Oh, yeah! I wrote that... heh, heh... um...

This is funny. I had a comment on an earlier blog post that included a joke about an ogre in an outhouse. I did not recognise it as a phrase from my own work.  But today, while doing cross checks for Redemption 4, I came across the ogre joke in Gryphon 2. I laughed. At me in particular.

This is not the first time I have done this. I always have to reread at least the previous novel in a set to get the feel of the story again, and I often have to find references in much earlier books in the series to keep ‘facts’ straight. For me, the sensation is similar to reading a book a second or third time. I don’t remember exact quotes, and that resulted in a little surprise, where my own words were quoted for humour and I didn’t recognise them. The same forgetfulness has the bonus benefit of letting me laugh at or delight in my own prose when I come across something I did well.

I think this mechanism is at work when we reread favourite books in our collections. Unless we have absolutely perfect memories, we travel through a familiar story with a sense of deja vu, but do so appreciating the prose anew. And stuff we may not have focused on the first time pops out better on second and third readings.

The crosschecking is very much necessary for this last reason. I don’t expect readers to pick up on my little hints the first time through a novel, but darn, I like to give a person an ‘Oh, that’s right!’ moment on the next trip through my series.

I love books like that, books that make you perk up and notice the twisted little details.

But it also means a lot of rereading for me when I set up subsequent novels in the series.

Yes.  I have been working on my series. (: