Book Bloopers

A frantic call from a friend. She's hesitant to say anything. "Um, I've got some bad news," she tells my dear wife.

Thoughts race through my wife's brain. Is she sick or hurt? Did somebody die?

No, it's nothing like that. She found a blooper in my book. On page 174. It reads, "Lizzy put her right hand to her forehead."

What's wrong with that, you ask? Well, on page 169, the book reads, "Being locked in the trunk of a moving vehicle was bad enough, but, to make matters worse, her wrists were bound together behind her back..."

Ah, there's the slip-up. Obviously, she could not have touched her right hand to her forehead if her wrists were bound together behind her back.

The friend who pointed this out to my wife was hesitant to say anything because, well, because she knew how much I'd put into this book and she didn't want to hurt my feelings.

I can honestly say that my feelings are not even bruised. As much as I'd like my book to be perfect, I know it isn't. 

A couple weeks earlier my mother reported another blooper in the book. On page 46 it reads: "Standing on the cold tile of the bathroom floor, wearing nothing but his briefs, Charley reflected on the last twelve hours." 

What's wrong there? Well, on page 43, Charley, the protagonist, was wearing boxers, not briefs. And he didn't come with a change of clothes. So unless he got the briefs from Lizzy, he couldn't be wearing them.

The reality is, mistakes happen. Even in the best of movies and books, there are bloopers like these. In fact, there's a Web site called slipups.com devoted to pointing out these gaffes in movies, TV and books. Just check out some of the bloopers that have been found in best-selling and award-winning books. There are three bloopers listed for Ray Bradbury's classic, Fahrenheit 451. There are two slip-ups caught in Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove. Dumas' The Three Musketeers comes in with two mistakes. Harry Potter and the Temple of Goblet: a whopping 18 mistakes caught by readers.

So you see, I'm in pretty good company. If my book reaches anywhere near the success of the aforementioned books, I'll be one very happy former attorney resting on a hammock on a remote island a long way from Chicago.

For Appearances Sake

The Toddler has an insatiable appetite for books. Just about every other week now we feed his hunger by loading up on books at the library, checking out a dozen or so at a time.

So I've become a regular library visitor.

But I have a rather embarrassing admission to make. I can't remember the last time I checked out a library book that was not from the children's section.

Until The Toddler entered my life two years ago, I don't think I had even stepped in a library in almost a decade. Almost any book I read I bought, which I'm sure the authors appreciated.

This admission is by way of introduction to the latest news on my Appearances page. In the last week I've added four promotional appearances for my fiction debut, Lost in the Ivy. Each of these will be at libraries.

I'll be making three talk/reading/signing appearances at libraries near Rockford the weekend of September 24-25. Each of these will be joint appearances with historical mystery author and Chicago native N.S. Wikarski. On Saturday, September 24, we'll be at the North Suburban Library District's Roscoe Branch, 5562 Clayton Circle, Roscoe, IL from 10:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m., and at the District's Love's Park Branch, 6340 North Second Street, Love's Park, IL, at 2 p.m. On Sunday, September 25, we'll be at the Cherry Valley Library, 755 East State Street, Cherry Valley, IL, at 2 p.m.

Much farther down the road I'll be appearing with 17 other authors at the Indian Trails Library AuthorFest 2006 in Wheeling on April 8.

If you live in or around any of these communities, please stop by and visit me. I might need someone to point me in the direction of a section that isn't intended for kids. 

First Amazon Review

Hey, just a short note to thank Intl Johnny "Dogman" for my first Amazon review -- and a 5-star review to boot! It will make you thirsty for a pint of Honker's Ale. And hopefully hungry to read my book.

Letting Go

I don’t know if it was started by our parents or our parents’ parents, but somewhere back in time a huge lie was born.

The lie is that being an adult is harder than being a kid. Our parents mentally drilled this lie in to our brains from an early age, until we accepted it as the truth. Waiting for us outside, we were told forebodingly, was “a cold, cruel world.” Or we were warned, “It’s a jungle out there,” as if it was a big, scary place posing dangerous pitfalls at every turn.

