Almost there

Over the 4th of July weekend I finished up the final revision of Lovecraft Country. This week it goes to the copyeditor. We’re still on track for a February 16 publication date.

I’m tired but happy. The book reads well and there were no major changes this time through; this revision was about polishing, fixing a few minor lingering issues, and, as much as possible, trying to make the copyeditor superfluous.

Of course you can never catch everything yourself. At one point, glancing over a scene I must have read dozens of times since I first wrote it, I realized that I had a character calling out his own name in an attempt to get someone else’s attention. It’s an error a first-time reader would likely have caught right away, but because I’ve essentially got the text memorized I was blind to it—the only reason I noticed it is that I was skimming, looking for something else.

And even in these days of computerized spell-checking, you can still get words wrong, especially if you’re a little too quick to hit the “ignore” button. “Dessicated” is actually spelled “desiccated,” and the plural possessive of the surname Burns is “Burnses’,” not “Burns’s.” Who knew?