By John Gilstrap

I don’t think any creative person follows a straight line to a creative career. Motives and motivations and inspirations come from all kinds of angles. We bring our childhoods with us, along with our triumphs and lost loves. Recently, I’ve found myself in a more pensive mood than usual.

Last week, I binge-watched a few episodes of “Mannix“, starring the always-cool Mike Connors. As a kid, I thought that was one of the most riveting shows on the air. For those who are not old enough to remember, Mannix was a Los Angeles private investigator who got thoroughly beaten up pretty much every episode, and was shot more than 20 times in the same shoulder. He lived above his cool office in a cool neighborhood. His super-capable secretary, Peggy (Gail Fisher) was, I believe, one of the first African American characters of any real substance on television.

As I watched, I got smacked with a realization that came out of nowhere: Joe Mannix and Peggy are the inspiration for my characters Jonathan Grave and Venice Alexander. Even down to her race and the fact that she’s a single mom of one son! Honestly, this had never occurred to me, but now that I’ve seen it, I don’t think there’s any denying it. Jonathan lives below his office, but still. The subconscious stirs quietly and for a long time, I guess.

But wait, there’s more. With my brain primed for nostalgia, as I watched “Stand By Me” for the scumpty-seventh time (it’s one of the movies from which I cannot turn away), I was hit with another writing revelation. But first, some background . . .

After graduating from William and Mary in 1979, I got a terrible job working for Construction Magazine, a trade journal that was all about making advertisers look good. I was in a dark place writing-wise, and had pretty much abandoned my childhood dream of becoming a novelist. As the years progressed, I got consumed by grad school, the explosives business and the fire and rescue service and husbandhood and fatherhood. I’d say that writing went to the back burner, but in reality, it was off the stove entirely.

ENTER: 1986 and the movie, “Stand By Me”. An anthem to boyhood, the movie is bookended with scenes of the unnamed narrator as an author (played by Richard Dreyfus), writing the story of his great childhood adventure. We see the author/narrator typing away on the very first word processor I’d ever seen. The sound of the keys was melodic to me. The writer is also a dad, who’s made promises to take his kid and his friends swimming. Dad is distracted by the story he’s telling, though, and his son gets annoyed. The boy explains to his friend words to the effect, “He gets like that when he’s writing.”

Then in one of the most inspiring movie scenes ever, after the roller coaster that is the story, the film closes without dialogue. We hear the wonderful clicking sound of the keys as old-school white letters against the blue screen type, “I never had friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve . . . Jesus, does anyone?”

That was my moment of clarity. The writer on the screen was living the life I wanted to have. Despite professorial opinions to the contrary when I was in undergraduate school, I was convinced that I had talent. I realized that the dream wasn’t going to just happen, though. The stories in my head were not going to write themselves.

So I pulled my grad school typewriter–a cheap electric–out of the closet and I wrote crap. Utter awfulness. I was rusty, I told myself. I forced myself to write that first book all the way to the end, and when I read it, I realized two things: 1) It needed a page-one rewrite, and 2) I didn’t like the story enough to do that. So, I wrote a second bit of drivel that was decidedly less terrible than the first, and it had some good moments. Number Three had more good moments than bad, but I knew it still wasn’t ready for prime time. The language was too stiff, too stilted. I don’t think I knew at the time that the problem had a label–voice–but I knew that that’s what was missing.

And I was really busy with life. By then–1994–I’d added CEO of a consulting company to the list of things I dealt with every day.

One night, feeling guilty about not writing, I re-read Different Seasons by Stephen King, the collection of novellas that included The Body, which was the source material for “Stand By Me.” No one on the planet has a stronger narrative voice than King, and as I was reading, it hit me: He doesn’t write like a writer. He writes like a fascinating friend telling you a story. He uses vernacular in his narration. I realized that King, the writer, is invisible in all of his stories. Even when we’re in the third person, every scene is narrated in the voice of the point-of-view character.

