We receive a lot of email. Here is the latest.
Hello Nalini,
Sophia Stevens
I hope you are doing well today!
Our company REDACTED is one of the reputed companies with 6+ years of experience in eBook conversion, book composing, design & typesetting. Till now we have work for many authors and publishers from all over the world with a 100% successful work completion ratio. You can request samples if you wish to check our work.
We provide a free trial for eBooks conversion so get free trial as soon as possible and connect with us quickly. For more details kindly visit our website: REDACTED.
It would be great luck for our company to work with you. Waiting for your response.
Dear Sophia, when mass spamming writers, because clearly we don’t have enough work as is, don’t copy and paste the name. Just a bare minimum of effort. We still wouldn’t work with you. We do all the formatting in-house, and the fact that you’ve used the fan form instead of the professional one and didn’t edit your email well – English is hard as a second language, but you still have to try – means your attention to detail is weak. But at least it would be addressed properly.
Wow! That hilarious and sad!
Wow. But also, Archangel’s War? Fabulous read. Great way to pass the time between rereading snippets about the glorious battle of House Baylor vs. Takis (which is also fabulous).
Jajajaja. I bet the email to Ms. Singh says “Dear Ilona”.
???????????? yes!
????????????that definitely crossed my mind as well!
“one of the reputed companies” ─ hahahaha! It doesn’t say WHAT its reputation is. Reminds me of ads that boast “quality ingredients” ─ could be high quality, but I always presume it’s profit-is-everything-so-we-cut-corners-whereever-possible quality. In the case of this letter, they now have a so-sloppy-we-can’t-even-get-the-author’s-name-right reputation.
I particularly like the ones that say: “I saw you in a vision and I have a forecast just for you, dear [fname] …”
Although perhaps there is someone out there whose name really is [fname] ??
That reminds of an episode of Taxi where all the cabbies have been laid off and get together to recount what they’ve been doing. Reverend Jim recounts his efforts selling vacuums. He recites the patter supplied verbatim:
Hi, my name is (your name) but that’s okay you can call me (nickname).
All these years later and it’s still funny and somewhat sadly relevant in today’s email marketing.
Hi Ilona,
I hope that you’re all fully recovered and having an amazing weekend!
I want to say “Thank you” for the free fiction section of the blog. I’ve reread everything on it while recovering from bronchitis. It makes a difference to have somewhere fun and familiar to visit when reality is all about coughing and napping and coughing…
Oy vey, the spammers! These guys obviously don’t comprehend that their spam letter is their interview -and that it was an epic failure. They might benefit from reading your blog posts about writing, but they probably ‘…can’t be bothered’.
I wanted to mention that the photographs on the blog are gorgeous! And, the new layout is easy to navigate. You do so much for us and it is greatly appreciated.
Warm regards, Regina
Oy, with the poodles already.
Lmfao I have this on a Tshirt …. one of my favourite TV quotes ever!
That’s funny and frustrating at the same time. ????????
To:
Nalini Andrews…
😉
i’d love to read that book lol
If you can’t get the name right, don’t even try.
It might be a machine translation. Some languages (notably Chinese, I am told) do not use different verb forms for past, present and future, so the translation would always use the present tense.
(Please note, I am working from hearsay on the verb tenses. Any language I have studied has complicated verbs. I will be the first to admit I could be wrong.)
However, working with a company where no one could communicate in English any better than this would be maddening.
You’re correct. Mandarin has no verb tenses. Tense is entirely contextual. Weirdly, this fact doesn’t make it any less of a bitch to learn. Source: Live in China, am attempting to learn Mandarin, and it isn’t going well.
I found Chinese grammar easy to learn. However, key to the process is doing a lot of listening to things you can understand. Get someone to record a bunch of useful sentences/questions to start and listen to them over and over.
I totally thought of Chinese when I saw that the verb in the letter was not in past tense. Some of my students plug in whole papers into the translators, but usually the entire thing comes out much less coherent.
Katherine, children’s television cartoons are helpful when learning a new language, especially one with pictograms rather than spelled out words, so learning to read is not a shortcut.
I was annoyed, when approaching the idea of learning Mandarin, to discover that the mainland [Communist] version is considered childish by the Taiwanese, who kept all the elaborations of the original when Chiang Kai-shek and his people fled the mainland in 1949 . Ditto for the written form — my tutor’s first page-through of Mao’s Little Red Book sent her into gales of laughter.
I envy you your opportunity, though. It was when attempting Mandarine that I discovered I would only be able to properly learn it if embedded in the environment… and the threatened opportunity never appeared after all.
Very nice slap down.
Very nice slapdown.
haha. Idiots. There probably is no one who actually IS Sophia Stevens. It reads like someone ran text through a google translator…Every now and then I open up my Spam folder in my Gmail account. And then I get the heck out of there….so many crazies and offerings to do unmentionable things….lol.
She does not know you, this is a solicitation for business, etc. Even if she had gotten everything else right (that “Till sentence is still bothering me), she should never have addressed you by your first name. Of course she probably would have gotten your last name wrong as well ????♀️
???????????? did you contact Nalini Singh to have a good laugh about it? You could „share“ a cup of tea and commiserate about your quality of received mails… ????!
Don‘t fret the idiots…
Hope you all feel better!
Greets from switzerland
Inga
The first thing I said out loud was “Nalini?!” Then I started to laugh. Oh boy!
