Kings of Infinite Space, my first novel, was written between 1998 and 2000. This is an epic fantasy of over 184,000 words. I mention this only to excuse the presence of numerous errors – mostly spelling errors, and duplicate or missing words – in my single hard copy of the novel. Over the years, the number of post-it notes sticking out between pages grew into quite a forest. Well, okay, maybe thirty or so.
Creating the EPUB version last year was quite an effort because I had lost the latex source files and was forced to recreate the text from the PDF version, using Calibre for the heavy lifting. Still, it was a worthwhile endeavour, and I was able at last to throw the post-it notes into the bin.
Relaxing after all that to read it (Kindle on the iPhone) I found a whole bunch of new errors.
I like to think that I am a careful editor, but it’s amazing how blind we can be. I am currently reading my second novel, having published it a month ago and not really looked at it since. This is a shorter work, only 82,000 words and written over a period six months.
About 30% of the way into Suzie and the Monsters is this wonderful phrase:
… was assaulted and killed in his home shortly after 4 pm this morning.
Oh dear! How embarrassing…
How many times did I read that before publishing? Certainly many. I remember thinking very carefully about whether it should be pm or p.m., eventually deciding to follow the style of the newspaper article that had provided that glaringly incorrect pm.
Francis James Franklin (Alina Meridon) 