My Bad!! (Mistakes Were Made)

 My, oh my, many  (too many) mistakes were made in my new book "Of Kilted Pleasure," However, as I went through the one I ordered from Amazon, I noticed seven of the 12 mistakes were NOT mine. I will own anything that is mine. I will raise my hand and say "MY BAD" when I have been the one to screw up, but when someone else makes a mistake and tries to blame me for it, that's when I call "BS!".  

    I wrote the book "Of Kilted Pleasure," and I had very little understanding when I wrote it; even though it was my 6th published book, I didn't have to publish it at all the way a person thinks of publishing. If I had known, I could have just uploaded it onto the platform at IngramSpark, and it could have been formatted, sized, and whatnot on their end for less than what I paid at "X." I think the difference is significant; too, so next time...next time.

    One of the things I did not do when I published the book was to use the editing source at X. The reason(s) I didn't do that is because, in the past, I have paid for that service, and they didn't edit a damn thing. They left at least 30 comma errors, not to mention misspelled words, and don't get me started on the grammar. It was MY BAD that I wrote it, but they were supposed to have fixed that for me. I'm not a genius when it comes to writing. I have never claimed to be.  I'm good at writing. I may even be considered better than most, but I recognize the fact that I make mistakes, and I do need editors!! It's sort of like the lawyer who has their own counsel. I know I need help, so I get it. I just didn't pay for X to do it.

    That said, I wrote this book and didn't pay for the editing. I reviewed it 12 times, found errors, and corrected them. I found more errors, and I corrected them. This went on for a while.  After I submitted the manuscript for the final time, I knew I might have missed some mistakes. I didn't want there to be, but I knew there might be. There are 12, but more than half of them are not mine. SEVEN of the mistakes were made AFTER I sent the manuscript in for the last time. I kept the manuscript file that I sent to them. I know. I compared them, and there you go. My manuscript didn't match their PDF because when I sent in my manuscript, it wasn't saved as a PDF. THEY changed things and saved it as a PDF....then, they opened their PDF back up, and magically there were a few more mistakes that were sent to me when I asked for my owned PDF back from them when I quit them. Yeah, not cool. 

    If you buy the book from Amazon for the next few weeks, you'll have a collector's item because I will pull it soon, resubmit it, and see if I can get the 12 mistakes cleared. I'll be very happy if they don't charge me an arm and a leg for that. It would still be worth it if they wanted a lot of money. I have learned my lesson. Even as I write this blog (and other blogs from this point forward), I use Grammarly to check for better writing methods. I'm learning as I go, and that makes me happy. The computer will often correct spellings, show me where I'm wrong with punctuation, and how to rephrase things more directly and meaningfully. It's not 100% my style, I am far more relaxed, so I think about what I'm changing so I don't appear to be plastic.

    Here are the mistakes and the pages where they can be found. I'll place an "*" by the mistakes I know I made.

1.  Page 87.   "He cheerful" should be "He cheerfully"  
2.  Page 107.  "women abused"  should be "woman abused"
3.  Page 107. "firmed grasped"  should be "firmly grasped"
4.  Page 164.  "Emerald" should not be capitalized. *
5.  Page 214.  Random 'w' just sitting out there. NOPE, I didn't do that.
6.  Page 225. "the schemed"  should be "the scheme"  
7.  Page 237. "his given" should be "his giving," I may have, but I don't think so.
8.  Page 240. THIS WAS MY BAD...I said the letter had a single page written by Sean, then I went off and talked about other pages. I meant to say that one of the pages he wrote was this or that. THIS IS MY BAD. *
9.  Page 283. "to encouraged"  should be "to encourage"  (again, I didn't do this, but it seems to be a pattern with them adding a 'd' to words.)
10.  Page 294.  TWO random 'ww" just sitting around minding their own business. There's NO WAY IN HELL I did that. I would have caught that; Grammarly would have too.
11. Page 313. "Bridge" should be "Bridget" or "Brige". *  I'll own that one.
12. Last but not least, this is NOT a big, ugly mistake, but mine. I wrote that the dog Ginger was found under "his buggy," but I should have said THE buggy. *

    It's just that when I do take the time to run things through Grammarly 12 times, and I KNOW I didn't miss something like a random 'ww' or a plural word at a critical point, I know they must have sabotaged my writing to teach me a lesson for either not paying for their editing, or for quitting their services altogether. Ours was not a good relationship, and breaking up with them was harsh; they didn't have to be such pigs about it. I didn't keep their things; they shouldn't have vandalized mine. I wish I could prove it to do something about it, but sometimes it's just good to walk away from it and know you did your best. I won't let this experience stop me from writing or publishing. In fact, I'll use this experience to train and teach me to be aware of what small people can do.  You live, you learn. I hope I learned correctly. 

    Again, buy that copy now, and have yourself a collector's item for sure. LOL. I'm going to just write the sequel now, and not worry about it. 

Photo Credit:  Pinterest.com