Last week I
received what in the olden days of letterpress printing would have
been called the “galley proofs” of my mystery novel—the book
typeset, or rather, digitally formatted to look like typesetting.
Nowadays it’s called the “advance copy,” and my editor informed
me that this would be my last chance to make corrections to the text.
I’ve gotta
say it was a thrilling feeling to open the document and see my
manuscript—which has taken four years of writing, editing, honing,
and further tinkering—finally looking like a real live book.
Title Page of
Advance Copy
And it was
interesting how, in this new format, typos, repeated words, and other
problems with the text suddenly popped out at me from the page. I’ve
now finished my final edits, and the content is thus finally out of
my hands.
