The Shade Of The Moon Number Three Is Now In The Hands Of Editor Number One

Actually, it's not in anybody's hands, since thanks to the miracles of modern technology, I simply zapped it across the airwaves into the editor's computer. For that matter, she's not Editor One, since I had a different editor for Life As We Knew It and The Dead And The Gone. So the entire title is a lie, or at least a prevarication (which, I think, means lie, but with multiple syllables).

I just checked over at dictionary.com and yes, it's a fancy way of saying lying. I thought it was very funny that when I checked, it offered me, in one of its many ads, a free Christian dating service. I don't even date expensive Christians.

Back to literature, or what passes for it in my computer. Well, literature with complaining. I love the word processing gizmos, but they have their limitations. Remember Jon's friend Tyler? I gave him a last name in the first draft, but decided for reasons that totally escape me that he should have a different last name. So I went to that fabulous Replace button, and replaced the first last name with Ames. Only then, for reasons that also totally escape me,I decided that his last name shouldn't be Ames.So I went to that fabulous Replace button, and substituted Hughes for Ames. Tyler Hughes. Fine name.

But then that nasty little Mistake! Mistake! button started going crazy, so I looked to see what the problem was. Well, the problem was when people had names, they now had nHughes, and when they played games, they played gHughes.

Then there was the minor character Brian. He was definitely not a Brian, so I went back to my beloved Popular Baby Names  and discovered that the 396th most popular boy's name in 1970 was Virgil. Having taken four years of Latin in high school, I have a great fondness for Virgil, so Brian got replaced with Virgil.

Sadly though, that meant that Alex's sister Briana, mentioned once in the book, became Virgila. The Mistake!Mistake! button went crazy over that as well.

I thought the manuscript was perfect when I zipped it off, but in my search for a celebratory 2 pages to scan over here, I found that Jon took a book of Plato out of the library, but ended up reading Aristotle instead. Oh well. If manuscripts were perfect, editors would get very bored.

What we all should remember, as we think about the editor, is there's no contract for The Shade Of The Moon Attempt Number Tres. So the editor might not get bored, thanks to my catchy mistakes, but might not like the book either and turn it down, and all you'll ever get to read of it is the four pages I put on my blog earlier and the two I'm about to put on.

It's very tricky, by the way, getting two pages that don't give away too much of the plot. It's a book with a lot of plot, and every time I looked for two pages to put here, there was always too much information to reveal so casually.

The two pages I finally chose are about Miranda and Alex. So if you don't want to know what's happening with them, don't read the pages. Consider yourself warned.

Oh, I know what I'll do. I have an excellent picture of Scooter I've been looking for an excuse to plop here. If you want to stay completely unspoiled about Alex and Miranda, then admire the picture of Scooter and move on.

I'll say goodbye here just in case. Now that I no longer have the manuscript to write or rewrite, the focus of my life is on naps!