Thanking the validators

@ Goodgulf
I know how you feel. My worst problem is characters development. I tend to look for help from google searching for names that fit the time frame. It seems I can't find a name that is to my liking and tend to go for the top names of that year. It's easy for a teen from the late 1970ies, thus born in the 1960ies. From the late 1950ies to the early 1970ies it was Thomas except for a single year (1968?) in the 1960ies. The further you get away they more often another name shows up.
For my work on 'Set Up - 10 days in Brighton' I already changed the name three or four times and I am already looking for a name I fancy more.
For Psychology I experimented with google translate. Write a page in German and use translate in small steps. In German I referred to the brothers in 3rd person plural (sie) and google translated it by using 3rd person singular female (sie) resulting in lots of additional work.
The validators won't see what caused the mistake and have to comb through the story with a blind over their eyes. They won't know that the author forgot to change the name of that the AI the author used as help failed.

@ crudcutter
One of my greatest problem is the use of ME and I which sometimes contradicts what I learned in the late 1970ies to early 1980ies. Or if the author suddenly refers to a male character as she. This probably often results from me assuming someone else speaking as a result of punctuation.

@ VALIDATORS
Thank you for your outstanding work. Especially since you even have to do your work if you are opposed to a story.
Thanks for combing through the stories and doing your volunteer work. In my case I can't thank you enough.

@Moody
I can't imagine how difficult it is to write in a foreign language, I make too many grammatical and spelling mistakes in English.

I tend to ignore/forgive obvious spelling mistakes such as accidentally changing a female character into a male - she becoming he (perhaps his is because I know of languages where tenses and even plurals don't exist.
Different spelling of names which are phonetically the same - Cathy/Kathy, Jon/John , Thompson/Thomson etc. don't bother me either. I can't recall seeing a case of he becoming she - perhaps I have a short memory.

That might have been in a story I wrote. Yes, I've lost track of who was who, so now I make a list of the characters in the story. I find that really helps.

Another thing it prevents is reusing a name. If Ted is a teacher at a junior college, a different Ted shouldn't a family friend. Not without giving the characters last names and being very clear over which Ted is which. When I need a new name I look at the list of characters and say "Okay, those are taken".

One way I've fond to name characters is from movie credits. Take the first name from a character and the last name of the actor (or the other way around) and you have a character you can picture in your mind.

I use a lot of first names of people I know or have known, particularly if they are from the era I'm writing about. In an attempt to get names correct and keep them that way, frequently I go back to an old story with the same character in it and copy it. Usually it works well when the character is a repeat, but I don't always get it right. Believe me when I say, I don't always get it right. Hence, the reason I feel for the validators. and appreciate their hard work.

I'm never sure what to do when I see the author decided to change a character's name but forgot to change it in the text in one or more places. Do they appreciate me sending a message about it? Same for other mistakes that slipped through and disturb the flow of reading a bit more than a typo or a lack of a comma - do authors appreciate it when I tell them or would I only sounds like a nitpicker who thinks her own writing is perfect? (I know it's not!)

I can't speak for others, but I welcome a notice when I've made a mistake like what you describe. I know I am anything but perfect, and my proofreading is suspect, so by all means let me know when I make a serious error.

Thanks for all of their good work.

Thanks, validators for correcting the dates in 'Journal of a Witch' - I completely missed out the month of October!

I still think that having Halloween in November was a great touch. It pointed out that this was a world where things are different, magic works, and Halloween is in November.

Halloween isn't a well celebrated festivity in Germany.

When I first read 'The Peanuts' the walk of shame of Charlie Brown remembered me of Carnival in Germany. I think it was on Saturday prior to Carnival Monday (called Rose Monday) that we kids in disguise 'paraded' the streets around home ringing all the doors singing 'I am small king,... don't give me too few nor too many with the broom stick..' A tradition that has died nowadays. Since we were well behaved kids we only got sweets and not the broom stick

As it is, few parents now accompany their kids on the 31st of October
It might lead to a new tradition in a few decades but since it gets less common each year it might already be dying.