So, in August of 1994, I set to work on what would become Nathan’s Run. I wrote the story as if I were telling it to a friend. I kept my writerly vocabulary to a minimum and tried my best to bring characters to life on the page. Four months later, when the book was finished, no one was more startled than I that I liked the final product.

That was 21 books ago, and yes, I do zone out of the real world when I write. And even as I type this blog, I love the sound of those keys as they create words on the screen.

What say you, TKZers? Do you have unlikely inspirations that drove you to become a writer?

By John Gilstrap

Allow me to share the first paragraph of an email I received yesterday from my editor regarding my new book, Crimson Phoenix (March, 2021): “I finished the ms at 1 am.  What a page-turner. It sure was eerie reading about a post-nuclear apocalypse while being held hostage by a global pandemic.”

Tell me about it.

Over a year ago, I signed a two-book contract to create a new thriller series.  This one features Victoria Emerson, a member of the House of Representatives, whose world is turned upside down when U.S. Army Major Joseph McCrea shows up on her doorstep one night and announces that CRIMSON PHOENIX is active.  That means the USA is inches away from nuclear war.  McCrea is there to evacuate Victoria to the United States Government Relocation Center, a bunker in the mountains of West Virginia that is meant to house the entire legislative branch in the event of Armageddon.  She cannot bring her family.

A single mother, Victoria refuses to abandon her three teenage sons. Denied entry to the bunker, they nonetheless survive the nuclear onslaught that devastates the country. The land is nearly uninhabitable. Electronics have been rendered useless. Food is scarce. Millions of scared and ailing people await aid from a government that is unable to regroup, much less organize a rescue from the chaos.

With Major McCrea’s help, Victoria devotes herself to reestablishing order—only to encounter the harsh realities required of a leader dealing with the violence wrought by desperate people . . .

I think the book turned out great, but never have I struggled so hard to put words on paper.  When I pitched the book back in 2019, the economy was booming, people were happy and the idea of citizens reverting to their feral instincts seemed like a fun diversion.  Over the last two months, writing from quarantine, every fictional act of self-preservation and confrontation I wrote felt all too possible–especially in the early days of the madness when the panic was most vibrant and threatening.

Early on in the pandemic–facing an immovable April 15 deadline with 30,000 words to go–it felt as if my imagination had been switched off.  Writing about the collapse of infrastructure and the moral relativism that it triggers really troubled me.  I am not a man prone to pessimism or depression, but for that first week or more, there seemed to be no light in any day.  To make it all worse, even the weather conspired against me in those early weeks, when every morning, it seemed, dawned cold and cloudy.

Then I wrote a bit of dialogue that allowed light back in.  In a discussion with McCrea, who’s worried that Victoria’s children won’t be tough enough for what lies ahead, Victoria says, “Just because every bit of infrastructure is broken, and just because people become desperate is no reason to dismiss kindness and understanding as some kind of a curse. Kindness is a blessing, not a liability.”

I don’t know if this makes sense out of context, but that bit came out of nowhere, and it changed not just the arc of the story, but it lifted my mood.  Victoria and her crew are the lucky ones.  They’ve survived the destruction that killed millions.  From that moment on, Crimson Phoenix ceased being about how they would survive, but rather about how they can help to fix some of what has been broken.  How to work to help make people less miserable.

Forgive me if I am rambling, but I’ve never before experienced the phenomenon of my work lifting my spirit in such a direct manner.  I am not a victim of this pandemic, nor am I a survivor.  I am an author with a job to do who’s living in strange, difficult times.  None of us knows what tomorrow might bring, but I know that today I am healthy.  I started celebrating the weird repetitiveness of each day.  For the first time in a very long time, my wife and I cook every meal together and eat it together at home.  In the evenings, we sit together and binge-watch Netflix and Amazon Prime.  Then we go to bed, get up and do it all over again.  I realize now that when this awfulness lifts, I’m going to miss the relative ease of these days.

