By: Blonde Two

There is something very scary (some might say foolish) about editing your own book. It was easy enough with ‘The Dartmoor Christmas Tree’ and ‘Dart the River’, they had very few words; but move on a year or two to ‘Ignatius Bowerman’ and I was faced with 48,000 possible spelling errors (not to mention the punctuation).

I am okay with homophones, you know the sort of thing, ‘Blonde Two asked Blonde One to come too.” Direct speech however proved to be a bit of an issue, my young hero Thomas (no abbreviations please) and Ignatius Bowerman obviously had to talk to each other. Luckily Blonde One put me straight on those particular nuances, especially the commas instead of full-stops thing.

But my real nightmares came from semi-colons; they are used to; separate clauses; but when is a clause; not a clause? I was genuinely waking up in the night worrying about them. I blame this entirely on a previous head teacher, who once went through the reports that I had written to parents, and crossed out most of my lovely little semis (with a pink pen). I have never been the same since.

It is a shame really, because ‘The Non-Story of Ignatius Bowerman’ is no longer a story to me; it is an exercise in looking for mistakes (spot the clause). You will have to let me know when you read your copy, if it is still a story.

Of course after all of that poring over and re-reading, and with a copy finally in my hands, I can’t find any mistakes in the little things. There is however, one massive, glaring, obvious, irritating, ridiculous mistake. I am not going to tell you where, but you will find it… when you buy your copy!!

Ignatius Bowerman Real Book

It is, by the way, still a very beautiful book.