A writing challenge.

In book one, my daughter wrote a scene for me; in book two, one of my students wrote a scene for me. In book three, via an auction during a school fair, a person got her name included in the book.

And now I've set up another competition - to write a summary of Books One and Two for the start of Book Three.

Go to my Facebook page for more details.

Final touches and the value of another's eyes

I'm a perfectionist. I'm particular. I'm pretty fussy when it comes to getting what I pay for and doing the best at what is expected of me. It is because of these personality ticks that I'm grateful for the team at Penguin NZ who are putting together the finishing touches to Birthright.

Let me tell you about the two photos above: they are snapshots of a couple of pages of the proofs which I'd gone through (pencil) and then the proof-reader (red pen). I'm an English teacher so I'm pretty skilled at spotting a misused comma at a thousand paces. I may not be too good at spelling (I need my dictionary) but I can see spelling mistakes in my students' work. See, I'm pretty good with apostrophes as well.

So it is with some personal shame that I see how well the proof-reader did her job and how poorly I did mine. She told my project editor that she didn't find many errors; that the ms was pretty clean. I was feeling mightily self-satisfied until the fresh manuscript arrived this morning with this marked up copy. If that's 'pretty clean', I'd hate to see what grubby or dirty looks like.

There must be some research out there which explains why we just can't see errors in our own work; why we 'see' things so differently to others. Not sure if that information would make proof-reading one's work more effective but it might.

Anyway, I'm happy to say that publication day is now only a few months away. Here's a rough of the cover to whet your appetite.