The Author Got Dinner on the Table Early

If you’ve been following the blog, you know that I’m in the midst of editing book three of the Screwing Up Time series. Editing is always a very focused, intense time. I’m looking for the last of the errors, polishing the prose, and hunting the typos.

The other day, I was smoothing out a fight scene when this sentence popped up in the middle of the action, “Raise Matthew’s allowance.” And I laughed. Thankfully, my kids are older and usually don’t feel compelled to hack my computer any more. Years ago, I password protected my computer when I found out that my daughter was reading the endings of my books before I’d printed them out. (A great evil!) Anyway, the kids thought the passwords were a challenge and took to leaving notes in my text to prove they could hack my system.

Honestly, I do miss the notes in my texts that said, “Jacob loves Mom.” On the other hand, this recent foray into my latest novel has revived nightmares that after a book is published I’ll get an email from a reader that says, “In chapter 25, it reads ‘Mark got bit by a zombie and stabbed Miranda. They both died and the author got dinner on the table early.’”