I get occasional visitors via Google-land, and it’s…interesting…to see exactly what search terms they’ve entered to get here (though Google now hides this information from me if the search is performed by a logged-in user, the spoilsports).

So I figured I’d share some of ’em with you.

But first! There’s a new way to get to the site! I read over at The Digital Reader about No Names, No Jackets and thought the idea was wonderful. Basically you pick a genre (or not) and get a random chapter of somebody’s book. (Well, here I go with the caveats: the chapter’s actually selected by the author, and I don’t know how good the random-number generator is either, but you probably gain nothing by reading this sentence, so stop.)

No book description, no title, no author name. Just a chapter, and if you like it there’s a link where you can get the rest of the info.

I don’t know how long this will remain true, but so far I haven’t found a bad chapter on the site. I’m tempted to be perverse and link directly to my own entry, but…well. What for? Go look. I promise nothing, but–you’re a reader, right? So. (And if you’re a writer too, the whole thing is essentially a lightly customized WordPress blog. Easy to use.)

Also I found out today that I’d inadvertently included two chapters in a single entry. Uh. Oops? So I may be struck with a bolt of lightning soon. Or maybe I’ll fix it. Or both.

Okay. Search terms follow:

“pagan sex”

This one’s awesome, of course. I fully realize my book title is horrible in every commercial sense. The people who click to read the description are almost certainly not the people who’d like the actual book. But…well, eventually I’ll have more books out, and people who want to read more of my stuff will find it. Then they can make the call. As for me? I do not ever want to be the guy who thought of that title, realized the book gave him a perfect excuse to use it, and then…didn’t. Readers can do what they want about it. There’s one other downside: if I ever do get around to writing a counter-cultural coital how-to, I’ll have to use a different title for it. Related searches: “sex with a caveat,” “sexatale,” “sexupdates,” “sex with amazons,” “sex stores new orleans,” “robbery sex free mobi sex.com.”

“pegan sex”

Okay, this could have gone in the list above. But hold on a minute: there’s potential here. If people are searching for a term and finding my site, it kinda makes sense to capitalize on that. Right? So…I could write a science fiction novel about a race of people called “Pegans” and totally clean up!

 “profanity on amazon”

Um, okay. I kind of see how that happened.

“free ass node baby ass baby node”

Is this one actually my fault? Cool, I guess.

“fun times rv”

Yep, okay.

“contracts are evil”

Totally goes back to my first blog post when I was starting a software company in 2009. Nice that it still works sometimes.

“always barefoot”

If only. Also, sometimes “barefoot” and “bare foot.” Once: “trucker barefoot.”

“does smashwords distribute to google books”

Nope, they don’t. But I like ’em anyway. Related: “is smashwords really free,” “like smashwords,” “mark coker smashwords a fraud,” “sites like smashwords but better,” “smashwords assign isbn”

“scribendi sucks”

Okay, this one’s because I’m an ass. But I was provoked. I tried Scribendi’s editing services & got a total whack job–that can refer to either the editing or the editor there; it was nuts. Whatever the quality of the original chapter I sent (opinions will vary as they please), the “edits” were in every case either harmful or semi-neutral. And I think there was evil intent: trolling for easily intimidated writers with money, basically. So…anyway, read my post if you like. Related terms: “scribendi is a bad company,” “scribendi contract,” “scribendi editing test,” “scribendi rip off,” “scribendi and publishers,” “can i trust scribendi,” “novels edited by scribendi.” Amusingly, people working for Scribendi still search for the phrase “scribendi sucks” from time to time and click through to my site, thus helping me to preserve my ownership of the phrase. Hi, folks in Kitchener! Way to monitor your brand!

“extortion amazon”

Heh. Related, sorta: “john locke method ebooks scam”

“indiana inmate search”

Um. I guess there are things I haven’t told you guys? My story: it surprised me too.

“speculating ass”

Totally cool. And yes, that seems to fit.

“rock shop new orleans”

All right. Time to stop. A surprising number of searchers get here via stuff like that. All hail the great god Algorithm!

Hope that was fun for you. I’m going back to work now. Probably.

They sent email promising to respond “shortly” to my recent post but didn’t follow through. Actually I don’t blame them; I was just looking for an excuse to use the headline above. Here were their options, as far as I could see:

1. “The editing wasn’t so bad.” I suppose they could try it. But then I’d tell you guys what they’d said, and I’d probably include lots more stuff. Annotated by me. I don’t see that ending well for them.
2. “But nobody would be fooled into making changes so obviously bad, especially to the first two paragraphs of a novel.” Uh…well, okay, but I don’t think they want to go there either.
3. “We have/had at least one incompetent employee/contractor, so caveat emptor, buddy.” Yeah, okay again. Probably not the message they want to send. Though, if you’re a writer? When it comes to editing services, it’s caveat emptor all day long. Got it?