As for the book, the words started flowing.  Think fire hydrant–easily ten pages a day.  I had a new focus, and now knowing what the book is really about, I created a story that was substantively different–and, I believe, far better–than the one I set out to write.  It’s not about victimhood, it’s about leadership.  It’s about triumphing over adversity. It’s still very much a thriller, and I think it may very well be the best thing I’ve ever written.  Of course, mine is the least important opinion on that last point.

Have y’all ever had your fiction make a profound impact on you like this?

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On an unrelated note, I’ve added another video to my YouTube channel.  This one talks about what to look for in a publisher. Just click on the picture.

By John Gilstrap

I’ve read articles by and about other writers who maintain that their first step in drawing a character is to find the perfect name.  I’ve never understood that, beyond the obvious connotations of character type.  A romantic hero named Raunchy McStinkface would probably be doomed.  My series character, Jonathan Grave, is called that because my original plan for the series was to build titles around the name–Grave Danger, Grave Peril, etc.  Okay, I’m not very good with titles.  (Hand to God: I was two or three books into the series before I realized, thanks to an inquiry from a fan, that Jonathan and I share the same initials.)

For me, characters develop in my head from the inside out–how they think and feel and react.  Names, for the most part, are just labels, something to call them.  I’ve taken names from friends, and also from news stories, sometimes attaching one news maker’s first name to someone else’s last name.

In my current WIP, Crimson Phoenix, my first non-Grave book in quite a while, I’m cursed with a ton of walk-on characters.  I’ve been going crazy trying to develop names for these folks, until earlier this week, when I wondered if the internet has such a thing as a name generator.  Eureka!  This site is a name generator.  It allows you to choose ethnicity, sex, age, and a host of other factors to spit out a list of names.  Or, you can go straight to the Quick Name Generator, which will spit out a random list for you to choose from.

Fair warning: The site can become an obsession if you’re not careful.

So, this got me to thinking, what else is out there?  One of my evil writing reflexes is to have characters nod too much.  Non-verbal communication is important in a scene, but beyond shrugs, nods making faces, my quiver runs empty pretty quickly.  Here’s a site I found specifically to help with body language.

Want more?  How about this helpful blog with 106 ways to describe sound?

I forget sometimes what a boon the internet can be for writers.  I am continually amazed by how there seems always to be an answer to any question you want to ask.  Not all of the answers or suggestions are great, but there’s always a route to follow to get to the answer.

So, TKZers, give us a link to your favorite helpful sites, either on craft or just for reaearch.

By John Gilstrap

Full disclosure: This post originally appeared here in TKZ on July 23, 2010, with the title, “Skin Like Leather.”  I bring it back here today for two reasons: 1) It’s still relevant; and 2) I’m crashing on a deadline.

We always tell up-and-comers that they’ve got to have a thick skin if they’re ever going to break into the publishing business. As the rejections pile up, it’s hard not to lose faith in your own abilities. When the news finally turns good, and an agent wants to see the manuscript, and later when an editor decides to buy it, you feel vindicated. Ha-ha and neener-neener, you think. Clearly all those rejecters were wrong.

What clearer affirmation of talent can there be than a publishing contract, right? If you’re not careful, you might start rubbing aloe on that leather-tough skin, thinking that it’s time to shed the bullet-proof coating.

Oh, that it were true.

I won the 2010 award at Thriller Fest for the Worst Review Ever, for an opinion of Nathan’s Run that appeared in an upstate New York newspaper: “The glue boogers in the binding were more captivating than Gilstrap’s torpid prose.” That it followed dozens of major market rave reviews from around the world softened the blow to the point that I laughed out loud when I read it at the time. Now I treasure my award, which is a lovely wooden box containing a fossilized dinosaur turd. All in good fun.

As I write this, I am again in the early stages of a new book launch (Hostage Zero, 19 days straight in the Top 30 in Amazon’s Kindle store), blessed with a starred review from Publisher’s Weekly. I’m very proud of the book. Frankly, I think it’s my best work, but then I always think that when a new book comes out.

