Susan Palmer's Exquisite Now

Typos, I mean. Sheesh. My novel The Booker Rebellion will be released in November. It has been copy edited many times. Seriously. I spent some years as a copy editor at two of the finest papers in the West, The Anchorage Daily News and The Register-Guard in Eugene. This was the era when newspapers still made financial sense and people didn’t think you got factual information for free in your socials. But that’s a rant for another day.

Before I sent the manuscript out for consideration I hired one of the best copy editors I know to give it a read and she caught tons. Every dumb thing I’d missed. Fast forward a year, and my publisher’s editor, another close-reading kind of genius, went over it again.

And still. Okay, there may have been some tinkering on my part, a few little fixes to plot and character here and there. I may have introduced an error or two between copy edits. My bad.

Here’s the thing. A writer wants a reader to fall into the story, to be in among the characters and the place and the what-happens-next. A typo throws them out, dumps them back in the real world. And that is the biggest sin.

What comes next for my manuscript? Galleys, the version of the book that goes to the printer. Last chance to catch the woolly boogers. They’re like aphids on roses, only you can’t hose them off. This is a hand-picking job.

I’m ready for ’em. Vats of coffee. Phone off. Cranky, judgy self at the ready.

I’ll be thinking of my ideal reader when I do this task, imagining the person who will love the story. The last thing I want is that reader flinging the book across the room in a snit because I let my guard down at the end.

Semper vigilans, baby.