Copyedited MS. under my belt

Today the copyedited manuscript of Tracking the Beast arrived in the morning email. Four hours later I'd looked over the edits, commented on a few of them, and returned the file to Five Star Mysteries.

Seems that I got off easy. There were no snarky comments from the editor about spellings, sentences, or plots. Mostly the fixes had to do with conformation to house style. Five Star believes in the serial, or Oxford, comma. As a longtime newspaper copy editor I'm used to the other kind. Also, Five Star lower cases the names of the military services, while as the son of a Navy officer and the father of one, I habitually upper-case them without thinking.

I did get caught in one minor mistake and caught the editor in one minor mistake, so that was a wash.

Now to wait for page proofs and the jacket art, and my job will be done . . . until publication day in December, when I'll have to go out and promote the thing.