I almost took out the aloe again. Not so fast.

This is the age of the amateur Internet review, where the opinions of casual readers wield influence equal to that of professional critics. Among many very positive reviews, one fellow calls my book “surprisingly decent.” Another expresses surprise that as a “second tier suspense writer” I have had such a long career. I have been chastised for leading with my left-wing politics, and I’ve been chastised for leading with my right-wing politics. One reviewer chastises me for coming off as stupid because I can’t seem to keep my own politics straight.

Interestingly, several reviewers have accused me in an online forum of writing my own raves, one of them going so far as to praise my ability to change my writing style to accommodate my various fictional identities. (For the record, I’ve never done such a thing.)

God bless them all. Once the book is written and I’ve launched it out to the world, it belongs more to the reader than it does to me. It’s the nature of art that perception trumps intent. A review is a review, after all, and since the major media markets have decided that books are no longer worthy of ink and newsprint, I’m just happy that someone’s paying attention.

The need for thick skin doesn’t end at the impersonal review, however.

Nine times out of ten, people are wonderfully supportive of me and my work. With the exception of certain engineered opportunities—book signings, etc.—I have little desire to be the star of a social setting. I’d much rather discuss current events than the mechanics of writing. Among these friends, the launch of a new book warrants a congratulations and a couple of signed books and that’s about it.

Then there’s the remaining one out of ten who just sort of baffle me. Consider those among my relatives who ostentatiously don’t read my books (even though I think they do), yet ask me to autograph editions for their friends. A day-job colleague of mine went out of his way to list the stores he’d visited where none of my books were in stock, and another rarely missed a public opportunity to express shock that my books do as well as they do. What am I supposed to say in response to such things? It seems sometimes that people go out of their way to be hurtful.

Over the years, I’ve come to understand that the rudeness—whether by acts of omission or commission—is rarely intended to be hurtful. The family stuff is weirder than the collegial stuff, but I’ve decided that artistic success—even when it’s second tier—makes some people feel both empowered and uncomfortable. The public nature of book writing empowers people to criticize, while public success—and the minor celebrity that comes with it—can upset the balance of an insecure relationship.

One of the most valuable lessons I’ve learned over the past 25 years toiling as a scribe is to respond thusly to even the most scathing review: Thank you for reading my work and taking the time to comment.

By John Gilstrap

Let’s say that you want to write a bit of fiction that’s set at the Battle of Gettysburg.  You want to convey the scope and terror of the battlefield, and you want your readers’ pulses to pound with the drama of the event.  You want to show the humanity and the awfulness, all while eliciting an emotional response from your audience.

By way of refresher, from July 1-3, 1863, 104,000 Union soldiers clashed with 75,000 Confederates in a little town populated by 2,400 residents.  By the time the smoke cleared (hey, guess the origins of that phrase!), each side suffered 23,000 casualties.  That’s 46,000 killed, wounded or missing soldiers.  Now, consider the 1,500 dead horses.  In July.  The Union Army marched away from 14,529 wounded men, while the Confederates left behind about 13,000 wounded soldiers.  So, in addition to the 46,000 moldering human corpses, the town had to deal with 27,000 men in need of urgent medical care.

The magnitude of the battle and its aftermath are almost impossible to grasp.  And you want to bring it to life on the page.  It’s a daunting challenge, and it’s equally applicable to any large conflicts, whether real or imagined; in this world or a pretend one.  If we stipulate that the primary building block of any story is character, how can we possibly bring all of those people into high relief on the page?

The answer is to not try.  The trick is to pick your point of view characters carefully and develop them well.  During any bit of action, the new recruit may want to lie down or run forward, but the sergeant major has to preserve order.  Both are likely to be terrified, but one does not have the luxury of showing it.  Which POV is the most compelling for which bit of action?  If the set piece is about a frontal assault on a defended position, maybe the most drama is found in the POV of the kid who’s watching the human wave charge at him.

