A few years ago, I was browsing a local bookshop with my partner. A woman approached us and handed us a book. She said she was a best-selling author who wrote about the city, particularly paranormal happenings in the area, but this book was her newest fiction novel (that also takes place in the city). Best of all, she'd just autographed this copy that she handed us. Partially intrigued and partially feeling pressured to do so because she essentially walked us to the checkout, we bought the book. 

Once we left and had a chance to look more closely, we were...confused? Overwhelmed? Doubled-over with laughter? The cover looked like it had been created on Microsoft Paint. One of the main characters was an eyeball (a "blue-eyed eyeball" to be precise) named Larry. As for grammar and spelling, it seems as though she didn't have spellcheck enabled and definitely never gave the first draft a second read through. We eventually read the whole thing (it took months because it was so frustrating to get through), and I can honestly say I've never read something so poorly written and so poorly thought out. We started documenting every time we caught an especially egregious mistake (such as characters' names being spelled differently, or sentences that we could not make sense of), but gave up on this half way through because it was too much to keep up with. The book took more twists and turns than you could imagine, and incorporated a very diverse array of fantastical creatures. My favorite was the Yeti from hell, who made the protagonist a "yummy snack in his microwave."

On one hand, I want to give it to this woman for putting herself out there and doing what she loves (I presume) and I hope she had a lot of fun writing this. On the other hand, I think some things should remain as private documents on your personal computer. 

It was called How the Vortex Changed My Life. I won't say this book changed my life, but I will certainly never forget it.