When I wrote the original books in this universe, I had reasons for everything, but…in hindsight…not all those reasons were good ones.\u00a0\u00a0 You remember I told you about the naming conventions…using root-names for characters and then suffixes which suggested (were supposed to suggest) different origins for them, like Seli, Selis, Selits, and Tam, Tamis…??\u00a0 And you probably remember that, in hindsight, this was sheer h-e-double-hockey-sticks for the copy-editor and probably did not enrich the reading experience nearly as much as I’d hoped.<\/p>\n
I also named political units in Aarenis, and their cities, with both history and related populations in mind.\u00a0 Hence Vonja, with Cortes Vonja and Pler Vonja, and Foss Council, with its three cities of Foss, Fossnir, and Ifoss.\u00a0 (The lack of a Cortes Foss means that the original Old Aarean inhabitants of Aarenis did not establish a fortified base in that area.)\u00a0 However…early in this set of books, and particularly when drafting Book IV, I waffled about whether to have Arcolin pick Fossnir or Ifoss as his base of operations.\u00a0 Fossnir was too close to Valdaire–not central at all.\u00a0 Ifoss, though away from the main river valley, had a good angle to both Foss and Fossnir, and a “back door” approach to Andressat.\u00a0 So I chose that.<\/p>\n
However, in drafting various chapters at various times, I failed to remind myself which of the minor Foss Council cities was where, and used “Fossnir” instead of “Ifoss”…and nobody caught it, not even early readers.\u00a0 My editor, the copy editor, and I all missed it until I was caught by one particular passage in which Fossnir was mentioned.\u00a0 It is not the only place the error exists.\u00a0\u00a0 As the person who wins an ARC will quickly notice.<\/p>\n
This error woke me up this morning…I knew I hadn’t marked it as it slid past my eyes, so it was some pages back in the stack that was “done.”\u00a0\u00a0 I did a routine search on “Fossnir” to find it…and instead found all the other wrong instances.\u00a0 Whose page numbers do not correspond with the copy edits, let alone with the page proof pagination.\u00a0\u00a0 It’s my fault entirely: my new editor could not be expected to know Fossnir was wrong, nor the CE.\u00a0 There are only two legitimate mentions of Fossnir, as the Company passed through it from Valdaire to Ifoss.<\/p>\n
HEADDESK time.\u00a0\u00a0 Then quickly head back up and a separate card for noting page numbers (the computer file is closer to the CE pages, and from there I can find the places on the page proofs.\u00a0 But major, major DUH on my part.<\/p>\n
Why tell you about my blunder?\u00a0 Because if you ever write a book, this is the kind of thing that may happen to you, especially in a long, complicated project.\u00a0\u00a0 Fact check at least one more time than you think you need to.\u00a0\u00a0 Errors in proofs that have been there since the Dawn of Book are…embarrassing.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 (And also, whoever gets the ARC would go “WHAT?\u00a0 But….!)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When I wrote the original books in this universe, I had reasons for everything, but…in hindsight…not all those reasons were good ones.\u00a0\u00a0 You remember I told you about the naming conventions…using root-names for characters and then suffixes which suggested (were supposed to suggest) different origins for them, like Seli, Selis, Selits, and Tam, Tamis…??\u00a0 And […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[11,107],"class_list":["post-1739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-writing-life","tag-mistakes","tag-the-writing-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1739"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1739"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1739\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1740,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1739\/revisions\/1740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}