Let your POV character serve as an exemplar for the other characters of his class and rank.  Through his set of eyes–the ones that belong to a character we care about–we experience his confusion and his fear and his horror as he does.  He’s less likely to count the bodies he passes in the grass than he is to be sickened by the brutality with which those other soldiers were dismembered.  As readers, we don’t need to know about the number of people killed, we just need to understand that the number is incomprehensible.

In the opening pages of Total Mayhem (2019), a sniper with a semiautomatic weapon opens fire on a high school football game.  The main challenge I faced in writing that scene centered on how to show the horror from the point of view of a character who is running away.  No one is going to stick around and observe details while his neighbors are dying in the stands.  I chose to show the awfulness through tiny, fleeting details.  The heavy thump of bullets as they impacted people and the sound the victims made when they were hit.  The character–Tom Darone–observed those details but didn’t dwell on them because his emotions were focused on saving his own life.  That scene was really hard to write, in large measure because of Tom Darone’s fear.  He’s just not paying close attention to others.  By contrast, a later sniper scene with many times more casualties, was much easier to write because I presented the action from Jonathan Grave’s POV.  Jonathan is confident in his skills and actively searches for opportunities not to run, but to bring the fight to the bad guy.  That means he notices details.

In any crowd scene–whether a violent one or a social one–the trick is to remember that the character you choose to reveal the events is your readers’ guide.  Every new interaction is a new learning experience for the reader.  I urge you to think small to make big scenes work.

By John Gilstrap

In the mid-1990s, about the time when Nathan’s Run was first being published, AOL was pretty much synonymous with the internet for me.  Those were the days of squealing telephone modems and pay-by-the-hour access.  I remember jumping out of my skin the first time that AOL voice said, “Welcome” through the speakers that I didn’t even know my computer had.

There seemed to be no end to the rabbit holes of information diving. As a trivia junkie and a procrastinator, I’d stumbled upon the ultimate time suck.  It was fabulous!  But it wasn’t until I discovered the wonders of the chat room that I truly understood the addiction of internet rabbit holes.  AOL chat rooms provided opportunities to “speak” real-time with real people all over the world.

My favorite of those chat rooms was the AOL Writers Club.  Run by a husband-and-wife team out of their apartment in Arlington, Virginia, the Writers Club provided my first opportunity to interact with writers of all stripes.  Since the chats were real-time, the topics we discussed were the kinds of things you’d discuss in a coffee shop with friends.  We got to know each other as we talked not just about craft, but about our families and whatever came to mind.  Tom Clancy was probably the most famous person to pop in from time to time, but other regulars included Harlan Coben, Tess Gerritsen, Dennis Lehane and others who were just starting their careers.  More than a few of those Writers Club denizens became face-to-face friends and remain so to this day.

Then the trolls arrived.

I don’t know that we knew them as trolls at the time, but they charged into the otherwise friendly group and started swinging bats and throwing hand grenades.  They were uncooperative, and just plain mean to people.  One in particular went on to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Screenplay, but he was one of the most sour individuals I have ever run across.  The Writers Club did not survive.  (I don’t know if the trolls were the cause of the collapse, but they are certainly the reason why I capped off that particular rabbit hole in my life.)

At conferences, I run into some the old members, and when the topic comes up, everyone agrees that no group has ever come close to the sense of community we shared in the early days of the AOL Writers Club.  TKZ comes close on some levels, but the interaction here happens in slow motion, while the Writers Club was real time.

Fast forward to 2020.  I have joined–but rarely participate in–several writer-oriented Facebook groups, and I’m dismayed by how many of them are pre-loaded with trolls, and how the trolls are the dominant presence.  Even more frustrating is the fact that these moderated, members-only group leaders tolerate the internal festering that will ultimately kill the thing they’re trying to build.

