Ten things I love about my copy editor

1. She points out when my characters find their way all the way up the hallway and halfway up the stairs.

2. She suggests how to tighten the poesis of my descriptions. (I go along with these suggestions because I don’t know what poesis means. Not even after googling it. Twice.)

3. She won’t let me start three paragraphs in a row in the same way.  Starting successive paragraphs in the same way is a no-no.

4. After deleting verbiage, she tactfully asks if I think that works better to improve the pace?

5. I try not to mix my metaphors but have been sprung cramming too many different ones into a confined space. Man, I gotta remember to let those suckers breathe.

6. She calls me on phrases like ‘crabbing backwards’ because crabs normally scurry sideways. Duh.

7. And, technically, characters can’t hiss if there isn’t a sibilant sound in their line of dialogue. Suffering suckotash, how did I not figure that out for myself?

8. Intruder, my soon-to-released YA novel, is nearly 65,000 words long and not a single page has escaped the red pen of my copy editor.

9. Because she’s been specially trained to give a shit.

10. She’s going to make me look good when Intruder hits the bookshelves on 1 June.

But right now, I’m a hundred pages into the copy edit, on-screen track changes are sending me blind, Monday’s deadline is staring back at me, and I can’t stop muttering ‘I love my copy editor, I love my copy editor, I love my copy editor . . .