(Note: This post will be a little harried, so forgive me if it’s badly edited. I lost a crown Sunday night and my dentist was good enough to get me in Monday morning. Be good to your teeth or they’ll turn on you…)

By PJ Parrish

I like to think I’m a pretty decent writer. But man, I am a lousy editor. And this from a person who spent a good portion of her journalism career working a copy desk.

Try as I might, I am just not very good at ferreting out typos, keeping names of characters straight, and understanding all the variations of lie and lay. This was not a huge problem when my books were published by reputable houses with great line editors and wonderful in-house copy editors. But with the contraction in the industry over the past two decades, most publishers began to farm out editing duties to free-lancers. Not to bash them — many were refugees from staff cuts — but the father workers wander from the main source, the harder it to keep things from going awry. This is partly why print newspapers now have so many errors and typos in them; local copy desks are a thing of the past and stories are edited not in the towns where they are produced but in centralized mother-ship offices. This is why, when I was working in Fort Lauderdale, an editor in our Chicago office changed the color of key lime pie in my story from yellow to green. In all fairness, maybe she didn’t get out much.

But I digress. This week, I am trying to edit one of my old books, Thicker Than Water, as we ready to self-pub it on Amazon. We have done this to most of our backlist titles as we get the rights back to them.

Now here’s the thing: This book, like all the others, went through the rigorous thresher of our previous publishers — first Kensington, then Fawcett, Simon & Schuster, Thomas & Mercer, and some excellent foreign houses. Boy, I had some great editors along the line, including my very first, John Scoglamiglio, who is now editor in chief at Kensington Books.

Still, I am aghast at the errors, typos and flab I am finding. My blood runs cold at this because I know that while readers can be understanding about such things, their trust only can stretch so far.

My point (yes, I have one!) is that whether you hope to be traditionally published or go it on your own, you must do whatever you can do get good editing. How? Well, that’s the problem, right? How to find a good editor is a blog for another day. The good ones don’t come cheap. But I gotta say this: Only a fool thinks they can edit their own book. If you disagree, go read Terry’s January 8 post here on how she tackles editing.

So let me try to set the table by reviewing the three different types of editing you will need and maybe have to fork over good money to pay for. Basically, there are three levels to editing — LINE EDITING, COPY EDITING AND PROOF-READING.

One of the best explanations of the differences I’ve run across comes from publishing expert and teacher Jane Friedman. (Her blog is a must-read for any writer at any level.)

If you’re thinking of hiring an editor, you have to be clear on exactly what the editor will do. I recommend you read Jane’s entire blog on the subject. Click HERE. It is a guest post from Sandra Wendel, book doctor, editor, and author of the book, Cover To Cover: What First-Time Authors Need to Know about Editing. Here are some highlights:

LINE EDIT: an editor examines every word and every sentence and every paragraph and every section and every chapter and the entirety of your written manuscript. Typos, wrong words, misspellings, double words, punctuation, run-on sentences, long paragraphs, subheadings, chapter titles, table of contents, author bios—everything is scrutinized, corrected, tracked, and commented on. Facts are checked, name spellings of people and places are confirmed.

Me here: This is the heavy-lifting of editing. My professional editors would send me lengthy letters that made me want to cry. But the editors were doing their jobs — suggesting plot changes, character enhancements, digressions to fix, time-time errors to correct, places where the pace flagged. If you ever had a good line editor, you know they can make or break a book. Back to Sandra (with bold face from me!)

COPY EDIT:  There is confusion about what a copy edit includes. Most of the time, authors want that thorough line edit. If a manuscript is so clean, so squeaky clean, so perfectly written with lovely paragraphing and fine-tuned punctuation, then maybe the manuscript just needs a copy edit. Like never. I can’t even recall a manuscript that has come to me this clean that it would need just one pass for a polish for mechanical issues. Never. Not even books written by professional writers. And not even my own book. I hired out my line editing, and it’s a humbling process. So let’s just agree that when someone says copy edit, they really mean a much deeper and more thorough edit than putting commas in the right place. A copy edit is the lowest level of edit. Rarely does a manuscript need “just” a copy edit. Sometimes a copy edit is a final step performed separately by your editor or someone else with fresh eyes. Some editors (like me) do copy editing all along looking for these types of errors, and a copy edit is part of the line edit.

