If only I could say with all honesty that Amazing Paranormal Encounters, by Rick Kueber, Annette Munnich, Michael Lynch, William Lester, and a slew of other 'authors,' was a pleasant literary experience. Sure, this collection of assorted ghost stories and paranormal themed rumblings is at times arguably compelling. Scary, even. But well written? Not exactly. And certainly, taken as a comprehensive whole, not near as much as it could have been.
What actually did make me awfully fearful while reading the book, was that this glorified mishmash of otherwise spine tingling tales would actually come off as ill conceived, prematurely published, and exceptionally poorly edited to the vast majority of knowledgeable readers. But don't get me wrong. A few of the individuals who allowed their work to be stitched into this pell-mell patchwork Frankenstein's monster of a book actually appear to be relatively good writers. Sadly however, few of the rest come off as much more than passably competent in their craft in any sort of appreciable way. Even more frightening is the fact that a few of the most disjointed and poorly edited chapters were written by folks who apparently have PhDs!
And if THAT doesn't scare ya, surely nothing will.
Yes, folks, Amazing Paranormal Encounters appears to have just plain not been edited all that well. In fact, it doesn't appear to have been edited at all. But then, these days all sorts of things get hastily and really quite expeditiously "ePublished," don't they? These days, almost anybody who has the time and the patience to bang away long enough on a garden variety keyboard is a big name 'author.' Well, not really, but you get the picture. But hopefully you won't have to buy the book to actually find out for yourself. Like I unfortunately did.
Mind you, this is coming from a guy who also is sitting in front of his very own keyboard; a guy who also possesses the power to be an almighty 'author' type person too. Yes, I can articulate, therefore I truly am a writer. The question is, am I a good one? Well, the answer to that question is highly subjective, is it not? At least in my own defense, I'm a guy who actually does believe in the old saying, that "everyone has at least one good book in them." Of course! Why not? But... and this BUT really does deserve both ellipsis AND the strongly indicated obligatory pause, EVERYONE... and I mean EVERYONE, could use a decent EDITOR every now and then, you know.
Heck! I'll bet even a grade A, choice select, prime cut author like Stephen King has somebody or other who helps him review his manuscripts after he's finished banging away on his very own writing instrument of choice. You know, someone competent and trustworthy to help him to get all the details just right, BEFORE his latest book goes flying like a bat out of otherwise scholarly hell towards the hot and heavy presses that, in these days of electronic publishing, feed greedy and overanxious book sellers and consumers alike with appalling regularity.
But nowadays we all live in this crazy new wild, wild west type ePublishing world, don't we? Oh yes we do! Got a bunch of paranormal themed essays you can slap together and launch slapdash into the Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble stratosphere? Well you're in luck, baby! What? No time to edit it? And you've got nobody (with an actual background in genuine publishing, that is) to so much as give the book a good, thorough read through before the freshly delivered newborn can even utter its first earthbound scream? No problem! Here it is, folks! And it only costs $3 bucks odd! So even if your brain gets tangled up in mangled up knots trying to sort those poorly worded sentences out, at least your precious pocket book isn't going to be a whole heck of a lot lighter!
Yeah.... Right....
At any rate, Amazing Paranormal Encounters really should be a good book for anyone who loves true paranormal accounts, but this particular 'author' type person really cannot see how it ever would or should be at the top of anyone's reading list. Sure, the content isn't bad, as true paranormal fare goes, but some of the essays/chapters are so poorly written, that you may find yourself pausing an awful lot to mentally self edit while reading. Which really isn't fun, let me tell ya. One might even say that far too numerous grammar and punctuation errors in this book tend to break aesthetic distance so often, and to such an annoying degree, that the otherwise spooky nature of many of the stories pretty much ends up falling through the cracks in the floorboards of all those oft cited haunted houses.
Bottom line; even though I might be able to recommend this book to anyone who likes to read true paranormal tales, I really don't think anyone (or any English majors who actually know their stuff anyway) would give the book high marks. In fact, I'd say that most practiced readers and other assorted intellect types worth their salt, who know how to break their thoughts up into carefully worded sentences (highfalutin PhD or no) would find this book to be downright tedious and even needlessly painful to read at times. And the scariest thing of all, I truly fear to tell, is that a good, thorough editing of the text would have added at least a star and a half to my final, mostly generous, three star rating. Maybe even two! And that surely is scary indeed.
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