Snips and Snails and Puppy Dog Tales

The Troop, by "Nick Cutter".
Book provided free for review by Simon & Schuster.

I haven't accepted a book for review lately, but this one caught my eye. Or rather, a blurb about it did:

"THE TROOP scared the hell out of me, and I couldn't put it down. This is old-school horror at its best. Not for the faint-hearted, but for the rest of us sick puppies, it's a perfect gift for a winter night." -STEPHEN KING

A book that scared Stephen King? This I had to read!

I'm about 5% into it, and I have to wonder if the typing was what scared King. This was offered as an "uncorrected reader's proof", but as far as I know, that means it might get minor edits based on advanced reader feedback. Maybe "uncorrected" was meant to tell us it was utterly unedited? The Troop is worse than a first draft of a book. A lot worse. The author has only passing familiarity with his shift key. Every other sentence starts with a lower case letter. Nine proper nouns out of ten start with a lower case. If I wanted to type like him, it would take effort not to capitalize! How could anyone, let alone a writer, not use the most basic proper capitalization by default? (And this isn't a wacky ebook formatting issue, the multi-page legal blurb at the front of the book is fine.)

If the book was meant to be sent out unedited, why? Why not at least do the most basic proofreading beforehand? How had the writer himself not corrected these errors before submitting it? Most the character names, lower case. Place names, lower case. Prince Edward Island was mentioned a bunch of times (including as "PEI") and never does it have correct capitalization. PeI, peI, PEi, every combo you could think of. Every. Single. Time.

"Nick Cutter" is a pseudonym for "an acclaimed author of novels and sort stories". I can't believe that.

Based on the 5% of the book I read, I can't say I liked the writing. Descriptions and dialogues were over the top. But Stephen King liked it, so I suppose I'll continue with it for now... For the sake of my iPad, I just need to keep all red pens out of reach.

Disclaimer: I'm a technical writer/editor by profession. I may well be a lot more anal about capitalization than others. (It pains me to type those two sentences. Proper nouns are capitalized! That's one of the most basic rules of writing! ARG!)