You might want to look that one up!

Everyone has a slip of the pen (or word processor) from time to time, and we’ve all seen them. Read enough books and you’ll discover weird or wrong word choices, misspellings, or zany phrases. Some of them are caused by upbringing—because mom and dad always said it that way, so it’s assumed everyone says it that way! Other boo-boos are the result of poor editing, senior moments, or mistakenly choosing a sound-alike word which has a completely different meaning. Here are some noteworthy blunders I’ve found that still make me laugh.

an eradicate heartbeat (erratic)

rot iron fence (wrought)

shutter (shudder)

woken up (awakened)

absents (absence)

champing at the bit (chomping)

try a different tact (tack)

wooden stove (wood stove)

tit bit (tidbit)

slither of information (sliver)

dumbie (dummy)

homely (homey)

cumber bun (cummerbund)

Silicone Valley (Silicon)

latter (ladder)

indigent (indignant)

distress (de-stress)

eatable (edible)

abstracted (distracted)

ascended through the crowds (descended/clouds)

made of led (lead)

boaring (boring)

conceded (conceited)

seizes to amaze me (ceases)

Anything you’d like to add? While I found these funny, they also made me cringe. I don’t want to be guilty of such obvious mistakes, yet I know I’ve made some, and will make more in the future. So just quit trying? Not on your life! Wrangling words into submission, creatively or otherwise, is my job. The goal is continuous improvement, not perfection. Good thing, too, or we’d all have to give up!

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What’s been keeping me busy….

I’ve spent the last seven weeks making repairs to Expectant Moon—book one of my Gladstone Shifters series, published two years ago and in need of some TLC. Yesterday, I uploaded the new edition to Amazon! It was a labor of love (emphasis on labor), but needed to be done. With that out of the way, I’m free to begin writing book four, Forbidden Moon.

This one promises to be a challenge, with a new pot-stirring character no one will be expecting. Jonah’s going to have his hands full with his long-awaited mate, and the pack has some lessons to learn. Hopefully, my readers will appreciate all the effort it takes to throw a monkey wrench into the works after three books! I’ve got some really cool ideas to present, along with humor, drama, and steamy romance. In other words, this will be a fun book to write!

If things go exceptionally well, I hope to publish this one by year’s end. After that, I intend to write another collection of shorts for a sequel to Rise of the Draman. I must admit, in the back of my brain is a niggling fear that those two series will go on and on, leaving me no time to write all the other stories waiting in the wings. If only I could clone myself. Hmmm… even that could be a cool story!