Grammar Gremlins

I have spent the last two weeks editing five manuscripts. Sometimes, I could almost believe that grammar gremlins come between the last edit and the first publication and cause havoc. I'm always amazed at the amount of errors that manage to sneak through, even when I always have another editor.

Take Transplanted to Red Clay, the final book in my Appalachian Roots series. The editor and I discussed, changed, and compromised until we were satisfied. Then it went to creative design, where it was typeset. When I got the first interior to view, I found mistakes still there that I thought we'd changed. I made note of the most critical ones, and hopefully Hannah will make the corrections, but there were three typed pages of them. What happened?

An, English professor and I also edited Through the Wilderness, a new manuscript set on the Oregon Trail, before I submitted it to my publisher. Yet, I'm sure I'll find mistakes when I read through it the next time and probably ever time thereafter. Even the published books have a few. Uprooted by War has three minor ones that we've found so far, but that's not too bad. I've become a lot more understanding of this since I've started publishing.

I have also been editing With Summer's Songs again. I had published it already, but I found so many errors in it, I want to redo it before I announce its release. The editor went through it twice, I've gone through it too many times to count, and yet glaring mistakes remained. On this one, I have to edit three versions: the ebook, the print copy, and the one for Smashwords. But it's important to me to have a mistake-free book. I wish I could talk the gremlins into doing corrections.

_________________________________