A new month, again!

Here we are in yet another new month -- where is the time going?

Oh, I know. Edits.

That's right, I'm hard at working making editor-requested revisions on my vampire books coming out next year. It's funny how finished I thought I was until my editor got hold of it! Not that the changes have been hard, but it makes me think about how often I make the same mistakes.

Like those pesky "-ly" words -- you know, regretfully, longingly, seriously, beautifully and their relatives. It's so easy to drop one of them in rather than use a bunch of nouns and verbs. And then there's my tendency to use the "has been" form of verbs, like "She had watched" or "He had waited."

I have a real attachment to the words "just" and "very," too. I'm too chicken to see how often I use them in a 70,000-word manuscript, but I wouldn't be surprised it they make up 10 percent. So I've just decided to be very careful in using them from now on. (Yeah, see how they creep in?)

My goal is to get the first manuscript squeaky clean by next week so the changes are back to the editor before I have to worry about getting plastic on the upstairs windows and checking for the best price on turkeys. And then we'll roll into a new month and more challenges ... like getting the next manuscript cleaned up and to the editor before Christmas rolls around.