Dragon Blade movie

Starring Jackie Chan, John Cusack and Adrien Brody (The Pianist). Amazon show the time as 127 minutes, but the box shows 99 minutes. The cuts are obvious, and I guess this has resulted in somebody cutting and pasting short explanatory scenes all over the place. Also, some scenes are simply "what's happening? How did they get there". Still, it is fairly understandable and viewable, although it tends to dwell on emotion, some of which would have been better to cut shorter rather than the story line. Overall, not bad, however, the explanatory notes at beginning and end need 20/20 vision and a huge screen to read. The story is about a Roman general escaping with the young brother of a Consul's son who wants to kill the brother and take over the Silk Road. Jackie Chan is the protector of the silk road, but the Brody's scheming has left him disgraced.

A recipe for money

A receipt is a written or printed acknowledgement usually for money but could be for goods or services, or of the actual receiving of something, i.e. I am in receipt of your receipt for the money I sent you.
However, it is an archaic form of the cookery word recipe. Receipt is still sometimes used instead of the word recipe in the USA, but is falling out of use.

Wide Holes

What is the difference between a crevice and a crevasse?
A crevice is a small fissure or cleft, and mining a crevice means a fissure in which ore or metal is found.
A crevasse is a fissure, but is usually wide and/or deep and found in ice or a glacier. In the USA, this can also mean a breach in a river bank or levee.

Advertisers need writers

Some advertisements may have not been meant the way they sound.
"Don’t sleep with a drip - Call your plumber."
"Tattoos done while you wait."
"Wanted - unmarried girls to pick fresh fruit and produce at night."
"Fine foods expertly served by waitresses in appetising forms."
And, of course, all those boards that apparently boast of cannibalism:
"Sunday roast children £2.50."
"Beef - £3.00 Chicken - £2.50 Children - £2.00"

Which Spelling to Choose?

Archaic words and spellings are difficult to judge. For instance, I was taught to write ‘aging’, which the Oxford dictionary says is fine. However, younger readers insist this should be ‘ageing’, which is also fine. So, which spelling should a writer use?

Editing

Professional editing is an additional cost for indie authors, and may not be perfect going by the number of errors in the ‘big name’ published books. I can go through a ms a dozen times until believing it is perfect. When I get somebody else to read it, they find a few more errors and poorly constructed sentences. After this, I will transfer to my kindle and read it again, and note down more problems. Then publish on kindle, and sometimes get comments that it has not been edited! Using Createspace to produce a printed version, I read the proof copy and find more errors. After making these changes to the printed and kindle versions, I hope to have an acceptable ms. Unfortunately, few people review the books on Amazon, and some comments are either unhelpful or do not match the content. One person may say ‘not enough detail’, while another will say ‘too much detail’. You can’t please all of the people all of the time.

SciFi reads

Just read a short sf story written about 1960, probably in response to fresh medical evidence linking smoking with cancer. I guessed where it was heading about halfway through, but it was still a good read, and available from Project Gutenberg. The story is about labs around the world struggling to find a cure for a new lethal virus that was produced accidentally. All children, some ethnic groups and about fifty percent of the rest of the world had already died or were dying. The cure? Smoke like crazy! Can just imagine if something like this happened for real. "Smoking only" public venues and shops everywhere.