Spam or not, if someone can’t proofread what they write, they deserve the silent treatment. 😀
Now, if you want to collaborate with Nalini Singh, I won’t mind. 🙂
+1
That is so sad. My sister-in-law is an editor for self publishing and I can feel her cringe. At least it wasn’t on the phone. By the way I do hope that the Austin crud stays back there as we really don’t need it.
Well, whatever effort she put into it was wasted.
Nalini, loved the latest Guild Hunter! ????
Yes loved Archangel’s War.
Lazy spammers!
Truth in advertising? Work with REDACTED and they’ll put the same effort into your book as they do in their emails. If you’re lucky, they might even credit the right author! ????????????????????
Oh, my stars and garters!
Sad.
Someone on another forum I’m part of posted a screen print of amazon’s “Customer who viewed this item also searched for…” page. The search items included: free erotica books, realistic dildos, swingers and… Ilona Andrews. ???
You never know when your name will pop up do you? Thought for a moment about sending to you, but obviously you receive more than enough funnies without any help from me!
Really hope you and the family are feeling better.
Send them one of the passages from James Joyce’s “Ulysses”. The ones in a foreign language where he is making double entendre of a third language, and see how they do. No, I myself have not made it past page three of this little tome, but I had a high school teacher who was a Rhodes scholar who told us about the book, and we spent a couple classes with one page. Oof!
Or how about the Odyssey in the original Greek? I use to have Greek plays for a literature class with one side in an English translation and the other side in Greek. Made for some interesting reading! 😉
I still have PTSD from making it through that book. There’s even a chapter without punctuation or capitalization–ugh!
I taught Portrait of a Young Man once, only once, as a HS teacher, and the only reason I got through it was that it wasn’t Ulysses.
It’s a sad truth, but if spammers had someone fluent in the language that they were trying to spam in, they’d probably get more people. I would think that for a book scam, they’d put a bit more effort into proof reading. ????♀️????
This rates up there with the heavily accented person calling me to say the IRS demands payment NOW and I must transfer funds to the to them immediately. Uh, no.
Wow. But also, Archangel’s War? Fabulous read. Great way to pass the time between rereading snippets about the glorious battle of House Baylor vs. Takis (which is also fabulous).
When I refused to cooperate, I was told that they would be sending the police to arrest me. I said that I’d meet them at the police department. They hung up.
Way to go! The IRS or Social Security, in the U.S., will send you letters in the mail, or via e-mail if you give them permission, if something is wrong. Scammers don’t know this, or if they do, they don’t care.
HAHAHAHAHA!
Yep… gotta love the spam email and the joys of spam callers.
Almost daily I get the one about them suspending my Social Security number for whatever reason and call back right now or the FBI will be coming to get me.
Uh huh and I have some snow mogul’s to sell to you for your fun.
( Strange reference I know but I was chuckling to myself remembering when a tourist asked a local store clerk where the ski area puts the snow mogul’s in the summer while waiting for the next winter season)
Our small local paper puts strange tourist questions asked thru the seasons and the respective laughter that it causes. The fun things always come up Snow Snakes, Snipe hunting and Moose encounters.
Lake Louise, Alberta is a beautiful blue thanks to fine particles of glacial silt. Every year the Parks Services gets asked how do they manage to paint the bottom of the lake or how much dye do they use and doesn’t it hurt the animals? Also, I was on a train from London to Edinburgh which passed through Newcastle. There was a family of tourists (I will be tactful and not mention their nationality) that were VERY upset over the fact they could see the ‘old castle’ from the train but where was the ‘new castle’. I love tourists!
OMG, how rude, unprofessional, desperate and down right hilarious. I’m often astonished at the stupidity of spammers, but I had not realised that they would use a fan page. That’s just ‘LOW’
Just something totally of track, I had to get anew device and went to get your books off it to put in the new one, and for 2Weeks Nook blocked me!!! I went on Kindle and bought Gunmetal Magic, first because my nerves needed soothing, and second, I love Andrea.
Good, better, best news, my husband (The Hero) was able to finally drag info out of Nook tech support, and said they were very decent to work with, but I must have done “something” to cause “the grief” OY OY OY!!!! But I got your books back!!!!! Yes, the good times are back. I reread your work almost every month, for my joy in my heart.
Thank you for everything and I just had to share.
wow, that’s a bad way to drum up work. Sloppy and stupid, not to mention unprofessional will never get them anywhere.
Hope House Andrews is recovering from the prevailing crud!
It is my understanding that spammers deliberately keep mistakes in because they don’t want to waste their time with someone too intelligent. They are looking for the desperate and/or dumb.
It along the lines of commercial “don’t worry, my Dutch is ok.” I tried to figure out what was originally intended. The first line, “these guys are very bendy.” Was easy. Should been “these guys are very flexible”. The second line that resulted in hug was much harder. I finally come up with “they need to be reassured”.
Translation/ interpretation are hard. I tried it with friends when we were broken down on a lonely road in Kazakhstan. The 1st translated an English text into verbal Russian the convert the Russian back into English and I checked their work an English copy of the book. It made for some entertaining laughs but appreciation for the work of others.
Hahahahaha!!! I was so confused, like why is Ilona Andrews posting an email titled to Nalini (Singh). It was quite lazy of them to get that wrong. But when you mass email, something is bound to get lost in the sauce!
Well at least they confused you with a very good author…
Hope you are having better health.. warm hugs ????
Well at least they confused you with a very good author…
Hope you are having better health.. warm hugs ????
Ugh… I hate that crap… your reply was probably more polite than they deserved…