
Estadísticas
- Obras
- 2
- Miembros
- 16
- Popularidad
- #679,947
- Valoración
- 1.9
- Reseñas
- 3
- ISBNs
- 3