So, the first of my readers got through Spells of Old! He loved it, and enjoyed a lot of it. There are a few chapters he mentioned stopped abruptly, which I need to fix, and I’ll likely have to add a chapter of daily goings-on in the dungeon to help flesh out a few relationships, but that’s something I can easily handle. Waiting on the other two before going to town on it. I also have one part I’ve decided desperately needs to be revised, due to Bad Math on my part.
Second, after some consideration, I’ve put up a snippet of Spells of Old. This is part of the Prologue, not all of it. Once I have a mailing list set up, I intend to let those who’ve signed up see more. Remember, this is the first draft! Spells of Old Snippet
Ancient Dreams 
Nice snippet.
dunno if you’re interested, but I was a bit bored and read some parts of the edited version (the fun parts of course). There’s still some punctuation errors and some weird sentences, but otherwise it looks pretty good.
LikeLike
I’m definitely interested (I always find errors irritating, so try to fix them).
Glad you like the snippet! And just as well I didn’t give the entire prologue, there’s an issue in the last couple of sentences I need to resolve.
LikeLike
For some reason I saw stuff mostly around the scene where Lily gets picked up by Sistina from the elf camp. No guarantees on completeness or even that I’m right about those errors (I’m no native speaker, and it has been some years since school ^^).
“The soldier replied (…) as if not certain who to address.” I think that should be “whom”.
“Lily froze almost panicked for a moment.” Bit of an odd sentence without any punctuation. At least I’d put a comma in there.
“…and she winced at how tightly the ropes were.” Tight, yes? Or tightly bound or something (also, next sentence starts with “On the other hand…” but I don’t see any “contrasting alternative” there).
“Well I personally hope…” Missing comma.
“…and gestured for Vendis to move the gesture looking…” Lacks some punctuation, I’d say. Maybe go wild and for a semi-colon?
“…before a soft golden glow appeared in the depths cavern…” Depths of the cavern?
“Phynis couldn’t help but notice that in spite of her cheerful demeanor, she was watching …” In that sentence you use a closing comma but no opening comma for the clause, which probably shouldn’t be done.
So that sort of stuff, assuming I’m even right with those. Some other things that could be debated, but they’re more stylistic preferences.
As an anecdote, I didn’t notice until re-reading it that doggedly keep direct speech as separate sentences through the book. I mean, there’s no ‘She yelled, “Kill them all!”‘ or ‘”They should all die!” she screamed.’ or ‘”Couldn’t we murder them in their sleep?” she asked pointedly.’ or ‘”They must die,” she asserted, “they must all die.”‘ You always continue with a capital letter, never use a comma to open a sentence of direct speech. Or at least I didn’t find any ^^;
LikeLike
Hmm…looks like you don’t have the most up to date version. The ‘tightly the ropes were’ was fixed in the most recent version for sure. Not sure when. *goes through several more* You know, I’m very grateful to my editor. They seem to have fixed almost all of these. *lets out a breath of relief*
Thank you for pointing them out, though. I’m glad to have looked them up.
As for the last bit…it’s stylistically something that bugs me. I don’t like doing things like using a comma before speech. I don’t know why. I know that my editor changed some of my sentences to flow better in that manner, though.
LikeLike