Some of these groups have tens of thousands of members.  If only 1% carry the troll gene, that’s still a lot of negativity.  So, why do people who are obviously early in their writer-journey post their work into these ant hills and ask for comments?  Do they not read other entries first?  Are they masochists and merely want to reinforce the negative narrative that plagues so many artists?  I cannot imagine doing such a thing.

Let’s add into this mix some egregiously awful advice, mostly doled out by people who clearly are parroting what they’ve heard from somebody who knows someone who attended a conference somewhere.  A recent goodie was the echo chamber conclusion that prologues are essential in order to give the backstory necessary to understand why the main character does what he does in Chapter One.

Let’s pause for a moment to give Brother Bell a chance to settle his blood pressure.

I join these groups with the intent of helping but then I realize that by pushing against the group-think, I run the risk of playing the role of the perceived troll.  So I sit silently, lurking through the bad advice about structure and the industry, waiting for that occasional opportunity to help out.  And after I do, I weather the push-back from the people who heard differently from their cousin’s girlfriend’s brother.

Here’s what I want to scream in those groups: If you’re serious about selling your writing–whether by traditional or indie routes–move away from the easy echo-chamber research.  Attend conferences.  Read books by people who know what they’re talking about.  Quit complaining about how stupid the world is to reject your 180,000-word dystopian romantic vampire political thriller and accept the reality that as a rookie, there are wise moves and unwise moves, and that your actions have consequences.

Understand that your zeal to self-publish that book that you know is under-cooked, merely for the bragging rights, can fundamentally damage your ability to sell future books as your skills improve.

Ah, the heck with it.  I’ll write a blog post instead.

By John Gilstrap

Fair warning:  This week’s post has very little to do with the craft of writing.  In fact, it’s sort of a one-off non sequitur.  I wrote it because I told these stories to some friends the other night, and they said, “You really should write those.”  Well, this was the only venue that came to mind, and really, it does have a strong message about the importance of effective communication.  So, here we go . . .

When I was 13 years old, I had to inform my mother that I had contracted gonorrhea.  But more on that later.

One lesson I learned through the fire and rescue service is the importance of detailed, explicit communication when dealing the the victims of mishaps.  As a medical provider with an important job to do, I occasionally lost track of how easily patients could be distracted more by perception than reality.

By way of background, EMT school trained us not just in overall emergency medical care, but also for some very specific rescue techniques.  For example, there is such a thing as a “zipper rescue”, which is prompted by a “zipper injury.”  This is a condition that in my experience applies exclusively to males who are in a hurry.  Consumption of alcohol is frequently a factor.  You’ve got the picture, right?  Whether you want to or not?  (I see you squirming over there!)

As you can imagine, patients who are suffering from this particular malady are often distraught, and always pretty bloody.  Our protocol for zipper rescues was pretty simple: You use a pair of scissor to cut the zipper out of the trousers to take the tension off of things, and then transport the patient to the ER, where doctors would take care of the more detailed work.  Honestly, you’d be shocked to know how many times I had to employ this technique in the field.  It helped to have a college in close proximity to the firehouse.

This brings me to my communication failure.  In this case, the patient was younger than usual–say, 12 or 13–and as far as I could tell, he was stone cold sober.  He’d just been rushing things a bit too much.  I assured him (and his mom) that this was something I was trained to take care of, and that soon he’d be feeling better.

Then he saw the scissors.

He, uh, jumped to the wrong conclusion.  So did Mom, actually, which I found a little startling.  Yeah, I kind of dropped the ball on that one, and no amount of backpedaling and explanation could stem the panic.  I put the scissors back in the aid box and we transported him as-is, trousers and all.  When the medical director asked me why I had violated the protocol, I explained.  I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a doctor laugh that hard.

Which brings me to my adolescent venereal disease.  And again, it comes down to garbled communication.

If you’ve ever been a young teen boy–or if you’ve had them in your life–you know that certain . . . obsessions kick in as the hormones hit.  Showers become longer and alone time becomes more important.  Are you with me?  Now remember, we’re talking about the early 1970s in a house where certain things were never discussed.  Never.  Those corners of life were giant voyages of discovery.

