The abyss of my own incompetence

On Christmas Eve morning I received a package from my publisher Little, Brown. Inside that envelope was my manuscript in its stark copy-edited form.

What are copy edits, you ask? Oh, they are just the thing that forces you to stare into the abyss of your own incompetence. (Thanks to my friend, colleague and fellow writer David Bloom for that apt description.)

I'm not just talking grammar or typos here, people. Though my astoundingly thorough copy editor caught all of those and then some, it...