I’m getting better, that’s what I keep telling myself. As an independent author, who at the moment can’t afford the luxury of editors and cover designers, I have to do a lot of what I do myself. And I’m pleased to say that I’m definitely improving on the editing and proof-reading front. My latest novel, the hilarious laughter fest Mutch Wants Moor, has only got four typos in it. Something that will take a mere hour or so to put right and re-release. And to be fair they’re not that bad either and a more lazy individual than I might not even bother. But I know they’re there and it will bug me so I’m going to correct them anyway.

Wind the clock back to 2019 and my first book Ah Boy! It was a very different experience then. I was as green behind the gills as they come when it came to all that proofing and editing malarky. I found all that far more intimidating than actually writing the book in the first place. As a result, mistakes were made and I’m not ashamed to admit it. A great many mistakes as it happens. I’m talking typos, grammar, punctuation the works. If there was a crime against publishing then I committed them all. You name it and I did it. But as I say in my defence I was as naïve as could be. As naïve as Evian backwards in fact (groan).

How Ah Boy! sold so well and garnered such favourable reviews is beyond me. However, it did do quite well and over time those mistakes kind of got under my skin like a tick. They didn’t keep me awake at night or anything like that but knowing they were there and what to do about them was a constant source of irritation to me. And this month, I finally decided that it was high time to do something about it.

Mutch Wants Moor is my fourth full length novel and along with the other two (The Ghost of Lenton Wattingham and The Pheasants Revolt) I have grown as a writer and as an editor/proof-reader. I’ve learned new tricks and tips with each passing book and I felt that I was now in a good place to turn Ah Boy! from being some scruffy yet funny little oik of a book into the highly polished comic pearl of laughter and hilarity it always should have been.

I re-read it with such scrutiny and took time and effort over each and every sentence. Initially I began counting the typos and errors but by the time I was half way through it and had already reached fifty I stopped counting and just applied myself to the task in hand in the certain knowledge that all would be well in the end. I also used my skill with Adobe Photoshop to re-jig the cover and I’m pleased with the outcome of that as well.

On Friday I resubmitted Ah Boy! (yes the exclamation mark is necessary) to KDP for publication with a feeling of achievement and a sense of relief that that horrible little tick of awareness that had been happily burrowing away under my skin has, at last, been dug out and squished. Writers, in whatever capacity, will always make typos. It can’t be helped; hey, you may even find one on this blog post, but I hope not. I’m just glad that in the case of Ah Boy! it has been a positive experience going through them and one that I have grown from again.