Pumpkinnapper Edits Done

Actually, I finished the edits on December 7. I hadn’t looked at the story for over a month, and it’s amazing the number of things you see after you’ve left it for a while.

The editor didn’t make very many changes, although she did find two problems I fixed. While the story already was fairly clean, now I could see I use some words too often. Too many only’s, breath’s, turn’s, return’s, took’s, gave’s, put’s. I found a handy-dandy thesaurus at the freedictionary.com and replaced and rewrote. But the story is only about 100 words longer.

Then I copied all the changes into a fresh copy of the file, spell-checked once more, and sent it off to the editor. She sent me mail back saying she wanted to get it done before the Wild Rose PRess Christmas shutdown. And I thought I could concentrate on promotion for a while. Silly me.

She returned the ms. only three days later, asking me to check cadence and grammar. Reading the story aloud will help the cadence. I thought the grammar was all right, but I will check again. Maybe I missed some dangling participles. And I’m sure I will see more places where I can replace ordinary words with better ones.

The best part is, she doesn’t expect it back until the end of January, so I can take a breather.

Merry Christmas to all.

I now have three solid weeks off for the first time in my working life, thanks to plant shutdown and vacation I have to take. I intend to put a dent in my TBR pile.

And as the days count down, it’s only two and a half weeks to Lady of the Stars release on January 7 at The Wild Rose Press.

Thank you all,

Linda