Today’s guest post has been provided by Kevin R. Doyle, author of the upcoming release HEEL TURN.
About the Book
Available for pre-order now!
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/heel-turn-kevin-doyle/1138634193?ean=9781603812962
https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/heel-turn
https://books.apple.com/gb/book/heel-turn/id1549289575
Author Guest Post
Ooops.
It’s beyond cliché that embarking on a writing career, especially in fiction, requires a tough skin. The multitude of rejections, constant constructive criticism, and thinking a deal is set only to have it turn to dust a week or a month later. None of this is for the faint at heart. However, the other day I encountered a situation that really required that tough skin.
Along with a large dash of humility.
My first full-length novel (at least the first to see publication) is The Group. Originally intended to be a standalone murder mystery, it has since spawned two sequels. (Allow me a purely mercenary moment here: When You Have to Go There and And the Devil Walks Away.)
Originally published by Barbarian Books, The Group was later picked up by MuseItUp Publishing, which released a new version plus the (so far) two sequels.
As a natural consequence, this means that the 82,000 word volume has been through two rounds of content edits, line edits, galley proofs, etc. It has also been favorably reviewed by several web sites and bloggers.
So far, so good.
Until the other day when one of my students, a sixteen-year old sophomore, checked it out of our school library to read. Later that day, he came into my room and quietly whispered to me, “Mr. Doyle, I think I found a mistake in your book.”
Mistake? What could he possibly mean? From such a meticulously edited (not to mention conceived and written) masterpiece of misdirection and deduction?
“Where at?” I asked.
He then opened the book to — Chapter One.
“Right here,” he said, as he indicated something in that first chapter.
Crud, I thought. All that editing, all those stellar (well, mostly stellar) reviews, and a sixteen-year old high schooler spots something so obvious that I’m ashamed to specify what it was.
Arriving home that night, I considered that I’d merely glanced at what he’d pointed out. I had a flock of new students coming in for the hour, and I hadn’t taken the time to really read over the section he’d pointed out.
Thus, my first action on stepping in the door was to go in the other room, grab a paperback copy and turn to the pages in question. Surely, the student had read too quickly; surely, in glancing and listening to him I’d merely thought I’d seen what he’d pointed out, not what was really on the page.
Nope. No way. There it was, in black and white. The big glitch.
It’s nothing that screws up the plot, nothing that in any way interferes (much) with the flow of the story. But it was there.
For one and all to see.
Fortunately, in this digital age, a quick e-mail to the publisher and the wheels are set in motion for the glitch to be fixed. Problem solved.
Uhmm, not quite.
Because I had to go to work the next day and have my regular contingent of students come into my English classroom all day.
Every single one of them having heard that one of their classmates had found a mistake in my work.
Thick skin?
Hah, try bulletproof.
Or at least, proof against good natured slings and arrows.
