My 24,000-word masterpiece

The early reviews are trickling in, and — aaaagh! — a friend has spotted a typo that has been hanging out there on the World Wide Web for nearly two years.

In the April 26, 2006, introduction to the Imaginary Bomb podcast, which is revised and reprinted in the new print edition, I wrote about being inspired by a phrase that came to me in a dream:

Those dozen words formed themselves into a sentence, a surge of adrenaline raced through my veins, and a few weeks later I had a 24,000-page novel - well, maybe that's a novella - or maybe even a long short story ...

Yesterday I received an e-mail that said the book is delightful, but ... "Now, with (more than) 23,000 pages lying on the editing room floor, there must have been something in all those pages for another book or two."

Whoops. Remind me that in the second edition, the introduction will speak of "a few weeks later I had a 24,000-word novel." Proof-reading sometimes appears to be a lost art. With this and another that my friend caught, I'm now aware of four typos in the darn thing - in one sense, not bad for a 100-page book, in another sense, a tad agonizing. I know when I encounter a typo in a book, it breaks the illusion, taking me out of the story for a moment, so I humbly apologize.

Stiil, I remain pleased over how the first Richardson & Bluhm publication turned out and, of course, urge you to consider passing some FRNs our way to see for yourself. I expect the typos won't bug you as much as they bug me.