I sent in No Marigolds to some betas, knowing it was going to need some work.
Sigh.
Commas are a bigger challenge than I thought. And I’m one for whom you can pry my Oxford comma from my cold, dead, and lifeless hand. Hey, if you fall in love with your first draft, you’re an idiot.
But then I reread another novella and realize…
Yeah, there’s the danger of indie pub. One of the novellas has a few typos. Quite a few typos. After three betas looked at it. Of course, most of the typos came after I did the rewrites. So before this particular book goes to Clayborne Press for rerelease. They’re not major ones, but I have an inconsistent rank, and a reference to a character’s children where another novella refers to that person as childless.
One of the solutions I plan to come up with is a wiki. Go through each novella and create an online reference for future projects. Sure, I have all the stories in the can with the unpublished ones under revision. But I also plan to write a prequel to shop. Might be nice if I keep things consistent.
The novella in question also did not get a Grammarly pass. True, the free version defaults to UK English, but it cleans up a lot of problems. Certainly, Word’s grammar check is overzealous while Scriverner’s is anemic. Fortunately, the remaining three novellas will take an editorial beating before they head out for publication.
But it’s still embarrassing when something gets through.