Space for a pause

People, the thing about being one’s own editor and proofreader is that IT NEVER STOPS. There’s no one to please at this point but me, and I am never completely satisfied. Almost 60,000 words, much of it dialogue, and the chances for punctuation errors are endless. I made the mistake of mentioning this bit of stress to Mark the other night, and he said something like, “Just catch all the big mistakes. No one cares.”

So then there was a delay for shallow-grave digging.

I will miss him.

Anyway … I am happy to report that I am done.

Fightball: Dying of Suck is ready to go.

Except for the print-version cover, which I have to design this weekend. Photoshop is the devil, people. Sigh.

Kallan peers over my shoulder as I stare at the finished manuscript on my screen. “How many people bought your first book, Hope Lies in Less?”

(OK, she didn’t actually mention Hope Lies in Less by name … work with me.)

I supply a number, and she turns her head to stare into my eyes, her eyes so close to mine that our eyelashes touch, which I HATE, and she says, “You are perhaps crazily unsuccessful as an author.”

I shove her out of my eyeballs. “Whatever. People like funny. This one might sell better.”

She twirls away from me. “For some reason, I imagined Fightball was going to make me famous. Good to know I won’t have to make that adjustment.”

“Smarty-pants.”

“Seriously, though … I hope it sells more copies than Hope Lies in Less.”

(Again, she didn’t actually mention Hope Lies in Less by name.)

I assure her, “Well, I don’t imagine you are going to be famous, but you may end up being mildly locally well-known for a short period of time.”

She laughs and twirls some more. “When I am grown-up and actually FAMOUS, I am going to share the charming story of my mother the struggling author and how she promised me that I would one day be mildly locally well-known for a short period of time.”

“I am not struggling,” I protest.

She leans over my shoulder again and points into the screen. “Shouldn’t there be a comma there?”

DAMN IT.

 

22 thoughts on “Space for a pause”

      1. Kallan could bask in your fame, and keep all the people in line waiting for your autograph from rioting because the line is not moving fast enough. She could also appear with you on early morning TV. That requires getting up really, really early for a 3 minute spot that lures people to your book signing that night. Oh, and having a TV wardrobe.

  2. I kinda thought so. I used to keep a special unfaded t-shirt for TV. Got so they knew me by what I wore. Sortuva branding, if you will. Hey, it worked for me. Put the name of your book on a t-shirt and you will be good to go.

      1. Umm, mask? Guess you gotta go to the Mardi Gras to get one. They have lots. Or you could make one, as handy as you are as a crafter. It could have a face like a bloodsucker or eel. That would fit and make you an instant celeb.

          1. We seem to be straying from your goals here. Didn’t we start talking about a book tour? And now you want to be a sea lion on TV? Like the ones that are hauled out on all your wharves, piers, rocks, and little islands all up and down the coast from the San Juans to San Diego? Do you really want to add to that population?
            Please note the Oxford comma, Ms proofreader.

            1. I’m forever straying from my goals.

              Have we met?

              I’m Kris.

              Also, people who omit the Oxford comma are people I don’t even want to know.

              1. We have never met. I live far from you in the rural hills and hollers of the Ozarks. However, I was educated in the far North of Michigan State U and the U of Chicago. They taught me the Oxford comma.
                Makes me sort of an oddster here in AR. But I did spend 45 years in New Orleans, if that counts for anything.
                Your TV mask could be a banana slug. That should get some publicity. Folks will flock to your signings.

                1. 45 years in New Orleans … that definitely counts for something. Definitely.

                  I took the weekend away from the internet, as explanation for my delayed response … but the thought of being a masked banana-slug as I go about doing “Appearances” has made me giggle.

                  Thank you for that image.

                  Love that.

                  Kris

  5. Yea! Fightball is coming to actual print! Because I don’t have a kindle-thingy, so I’ve been waiting.

    And I love that you care about grammar and proofreading and spelling and such. Wish more people did. I struggle with the Oxford comma, but am a Nazi about my two spaces after the period!!!!

    1. Funny thing … I am LITERALLY unable to type without leaving two spaces after a period. I simply cannot unlearn that double-tap after a sentence. Here on this blog, I always leave two spaces. I prefer the way it looks; it’s how I grew up reading the typewritten word, and it’s how I learned to type; it looks and feels right to me.

      BUT. When I was readying Hope Lies in Less for publication, there came a moment when Kallan said mockingly, “If you leave all those extra spaces in your book, you know what it tells people?”

      “What?”

      “It tells people you are old and stubborn. Mostly the old thing.”

      So guess what? I figured out how to remove every single one of those so-called extra spaces.

      Seriously.

  6. I’m hopelessly late here.
    Does Kallan not know she is already famous? Of course she must share that space with Maj. And three dogs.

    1. HA! Kallan is not famous in a way that touches her everyday life, and so no … according to Kallan … she is not the least bit famous.

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