WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2008
 

Chrissy Series

On March 24th my fifth Chrissy McMullen mystery will hit the shelves. The people at Bantam Books have decided I need a whole new look and title. (Notice cover--it’s totally different than the others.) Which got me to thinking; editors, sometimes you love ‘em, sometimes you hate ‘em, but you always need ‘em. At least I do because I have no idea how to punctuate. Never have, but these days I’m worse than ever. And I’m blaming the simplicity of email.

For example, the other day I was trying to send my bio to a guy at a conference in Chicago. He didn’t receive it, so I tried again. When I didn’t get a response I sent a message that read, “I resent. Did you get it now?”

A couple of hours later I got a note back from him that said, “I am so sorry if I offended you. I looked through my emails and didn’t find where I wrote, ‘did you get it now?’ But please forgive me. I assure you I did not mean to offend.”

I sat there flummoxed for a few seconds and finally knew what he was talking about. Laughing and blushing at the same time I assured him that he had not offended me. I had just been too lazy to put the proper hyphen in re-sent, giving him an entirely different meaning than I had intended.

How about you? Have you ever completely mis-represented your meaning when you dashed off an email or am I the only one who does this sort of thing with stunning regularity. Tell me your silliest cyber mistake. I’ll send an advance reading copy to one blundering commenter. I promise I have a top-notch editor who catches most of my mistakes.