The fly in the ointment when self-publishing is thinking you can copy edit your own book and get away with it. In my rush to have MOTHER TONGUE released in Kindle and paperback versions before the holidays, I did my own copy editing. WRONG!

Just before my rush to publish, I had completed a major re-write in which I had changed from a third person point-of-view to first person. Unfortunately, one is capable of doing mass change-all edits with WORD and pronouns are incredibly capricious little devils. What’s worse is that spell-check does not always pick up the resulting grammatical errors because they are perceived as being correct even though the meaning is entirely altered. Case in point: “our” and “their”.

Example: I listened closely to our conversation when what I meant was I listened closely to their conversation. The first is not poor grammar but totally incorrect in terms of meaning.

You’ve all probably seen the passage pictured here about the power of the human mind. This is why it is so difficult to pick up these errors. Skimming over large volumes of material, our gaze slides over the little words like pronouns, especially when we’ve written them ourselves.

So, until a generous copy-edit-minded friend gave me the horrendous news  yesterday, I had no idea that there were over a hundred uses of “our” when I meant “their”. And a few minor typos to boot.

So, my sincere apologies to those who purchased either the Kindle or the paperback version of MOTHER TONGUE. I have made the corrections, resubmitted the interiors, and both versions will be available within the next 24-48 hours at Amazon.This is the up side of self-publishing. Corrections are very easily made.

For any of you paid good money for my novel and then threw your hands up in frustration or your Kindle down in annoyance, I would be happy to make reparations. A new paperback version can be sent to your door as soon as it is available or a gift certificate for a new Kindle version. Please use my CONTACT PAGE to send me your druthers. And a special kudos to those who gave me excellent reviews in spite of this–and they weren’t even relatives! You are kindhearted to the Nth degree or speed readers who never read the pronouns to begin with!