Here is a checklist of what Sandra says goes into a copy edit:

• Correct any typos, which would include misspelled words.
• Fill in missing words.
• Format the manuscript before production, and that includes just one space between sentences (I don’t care what you learned in typing class in high school, the double space messes up the document when it is converted into real book pages).
• Streamline punctuation and properly use commas, periods, and em dashes—like this.
• Avoid overuse of ellipses to denote a break in thought … when they are really used to show missing text. And those exclamation marks! I allow authors about five in each manuscript. Overuse them, and they lose their punch.
• Make sure the names of characters and places are spelled consistently throughout (Peterson in chapter 1 may or may not be the same Petersen in chapter 6).
• Find and replace similarly sounding words that have different meanings (for example, effect and affect).
• Conduct a modest fact check (perform a Google search to find the exact spelling of Katharine Hepburn or the capital of Mongolia). This isn’t Jeopardy!, so you do get to consult resources. I keep a window open to Google just for such searches.
• Make new paragraphs to break up long passages.
• Question the use of song lyrics and remind the author to get written permission.
• Point out, in academic work, that footnote 6 does not have a reference source in the citations.
• Remove overuse of quotation marks. For emphasis, use italics, but sparingly. Books generally do not use boldface.
• Impose a consistent style for the text (this means using a style guide for capitalization and hyphenation, treatment of numbers, heading levels). The Chicago Manual of Style is preferred unless the work needs to conform to an academic convention such as APA, AMA, or MLA.

Me again. Whew. See the difference? A good copy edit is vital to any book. But don’t confuse it with a line edit. A line edit is a deep tissue massage, and sometimes surgery. A copy edit is a mani-pedi. Which leaves us with the last editing step. From Sandra again, talking about proof-reading, a k a getting your galleys:

PROOF-READ: Let’s say your manuscript is fully edited (no matter which level you chose, sometimes even a developmental followed by a line edit with the same or different editors). Your work will need a proofread either in manuscript format or after it is designed in pages as PDFs. Should you proofread your own work? The short answer is later, if you’re in writing mode. The shorter answer is never. Why? Because it’s your work. And your brain plays funny tricks on you. It will fill in your words, and you’ll be completely shocked when a professional editor returns your edited manuscript. What? How could I miss that?

Me here. (Back from the dentist with a temp crown and a jaw full of novocaine) Okay, that’s the breakdown of what to expect from editing, in a nutshell. Again, I urge you to go read the entire blog. It’s filled with good advice. Hope I’ve left you something good to chew on.

by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

Leroy “Satchel” Paige

On July 9, 1948, the oldest rookie ever to make the big leagues took the mound for the Cleveland Indians. He also happened to be one of the greatest pitchers of all time.

Leroy “Satchel” Paige was forty-two years old. The Indians were in a pennant race that July, and their acquisition helped get them to the World Series. Paige finished the season with a 6-1 record, a 2.48 ERA and 43 strikeouts.

It was a bittersweet achievement. Paige, one of the immortals of the old Negro Leagues (and thus kept out of the Majors by the color barrier) showed the large crowds who came to see him what he was capable of.  Indeed, Joe DiMaggio once hit against Paige in his prime, in an exhibition game, and called Paige the greatest pitcher he ever faced.

After a disappointing 1949 season, the Indians dropped Paige, but he wasn’t through. He came back with the St. Louis Browns in 1951. In 1952 he was so effective he was named to the American League All-Star team.

Amazingly, Paige’s career continued. He bounced around on barnstorming teams and in the minors, still showing occasional flashes of brilliance. At the age of 56 he pitched for a minor league team in the Pacific Coast League. And then, at 59 (that’s five-nine!) on a whim from the colorful promoter Charles O. Finley, Paige came out to pitch in one game for the old Kansas City Athletics, facing the Boston Red Sox.

Satchel Paige faced ten batters that day in 1965, allowing only one hit (a double by Carl Yastrzemski) and getting his last major league strikeout. Astonishing!

Satchel Paige was elected to baseball’s Hall of Fame in 1971.