I’m tempted to start trying out more of these guys and publishing the results. Then y’all could vote on the versions you like best. But it’d be a silly distraction. Which normally means I’m a-gonna do it, but in this case I hope I restrain myself.

But anyway. The headline above didn’t actually mean I’d be making noise about Scribendi’s suckage. It meant I suck in a noisy way. Because Pagan Sex is not ready, and it’ll probably be another couple of days. I could make excuses, but they’re all lame. I told you when it’d be done, and I didn’t follow through.

So I suck, loudly, and we’ll all have to deal with it.

Still. It’s coming. Like winter. Or the future.

No, I haven’t read any of his books. Except for Be the Monkey, which he co-wrote with Joe Konrath. I got a lot out of it, but if you’re not planning to produce fiction on at least a semi-pro level? Maybe you wouldn’t be interested.

I do plan to try his fiction, though. Eisler is a very smart guy & I’d like to see what he can do. (Aside from turning down a 1/2-mil 2-book contract in favor of self-publishing, though you might think that would be enough to justify my paying attention to the man.)

[UPDATE 1/7/13: I’ve read some of Eisler’s fiction now. It’s great! I’ve become a fan of John Rain.]

That led me to Eisler’s site, upon which I found this: “Scribendi offers high quality editing and proofreading, fast turnaround times, and affordable prices—all in a highly secure, confidential environment.”

Cool! So a while back I decided to try them out. Here’s the version of Pagan Sex‘s opening paragraphs I sent to Scribendi for a free sample of their editing services:

Freddy Shackleton stumped around a corner of the “B” building. Chest pains, smoke from the dump fires, the Young Gadjo sneering at him and swaggering like a boy who’d never been laid—was this why he had come to America?

No. Obviously it was to fix dishwashers. Freddy waited for the idiot boy to open the resident’s apartment door. Fifteen years in the job, fixing anything that broke, stretching the owner’s dollars till they screamed, and Freddy still didn’t get access to the apartment keys on his own. Who trusts a Gypsy? Naturally he had made a duplicate of the key to their cabinet just in case he needed them someday. But it was offensive. Fifteen years.

And here’s their improved version:

Freddy Shackleton stumbled around a corner of the “B” building. He was focused on the pains in his chest, the smoke from the dump fires, and the young gadjo sneering at him, swaggering like a boy who’d never been laid—was this why he had come to America?

No. Obviously it was to fix dishwashers. Freddy waited for the idiot boy to open the door of a resident’s apartment. He still didn’t have access to the apartment keys after fifteen years on the job, fixing anything that broke, stretching the owner’s dollars till they screamed. Who trusts a gypsy? Naturally, he had made a duplicate of the key to the key cabinet just in case he needed them someday. But it was offensive. Fifteen years.

(This went on for four or five pages, but I think you get the gist of it already. Don’t you?)

Seriously? I realize this was just one editor, and I have no idea how many are employed by or otherwise associated with Scribendi. But this reads as if produced by a moderately talented third-grader. Aside from weird passive construction, goofy non-parallelism, arbitrary word choices that change the meaning of my sentences, repetition that “sounds” awkward, issues with pronoun clarity, and gratuitous reduction of the “Young Gadjo” title to a generic reference, I have to ask: what was the goal here?

My further claim is that there were grammatical goofs in the extended bits, too, but that doesn’t mean you should have to read them. If you don’t believe me, I’ll send you the whole thing. Okay? Plus, “on” the job only works for certain sorts of positions. And I capitalized “Gypsy” for the same reason others capitalize “Native American.” Or “Indian” for that matter. For chrissake. (Which I didn’t capitalize…heh. Sue me.)

This editor-person went on to recommend that I pay several hundred dollars more for a full-book treatment on the grounds that a copy edit would NOT be enough (all-caps duplicated from original). This, I was told, would increase my chances of publication. There were further comments on formatting issues…even though I’d explained upon submission that the actual document resided in Scrivener, and this was just a Microsoft Word format export. [UPDATE: Oops, that was from another source; I got ’em mixed up.] Oh, and that I’ll be publishing it myself.

So I guess that answers my question about the underlying goal of the exercise: I was supposed to be chastened, buffaloed, and willing to pay them to save me.

Scribendi? They suck. (Did you notice that the company was singular in the title but is plural here? If they’d called my attention to that sort of goof, I’d have appreciated it.)

Though if anyone out there has had good experiences with them, I’d like to hear about it. In spite of my 15+ attempts, so far all my searching for an editor who can actually improve a manuscript has been in vain.