Writing a book every five or six or even eight or nine weeks means I spend a great deal of time fixing things.
Not important things, naturally.
Only minor details such as spelling, history, ballroom etiquette, geography, emotional continuity, the occasional vanishing chair, and whether or not my hero has accidentally become clairvoyant.
This month, the manuscripts were especially determined to entertain themselves.
The first offender was a small but meaningful distinction:
saleroom: a room in which items are sold at auction
salesroom: a shop, a showroom
This is the kind of difference that seems small until one realizes one has placed a character in the wrong sort of room entirely.
(Thank you, dear editor, for spotting this!)
A saleroom suggests drama. Bidding. Whispered rivalries. A gentleman pretending he is not emotionally attached to a porcelain shepherdess while raising his paddle with increasing desperation.
A salesroom suggests commerce. Polite shelves. Possibly a clerk. Someone saying, “May I show you the latest imported silks?” with the calm confidence of a person who has never accidentally ruined a romantic subplot with vocabulary.
Naturally, I chose the wrong one.
Because why should a manuscript merely contain love, longing, and family secrets when it can also include a surprise auction?
Then came the spatial problem.
At one point, my hero appeared to see something through a wall.
Not an open doorway.
A window would have been still plausible enough.
But no, a wall.
Even my editor said she had to read it twice.
This was not, to be clear, part of the plot. I had not intended to write a Regency romance in which the hero’s secret advantage was X-ray vision. Though now that I think about it, that would make certain ballroom scenes alarmingly efficient.
He could know who was hiding behind the screen.
He could see which aunt was lurking in the corridor.
He could detect a compromised heroine, a stolen letter, and possibly a tray of ratafia all before breakfast.
But no. Alas. He was not gifted with supernatural perception. He was merely the victim of my draft-level geography, which had arranged the room in such a way that only a man with powers could have understood what was happening.
And then, not to be outdone, the heroine managed to hear something from the floor above.
Again, not through a conveniently open stairwell.
Not through a thin ceiling.
Not because someone shouted.
Apparently, she had simply developed the auditory gifts of a hunting owl.
Who says Regency characters cannot have superpowers?
Mine, evidently, acquire them by accident and lose them in edits.
For paid subscribers, welcome to the rest of this month’s manuscript rescue operation…
