Wanted: beta reader

[TxCat]

You need to be an adult and able to treat this like a business relationship. Good grammar, spelling and punctuation are non-negotiable requirements. A liking for modern westerns and mysteries or a knowledge of law enforcement that does Not come from fiction or television is a plus.

This is a story badly in need of revisions. It started out as a fan-fiction set in modern times for the cast of a classic western television show and then developed a life of its own. Now a publisher wants it provided we ---this is a cooperative effort between myself and another writer --- can strip the fan influence out and clean up the inconsistencies; however, the publisher wants us to keep the segments which switch back into the past and to keep the unique chapter voices (it alternates between two first person voices with occasional third person intervals when the story goes into the past).

We need someone who can give input regarding readability and who can spot those inconsistencies or places where characters overlap unnecessarily.

I don't have much to offer except a book credit if the editor takes the manuscript after revision and a heap of thanks. Please let me know if you can help out but don't do so unless you can commit. I have already had three people promise to do this and then never get back to me.

[Nerruse]

What kind of timeframe are you looking at? Sounds like a relatively short one, which pretty much leaves me out. I don't have any real world experience in law enforcement, I'm just working on my Criminal Justice degree so I have no idea if I'd be much help to you anyways.

I can however recommend a place where you'd probably be able to find the type of beta you're looking for. If you're interested I can PM it to you, just let me know.

[TxCat]

May of Next year is our deadline. Shoot, even the local professional writers' group failed us. I had three takers and none of them did as promised. We had a hard time even getting the manuscript back from one of them. Turns out he had submitted it to his own publisher but had failed to remove our watermark (would have loved to hear him explain why every sheet had 'intellectual property of...." with both our full real names on it!)

Criminal justice would be helpful as we are weak in that. Police procedural I have down pretty well from other sources but the rest is an unlovely train wreck. If you cannot help yourself, we would love a PM directing us to folks who can.

I still cannot believe we have this opportunity; it's a small publisher but a whit one and she's willing to take the next two in the series if we can get this one nailed down.

[Raneth]

How long is the manuscript?

[TxCat]

It's approximately nine chapters, probably about 50k at that point because we started it as a NaNo project. Then we stopped because of the aforementioned issues. There've a outline from that point, on the basis of which the publisher agreed to take it after revision, but nothing solid. We kinda tripped over ourselves.