about the notes added in the first book of the Starfire Angels: Forgotten Worlds series

The nice thing about indie/self-publishing is being able to make updates to books and not having to live with errors forever.

Readers of this blog know already that I've been reading through my series for my own personal enjoyment and also for a refresher before writing the last few books. I've also mentioned that I've been fixing little errors... and then made HUGE fixes to Book 1, A NEW BEGINNING, to the point that it added 4,000 words and cleaned up a lot of issues that made me cringe when I really looked deeply into them. As a perfectionist, I couldn't let that remain, so I fixed the book, and a new version has replaced the old.

I've recently been thinking again about something left in a couple of reviews on Goodreads, about a reader having some difficulty getting into the book and another being confused. That was part of the impetus to take a deeper look at it. It was also the reason for adding the update notes in the beginning of the book in 2024 regarding the odd dialogue formats indicating alien languages being written for the audience to understand and what to expect of the series. (Yes, authors do pay attention to reader comments, and I appreciate those, especially if someone wants to send them to me directly, which is why I have my public email address in every book.)

Now, I've added another note to that area as a "2025 update" note, regarding the naming order. To me, being a scifi geek, I've seen plenty of alien names and adapt. However, with more "laypeople" (metaphorically speaking), including kids (since Starfire Angels: Forgotten Worlds is written so that there's nothing inappropriate for tweens), picking up scifi for perhaps the first time or not being as tuned into some of the weirdness of truly immersive fictional alien cultures, I've decided to offer a bit of an explanation on this.

The opening now includes the following notes:

2024 updates

A note about dialogue format:

Because multiple "alien" languages are referenced throughout the series, dialogue needed some sort of indicators. Where the translation is revealed but is meant to be in another language, either [ ] or { } or even | | is used to encapsulate that dialogue. If any of these brackets are used in a book, they indicate different alien languages. In some of the books, all three are used. Where those brackets are, the character is speaking in a language other than Standard.

A note about the series:

This series has been planned as 24-25 books, each being its own complete adventure (beginning-middle-end). However, each book is a chapter of a larger "book" (the series) with growth and changes of characters and cultural/political situations over the course of the series, which will end in a series climax. For best enjoyment of the series arc, it is recommended to read every book in the numbered order.

* * * * *

2025 update

A note about naming formats:

I realized that some of the naming conveniences may be a little confusing to those who think personal-name familial-name (aka first-name last-name) format (such as John Smith) is the only order for names. However, when I created the Inari in the first Starfire Angels book, I was entrenched in anime and decided to use the Asian order of familial-name personal-name for them. Some of the fictional cultures influenced by the Inari culture in this series also use that naming order. However, since this is science fiction and touches on a variety of different fictional cultures, the series has names in a few different structures when referencing full names.