For forty-three years I myself had believed this lie. Of course being a kid was easier than being an adult. As a kid, you have no real responsibilities. From day one you poop in your pants and someone else cleans it up for you. You cry and someone feeds you. Really, what could be easier? Someone is serving you at your beck and call round-the-clock.

For the first two years of The Toddler’s life I continued to buy into this long-held belief that if a choice was given and you could be a kid or an adult, well of course you’d rather be a kid.

But recently I’ve begun to question the foundations upon which this belief is built. Yes, being an adult is hard work. But, for the most part, life as an adult isn’t scary or threatening. Sure there are times you walk down a dark alley and hear footsteps, either real or imagined. But most of life as an adult follows a pretty set routine. True surprises in our lives are rare occurrences.

Imagine being a kid, though. Every day is a surprise. You’re learning something new with each step you take. Even by the time you’re a teen, you’re still feeling your way around new and scary worlds – the opposite sex being one of them. I don’t know about you, but there’s no way in the world that I’d relive those adolescent, pimple-popping years over again. Sure we like to wax nostalgic about those days, but it seems that when we reminisce our brains White-Out all the bad parts and leave only the good.

A recent event in The Toddler’s life got me thinking about just how scary everyday life is for a kid. Things that we, as adults, take for granted, like going to the restroom, can be truly frightening experiences if your not even three feet tall.

This particular event began with Mommy taking The Toddler to a restroom in a busy restaurant. While in the restroom, The Toddler and Mommy were separated for a couple of moments, which was just long enough for The Toddler to wonder, “Where’s Mommy,” and become very afraid.

Eyes dart one way and then the other. It’s a warm summer evening and all they see are bare legs. But which ones are Mommy’s?

The Toddler was lost in a forest of lower limbs. Instinct at some point took over and he grabbed the nearest pair and clung to them as if his life depended on it.

When Mommy reappeared she found The Toddler wrapped around the legs of a stranger, who didn’t know what to make of this creature that had attached itself to her legs. When Mommy called The Toddler’s name, he looked her way. His face flushed with embarrassment as he realized his mistake, released the Kung-Fu grip he maintained on the stranger, and ran to where he belonged.

Long ago when our parents let us go and cautioned, “It’s a jungle out there,” perhaps they forgot that we’d been let go many times before. By the time they let us go for good that world isn’t nearly as cold and cruel as it once was. But maybe they really knew that, and that’s why they knew it was time to let us go.

Exposing Myself

Right at this moment, as I write this journal entry, someone out there might be reading my book, Lost in the Ivy. It might be someone I know; it might be a complete stranger.

I know my book is out there now. And that's an incredibly cool feeling. But it's also a little bit scary.

So much of you, the author, goes into a book that when you release it out into the public you are, in a sense, shedding your clothes and allowing the world to see parts of you that they wouldn't ordinarily see. 

In the newsletter that went out to my mailing list subscribers last week I remarked that if my Amazon sales rank ever dropped into the 4 digits, I'd dance naked in the streets. As I noted in a follow-up to my last journal entry, the sales rank figure did actually climb up around 5,000 later that same day. When I checked tonight it had fallen down into the 30,000 range, which is still a good ranking for a little book like mine, but not good enough to inspire me to disco in the nude.

Some of my mailing list subscribers wanted to know if I really kept my word and went dancing naked in the streets when the Amazon ranking reached 4 digits.

The answer, of course, is, no.

Or is it?

In a literal sense, I did not disrobe and boogie in the buff. But in a figurative sense, just by releasing my book to the public, I've exposed all of myself for all to see. Anyone can peek in on me at any time -- and I would have no way of knowing it. This is a terribly unsettling feeling. All you can hope is that they aren't giggling at you.

When you put your heart and soul into something, you want others to feel the same way that you do about it. But you know that won't always happen. Some will love it. Some will hate it. Most will likely fall somewhere in between.

The one thing I can almost guarantee, though, is that even those who know me will look at me differently after they read my book. Because they will have seen a part of me that they've likely never seen before.