In addition to his pitching prowess, Paige was something of a down-home philosopher. He handed out advice like, “If your stomach disputes you, lie down and pacify it with cool thoughts.” Now who can argue with that?

Paige never made a lot of money, yet he kept pitching. Why? Simply because he loved baseball.

You’ve got to love what you do to keep on doing it. We had an intriguing discussion some time ago on whether a writer should think about quitting. Our own Kris (P.J. Parrish) said the only valid reason should be that “the whole process of writing has become something of a chore, a duty rather than a delight.”

Every writer feels that way from time to time. Last year (the late, unlamented, atrocious, and altogether train-wreck known as 2020) induced quite a wave of such feelings. I wrote about why that is here.

So we need to fight back with delight. We need to keep in touch with our inner Satchel Paige and keep writing because we love it.

To rekindle that romance:

1. Remember the good times

“We’ll always have Paris,” Bogart tells Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca. Think back to the best times you’ve had as a writer. When did you feel the most joy? When did somebody tell you something that made you feel good about your writing? Dwell on that. You can do it again.

2. Write something you might throw away

Almost always we write with the goal of having readers pitch us some dough and become fans. When you have that in mind, it can sometimes sit there like Poe’s raven, mocking you. The way to chase that bird away is to write something just for you, for fun. I like flash fiction (under 1k words) for this. It doesn’t take long, and if I don’t ever publish it anywhere, no big deal. It frees me up to write just as I wish. And sometimes that turns into the germ of a full-length idea.

3. Re-read favorite passages

For me, nothing gets me back into the writing mood like re-reading select passages from favorite novels. Like this from Ask the Dust, John Fante’s 1939 novel about a young writer longing for success:

Los Angeles, give me some of you! Los Angeles come to me the way I came to you, my feet over your streets, you pretty town, I loved you so much, you sad flower in the sand, you pretty town. A day and another day and the day before, and the library with the big boys in the shelves, old Dreiser, old Mencken, all the boys down there, and I went to see them, Hya Dreiser, Hya Mencken, Hya, hya: there’s a place for me, too, and it begins with B, in the B shelf. Arturo Bandini, make way for Arturo Bandini, his slot for his book, and I sat at the table and just looked at the place where my book would be, right there close to Arnold Bennett, not much that Arnold Bennett, but I’d be there to sort of bolster up the B’s, old Arturo Bandini, one of the boys, until some girl came along, some scent of perfume through the fiction room, some click of high heels to break up the monotony of my fame. Gala day, gala dream!

How’s your (writing) love life these days? What do you do to romance it? 

All photos by Al Thumz Photography

Happy New Year! Thank you for being here. I will apologize in advance for the length of what follows. 

Between the economic impact resulting from restrictions imposed on businesses in reaction to COVID-19 as well as other factors — the term “starving writer” wasn’t pulled out of thin air — those of us who labor in the grammar mine might be having some problems making ends meet. What follows is a shopping hack called “Dollar Tree.”

I had never been in a Dollar Tree until early October 2020, having until that time succumbed to what was and is a certain negative cache attached to dollar stores in general.  To my surprise I learned last year that one was going to occupy the last remaining storefront in a retail center a few blocks from my home. My invitation to the grand opening in April 2020 was apparently lost in the mail and as a result I didn’t learn until a few weeks before Halloween that it had been open for months, yet another reminder that behavior resulting in getting fitted with an ankle monitor can really cramp one’s style.  

Dollar Tree has apparently been upping their game with new and larger stores located in (somewhat) better neighborhoods. The one near me has everything one could want or need, or a variation thereof. It has cleaning products,toys, school supplies,  canned and paper goods, health and beauty aids, and automotive and tool products. The newer stores have a card section, a “Snack Zone,”  and a refrigerated/frozen food case. The best part of Dollar Tree is that, unlike many stores with the word “dollar” in the name,  Dollar Tree means what it says. Everything in the store can be had for a dollar. Period. Actually, that’s not quite accurate. Greeting cards are two for a dollar. There is also a shopping cart at the front of the store full of reduced-price — fifty cents — items that have been closed out. Everything else? One buck. This includes the Snack Zone where, in addition to chips, candy, and Little Debbie cakes, one can purchase fruits and vegetables (just kidding) (unless pork rinds count). The frozen food case features microwaveable breakfast, lunch, and dinner items as well as ice cream novelties (which of course can be eaten for breakfast, lunch, and dinner). 

