Good morning! I'm late with this post for three reasons. First, because things have been a little crazy here in Ottawa and I've been distracted by news and social media for days as my city's occupation continues, the prime minister invokes the Emergencies Act (despite all the hand-wringing from civil libertarians, a much tamer tool than its predecessor the War Measures Act), our police chief is forced to resign, and the area around our venerable Parliament buildings has been turned into a giant trailer park party. Picture this scene clogged with idling, forty-ton big rigs.
Secondly, because my beloved dog Eva, on whom my fictional dog Kaylee is based, has fallen seriously ill, but that's not a subject for a blog post.
And lastly, because in the midst of this chaos, I've been racing to finish the final draft of my latest Amanda Doucette mystery before the submission deadline, which was yesterday, February 15. I am a few hours late, but it's done! And that's what I want to write about today.
Now the in-house editorial process begins, which grinds exceedingly slow. The release date has been pushed back from this fall, and now lands with a thud into the middle of post-holiday January 2023. Ugh. In a recent post, I mentioned that the publisher's marketing department didn't like my chosen title THERE BUT FOR FORTUNE, the title of a 60s protest song and very apt for the story. I have now come up with another one, which has passed the test. WRECK BAY.
So tadah!! Announcing the title of my forthcoming fifth book in the Amanda Doucette series. WRECK BAY! I am not unhappy with the title, which refers in the book to the hippie commune set up at the edge of Long Beach near Tofino on Vancouver Island. It has a nice ring to it and, with its multiple layers of meaning, will suit the story well enough.
So onward. I expect the usual to-and-fro between me and the editor, in which aspects are expanded, clarified, and polished. I like this part of the process, provided the editor likes the basic story to begin with. In the past, I've usually had very few major editorial quibbles and the small ones are easily resolved. Editors generally have not asked for major shifts in the storyline (like "I hate the ending"). Having an open mind and a supportive, perhaps even enthusiastic attitude from the editor makes this an opportunity to make a good story great.
In my last book, I did have a peculiar experience with an overly enthusiastic proofreader. These are the people who don't change the story substantially but pick apart the exact choice of words, grammatical structures, even commas (the bane of every writer's existence). Copy-editors and proofreaders have to be detail people– one might even say micromanagers– by nature. and for a big-picture person like myself, they can be frustrating. But I want it to be ungrammatical! That's how this character thinks!
During the last proofreading exercise, I learned something new. Apparently the newest stye guidelines discourage the use of foods to describe features or traits of the characters. Gone are "coffee-coloured skin" and "chocolate brown eyes". I did briefly wonder - what do they want "mud-coloured"? Foods conjure up vivid sensory impressions, both delicious and unpleasant, beyond the colour. Chocolate is a whole lot more appealing than mud. And what about the adjectives that are both food and colour, like honey, caramel, orange, etc?
If I recall, the new guidelines were because such adjectives were often used for characters of colour and might be subtly demeaning in some way. For over twenty years, I've been describing Green's wife (white, although Jewish) wife as having chocolate brown eyes. Similarly, I think white as well as ugly when I read "he had a face like lumpy dough" or cauliflower ears.
Regardless, in this book I have tried to avoid all food unless it's on a plate. Fortunately there are a lot of words in the English language. What are your thoughts both as reader and writer? Writers, is this a new thing?
