Bloodlines - Touch Not The Cat - Traces - A Scottish - American Genealogy Mystery Novel Series by Thomas McKerley and Ingrid Schippers

Catch the Blooper

The part of editing Tom and I are in now, is the most fun part.
It is the part, where the book is already written and edited;
where all the editor’s feedback has been evaluated and used for improvements;
and where now; it is up to the proofreaders, to show the authors, where their trains of thought took a wrong turn.

Reading one’s own book through the eyes of one’s readers is a very interesting experience. It reveals bloopers, the author(s) never noticed. In most cases these are the smallest of mistakes; the ones overlooked, after numerous re-writes and re-reads have taken out the bigger flaws in the story line.

This one for instance:

Weary Cathy opened an email from Steve Hicks her partner at the Raleigh PD.

Of course we meant to say:

‘Weary, Cathy opened an email from Steve Hicks her partner at the Raleigh PD’;
for our Raleigh PD cop Cathy, is not nicknamed ‘Weary Cathy’.

Yet even the comma isn’t enough we decided, after much linguistic debate.
As an alternative, we put in (not Putin, but put in; this is a definciency one gets while emerged in (at?within?) this level of editing); so…we put in:

Wearily, Cathy opened an email from Steve Hicks, her partner at the Raleigh PD.

Believe it or not, but this is a really very enjoyable part of writing a book.

Ingrid Schippers