Dreams of the Quill

The goal of this page is to deal with some of the concerns expressed by readers from Pages Unbound in their reviews of Night Switch.

Concern #1:
“The site font. Less near-sighted people may not mind it, but this reader hates having to squint all the time just to piece the letters together. Don’t get me wrong, the prose is quality. I just wish I could read it without straining my eyes.”

Flak’s Solution
Increase effective font size in your browser. Firefox, Camino, Safari, Opera, Sunrise, etc. all have this functionality on Mac OS X, and I imagine that equivalent counterparts on more widely-used operating systems have equivalent functionalities in this regard.

Concern #2:
“The site design in a little clunky, but the work is found easily enough - and the banner images are neat.”

Flak’s Excuses
Er, yeah. I’m going to redesign the site sometime in not too long. This isn’t really a solution, because there will likely ALWAYS be problems with the DotQ site design… for now, an explanation! DotQ started out as a tiny site with two stories and twenty pictures on it. Over the years, the content multiplied rapidly, the technical aspects of the site always struggling to keep up. Over the years, the technical aspects of the site have always lagged behind. This is true today. The site simply “has too much” and I must admit it is a failing of mine that I can’t keep the site sleek.

Concern #3:
“The Jason chapters are hard to follow and bend credibility. He seems to be in an entirely different world from the other two main characters. And I don’t think you can whine your way into a job with Homeland Security.”

Flak’s Supplemental Material
First of all, sorry for the hard to follow. I’m assuming that the IRC party was problematic; I made it the way it was for several reasons and, while I am 98% sure I handled it in the best way possible, I can see how it was less than desirable. Any further IRC parties/conversations will be clearly such, laid out in log format.

As for bending credibility… yeah? I can’t say sorry for that. It’s Night Switch and it’s supposed to be infused with the ridiculous. I might say sorry to someone who, knowing that credibility is meant to be bent, still dislikes the bending of credibility. But yeah, things are supposed to be weird.

Regarding the “entirely different world”—no, he’s not :)
Just wait until 02.06. Marin and Joe might seem to be living in a more realistic world, but this story isn’t categorized as “Modern Supernatural” on Pages Unbound for nothing.

And no, you probably can’t whine your way into a job with the Department of Homeland Security in 2008 real America. Now I have to ask you to consider this: within the context of the story, what does it say about LAW1, and the Inspector, and the state of the DHS, that Jason does do exactly that? Just something to chew on.

Concern #4:
“The story seems to be part of a much larger site. Navigation is not easily laid out, probably because story is only part of site.”

Flak’s Praise
This person essentially said, in a nutshell, what I was trying to say in response to Concern #2. The site “has too much”—and yes, this is a problem, and yes, I will try to get to fixing it.