A few notes on the launch of a digital novel

With the LEGENDS project online for about 16 hours, commenting has been already closed to halt the spam and the homophobic abuse. Didn't take long, did it? I've also "hidden" the comments, because readers don't need to be abused along with the writer. *sigh* Tells you something about human nature, doesn't it?

Alas, closing comments and making existing ones invisible means that a couple of very nice comments have vanished, and for this I apologise: it's regrettable.

Alex: if you're reading this: thanks for proofreading the uploads, which was quite kind (although perhaps it wasn't such a good idea to just post the list of typos as comments! This actually just draws them to the attention of the 95% of readers who didn't actually notice them! However, I do appreciate your noting them, and naturally I'll fix them. As I've said many times in the past, on this blog and on my website, I'm not a typist -- I'm a writer. I have a love-hate relationship with the keyboard; mostly hate).

It's worth noting, here, that LEGENDS is free fiction which issues directly from me. Because it's 100% free, I don't have the time or resources to devote to eight or ten proofing "passes" done by three of four people (extremely high "duh factor" there). You'll find a few typos, consistent with the free nature of the fiction, and many (most?) readers would call it a fair trade. If you're downloading the novel for your iPhone, Kindle, or whatever, the "compulsive copy editor" -- and I'm one myself, so I'm neither complaining nor surprised! -- can always correct the occasional typo on the fly. In fact, please do.

LEGENDS will be launching with a newsletter later today, and I do indeed apologise for the commenting being closed. If you want to leave remarks about the story and artwork, remember -- you can always do it on this blog. However, most readers will be going directly to the LEGENDS page, and those readers can live happily without being abused in coarse language, and told they're (in so many words) unhealthy, abnormal, and downward-bound to the hot place.

I just wanted to get this service message out this morning ... I'll be back later with the day's post, about the time the newsletter is going out.

Cheers,
MK