So, there I was in Mr. Binion’s English class when all the girls were herded out of the room and the school nurse came in with her film strip projector and a lecture on the perils of venereal disease–or, simply, VD.  Why this presentation was made in English class rather than, say, PE or Shop class, is a secret known only to the administration.

I’m confident that we probably learned important stuff that day, but the one detail that nailed me to my chair was this: One of the primary symptoms of gonorrhea is . . . wait for it . . . a milky white discharge from you-know-where.

Well, shit.  For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out how or where I got infected, but I was INFECTED!  At the rate I was going, blindness and dementia couldn’t be more than a week or two away.  Days, maybe.  I needed a doctor, and I needed one, like, yesterday!

When I walked home from the bus that afternoon, Mom knew that something was wrong.  I tried denying it for a while, but ultimately, the tears came, and with them, the devastating news of my disease.

And I saw the look.  My mom’s eyes would flash when she was amused–almost literally–and that’s what I saw.  She tried to keep her poker face, presumably to save me from humiliation, but I knew then that I had somehow miscalculated.  Things weren’t as bad as they seemed.  That night, my dad and I had the most awkward conversation of my life.

Happy Holidays, everyone!  I’ll see you in the New Year.

By John Gilstrap

I’m writing this on Monday evening, December 2, 2019.  This morning, I submitted my copy edited manuscript back to my publisher, having endured my annual pity party centered around the theme, “If you know so much, write your own damn book.”  It’s the constant picking at the niggling details that make me crazy.  Yeah, I get that “which” vs. “that” is a real thing, as is “farther” vs. “further”.  And, as I discussed last time in my epistle about my comma conundrum, I’ve accepted that I’ll never get certain things right.

But come on.  “We can’t take this argument any further/farther.”  They both make sense.

Copy editors make me think too hard, that’s the problem.  (See that friggin’ comma splice?  Boy, did we hammer on comma splices at my last critique group meeting!)  Even I–the passionate purveyor of the principle that there are no rules in writing–admit that there are rules to grammar, and I try very hard to stay out of the way of those who understand these things.  But then there are the stylistic choices.  Such as . . .

In my original draft, I wrote, “Sid asked for a Maker’s-rocks”.  (By the way, that comma is properly positioned.  You know, in case someone asks.)  The copy editor changed it to “. . . Maker’s Mark Bourbon on the rocks”.  My first instinct was to ignore the comment, but then I wondered if maybe I was unclear.  Sid is in a bar, for crying out loud. Doesn’t the context fill in whatever blanks there might be?  The word, Bourbon, was a non-starter, but should it be Maker’s Mark on the rocks?  On the first pass, I accepted that part of the change, but on the second pass, I switched it back to my original.  That sounded best to my ear.

Shouldn’t “God-forsaken” be capitalized?  The copy editor lower-cased it, and for the life of me, I don’t understand why.

And then I stumbled upon The Big One.  The.  Big.  One.  How I missed this in my own editing passes is beyond me, but miss it I did: A nighttime shootout sandwiched between two daylight scenes.  Wait.  What?  Holy crap!

My stories are all told on a pretty tight timeline, with the events of one scene having ripple effects through other subsequent scenes.  The shootout couldn’t be moved from its slot in the story, and the results of said shootout have a massive impact on the next 250 pages of story.  Have I said holy crap yet?  Well, here it is again: Holy crap!

So, I had to re-engineer the shootout to happen in the daytime.  From a tactical perspective, that changes everything.  Different gun sights, different approach to the building.  Different everything.  But I fixed it.  I made it work, and I think I was able to stitch the downrange damage back together.  I think.

Actually I’m sure.  Well, pretty sure.  Damn.

It looks like I’ll be reading the page proofs more carefully than usual in a couple of months.

Meanwhile, here it is for the record: Thank you, Mr. Copy Editor for catching The Big One while there was still time to fix it.

I hate being caught being wrong.