Not everything in Dollar Tree is a terrific deal. A box of baking soda is a dollar, but one can buy that in a supermarket for almost half the price. Boxes of theater candy are pretty much a dollar everywhere (except, interestingly enough, at a theater, even before they all closed), as are Arizona teas. There are, however some interesting finds in a Dollar Tree. The stores also now seem to be just about everywhere so if you want to read this as you walk through the aisles of one near you, please do so. What follows is a random sampling and review of what you can find, and what you should get or avoid, at a newer Dollar Tree.

— Golden Crust Jamaican Style Puffshell sandwiches:

      The good: Everything. I’ve never seen these in a store outside of corner markets in New York until now.

       The bad: Absolutely nothing at all.

       Bottom line: Dollar Tree sells a few different varieties of these which, like Imperial Garden Egg Rolls (see below) all taste somewhat similar. That said, the Jerk Chicken is my favorite. Microwave it for two minutes and you can call it lunch or dinner, or both. Caveat: I don’t recommend eating one within twelve hours of a first date, second date, assignation, job interview. wedding, or any anniversary celebration before the tenth one. 

— Motor oil:

      The good: If your ex- asks you to top off their oil when they come over to pick up their stuff, this is what you want to use. 

       The bad: You don’t want to use motor oil that costs a dollar in your own auto unless you have a car like Fred Flintstone’s. 

        Bottom line: No.

— Zapp’s Potato Chips(!): 

      The good: My favorite potato chips! Voodoo Style! For a dollar! And I didn’t have to drive to Louisiana to get them!

       The bad: None!

       Bottom line: Life is good!

— Power steering fluid:

     See Motor oil, above.

— Colorform playsets(!!!):

      The good: COLORFORMS! For a buck! I didn’t even know Colorforms sets were still made. If Dollar Tree had a security guard, he would have been called to Aisle 3 when I initially found them. The discovery caused me to break out into my James Brown “goodfoot” dance. “YOWWW! HUNH! GOOD GAWD!”

       The bad: Colorforms doesn’t make a Bettie Page set, but that isn’t the fault of Dollar Tree. 

        Bottom line: Colorforms! What more can I say

— Folding Knife: 

      The good: It is very sharp and surprisingly smooth when opening and closing. 

       The bad: The blade is short.

        Bottom line: That isn’t a knife!

Now…THAT’S a knife!

— Copper Moon French Roast Coffee (Four K-cups):

      The good: Everything. 

       The bad: Nothing. 

       Bottom line: I’m kind of a coffee snob. I usually only drink the Cafe du Monde, Community Coffee, or Bustelos brands. This, however, was surprisingly good. It has a rich, smooth flavor and, if you melt a Hershey’s kiss in it, a deep chocolate profile.

— Healthy Chef Canola No-Stick Cooking Spray:

      The good: I wasted only one dollar on it.

       The bad: I wasted a whole dollar on it.

       Bottom line: It didn’t work at all. I actually thought about taking it back and getting a refund, but I would have looked like a cheap***. 

— Assured Men’s Shave Cream Regular:

      The good: It didn’t make my face fall off.

      The bad:  It didn’t make my face fall off.

       Bottom line: I intended to buy a five-ounce can of Barbesol but the 12 ounce can of Dollar Tree’s house brand for the same price was too good to resist. It has a nice scent to it but the lather is a little thin. It’s good enough, however, that I might buy it again. 

—”Tactical” flashlight:

     The good: It is actually bright enough to use for ordinary purposes.

      The bad:  It is not a tactical flashlight.      

 Bottom line: It fails to meet the definition of a tactical flashlight in durability, size, ability to be dual-purposed as a self-defense instrument, and luminosity.Throw it in the glove box of your car as a substitute for one that should already be in there. Batteries — 3 “AAA” — are not included. The batteries actually cost more than the flashlight, unless you buy the batteries at Dollar Tree.

— Imperial Garden Egg Rolls:

The good: They are big and they are very tasty. Get a jar of Chinese hot mustard (not sold at Dollar Tree) and you’ll be all set to bypass Uber Eats for the night. 

