Mechanics, Usage, and Grammar

Does anyone else remember MUGs testing in middle school? We were given small, often inane sentences or paragraphs and told to identify something like five "mechanics, usage, and grammar" mistakes. I hated those. It always suggested one ideal form of writing that to which you ought to aspire to. Yeah, that sort of thing. Personally, I do enjoy the pomp of avoiding sentences ending with prepositions (of, to, with, etc.), but that is not how people speak and trying to incorporate it naturally is hardly ever going to sound appropriate. Unless, of course, your characters and narration are intentionally formal or outmoded or exceptional English language learners.

Anyway, this is an open invitation for commentators on the first few chapters--and likely successive chapters--of my detective story involving "strange cases." The protagonist is Lorenzo Vincenzi, PI, and one of his early, peculiar cases. It is built into traditional Lovecraftian fiction, but is in part inspired by other detective stories I have been enjoying lately. You can send me an email at Caleb[dot]A[dot]Phillips[at]Gmail[dot]com or just comment here.

Also, a note on mechanics. One does not require a Google account (which owns Blogger/Blogspot) to make comments on these weblogs. You have the option of logging on to your Google account, or commenting via a different network (I believe), or neither. Often, commenting does require rewriting one of those blurry text images to avoid bots, but having an account is not necessary.

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Future Posts:
Collected comments and thoughts on Flagstaff, AZ and Northern Arizona University trip;
Further views from my bikeseat;
and Man vs. Food: the Caleb Edition, in which I describe some behavioral peculiarities I have with food and how they make themselves known with my mom around.