No matter how many times and how many people read a manuscript, there's always something that slips through the cracks. Change of Heart has been out for four days and today I got a text message from my mother that said, "Lisa's original name Eva? x" At first I thought, what is she talking about and then the penny dropped.
I may have said a naughty word.
Because yes, Lisa, one of Carly's employees in Change of Heart was originally called Eva. I changed it during one of the edits because I thought Eva and Evan were too similar and I didn't want to confuse anyone. So I did a find and replace, making sure I didn't accidentally replace Evan so he became Lisan. (in Word if you don't choose to find whole words only, it will pick up words that have those letters as well and give you some really weird words - I learnt that the hard way!) I even did iterations like Eva' and Eva. rather than just Eva with a space, to make sure I got them all.
But somehow one Eva slipped through the cracks.
I was so annoyed. I mean three different people edited/proofread the book, I had at least half a dozen advanced readers who got early copies of the book, and not one of them picked it up.
And that gave me a moment to pause. If so many people had read the story and not picked it up, then maybe it wasn't the huge deal I was making it. I do occasionally have the tendency to get myself worked up over things, and so I took a deep breath and relaxed. I'm not going to race out and change all the files on the various platforms so the mistake is gone. At least not yet. I'll let Mum finish reading the book first 🙂 and wait a week or so to see if anyone else notices an error and then I'll go in and fix it.
Because mistakes happen, and really it's not like the whole book is wrong - just one little name.