The bad: all of the flavors — chicken, pork, shrimp, and lobster — kind of taste the same.

Bottom line: These are not foodie quality but they get the job done. Dollar Tree could probably open stores near college campuses and turn a profit just on the sale of the egg rolls to drunken students on weekend nights or during exam week.

— Croc’s Refillable Butane Candle Lighters:

The good: The price.

The bad: None. 

Bottom line: I learned recently that it is perfectly legal to buy and possess a flamethrower in forty-nine states (Maryland is the only poody-pants). While I am waiting for mine I can practice with this lighter which is as good if not better than the ones that cost two dollars and up at other stores. It eschews the two-step operation that most use, utilizing instead the equivalent of a double-action trigger pull that you’ll find on your better .38 Special revolvers. I thought about buying a bunch of them (the lighters) as Christmas stocking stuffers for the neighborhood children but tamped down the urge.

— Handsaw:

The good: It’s great if you need one just to trim a couple of tree branches and don’t own a chainsaw.

The bad: At the price of one dollar it should not be considered as a long-term tool for you. It can, however, be replaced rather easily and inexpensively.

Bottom line: This is part of “Tool Bench,” Dollar Tree’s in-house tool line.  The irony is that the Dollar Tree where I purchased the saw is located in the former storefront of a Sears Hardware store. 

— Greeting cards:

The good: Hallmark actually makes a line of greeting cards branded “Heartline” (I wonder if I could collect a quick settlement for trademark infringement using a “confusion in the marketplace” argument?) that 1) are two for a dollar and 2) don’t have the price on the back. They’re nice, too. None of my children could tell the difference this Christmas.

The bad: Your in-laws might buy you the same card you bought them and thus will know how much you paid for it. 

Bottom line(s): 1) It actually costs more to mail the card than to buy it. 

2) Sending your ex- a birthday card from Dollar Tree is like saying “God bless you!” in Nashville or “Have a magical day!” at Disney World. 

DVDs:

The good: Cardboard boxes of obscure horror and thriller movies on DVD.

The bad: Cardboard boxes of obscure horror and thriller movies on DVD. 

Bottom line: I had not heard of most of the movies or of the actors in them. If you are a fan of schlock horror I would recommend going to Dollar Tree for no other reason than to pour over what they have for sale. The boxes are usually in the school supply and toy aisles.

I invite you to visit and walk around Dollar Tree to see what else they have. Heck, if you find yourself at the one at Sunbury Road in Westerville, email me. I’ll drive over and give you a personal tour. I am willing to wager that you cannot walk out without spending at least ten dollars while delighting in doing so.  A number of major brands, including Colorforms and Hallmark, seem to be offering products of a size that can be sold at the Dollar Tree price point. A Pepsi salesman was in the store during one of my (daily) visits and advised that the chain is one of their major clients.  I also read somewhere that the folks who run Dollar Tree want their customers to be surprised by what they find every time they walk in the store. Mission accomplished. I found within their book section a couple of mass market paperback collections of Elmore Leonard western short stories. They were priced at a dollar each. They were not marked down or remaindered or anything. They are part of a small but growing line of HarperCollins paperbacks targeted for Dollar Tree customers.

Oh. I also have to compliment the store associates. They actually seem glad to see customers walk in and are familiar with the inventory and where it is located. One of them was interested when I told her that I was going to post a blog about Dollar Tree. She has asked me a couple of weeks why she hasn’t seen it yet. Here it is (Hi, Holly!). Another laughs at my jokes on a regular basis and on cue (Hi, Maribeth!). They treat me so well that I may go there for my birthday this year. After all, party supplies such as tablecloths, hats, those packs of ever-important “thank you” notes, and Dolly Madison Zingers are just a dollar. I even put a visit to Dollar Tree into my WIP, once I was able to tear myself away from playing with my Jurassic World Colorform set long enough to get some writing done. The best part of all is that, even after you get that huge publishing advance and license your work for a Netflix project, you will still want to shop at Dollar Tree.

If so inclined, please tell us your favorite store(s), why they are your favorite, and whether you plan to insert them into your stories. Thanks again for being here. Be well.