Typos and puns and fans

Over the last week or so I've been reading a kids' fantasy, The Midnight Glass, by D T Vaughn. It has a great climax, and a couple of neat surprises towards the end. Other people might have seen what was coming, but I didn't, so they were very pleasing when they arrived.

Unfortunately there are some typos and missing words in the book. It seems as if other people who've read it weren't perturbed by this, but having a kind of proofreader's eye, those sorts of things stick out like a sore thumb. They don't take away from the story, but just catch you up as you're reading along.

The irony is that my wife said to me last night while reading my book, The Disenchanted Wizard: 'there's a word missing here.' It was an of, but she picked it up, in spite of the fact that I've been through the book with a (plainly not effective enough) fine tooth comb, and so has my co-author. And to cap it all, my son informed me today that when his son enthusiastically read the book in the last couple of weeks he commented afterwards, 'There was an and missing at one point.' Oh, dear...

Anyway, on a more positive note, a friend of mine was here tonight and said she'd bought all three of the books in the series, after at first having had some trouble finding the most recent one on iTunes. Whatever the problem was, she'd obviously overcome it, and her son - a voracious reader - had already finished Grimhilda! and loved it, especially the humour; was into The Mumbersons, and keenly anticipating reading The Disenchanted Wizard. He even pointed out to his mother how 'clever' the title of this last one was...did she get it, did she see how it was a play on words, etc?  I think he's my greatest fan....!

He's talking about using the three titles for a book report for school, which has to be about a New Zealand author. Wow, I'm really into the big time now...!

But something else he said really made me laugh. Those who know the book, Grimhilda!, will know what a sticky end that lady comes to. This young fellow's comment to his mother was 'She should have been taken into custardy.' If you don't get that, my advice is to go and buy a copy and read it. You'll see how delightfully in tune with the book his comment was.

Coffee Cantata

I’m rather amazed to hear that New Zealand is regarded as one of the better places in the world to get decent coffee. (North and South magazine says so in its latest edition.) Certainly the coffee scene has increased out of all proportion in the last decade, and even here in Dunedin, where once no one would have thought of sitting outside to drink anything, let alone coffee, there are tables and chairs galore.
I’m not much into coffee – I mean coffee in the sense of it being a ‘real’ drink – so coffee makers aren’t much good to me either. Good old instant coffee does me every time, although I have developed a bit more of a taste for cappuccino of late, only because a friend of mine has introduced me to a restaurant where they provide excellent cappuccini (yes, I think that should be the plural!)
Any other kind of coffee you can keep, especially that stuff that’s so black it doesn’t need a cup to hold it. And I don’t drink coffee much after afternoon tea time (or coffee time, if you prefer) these days, otherwise when midnight comes my mind will still be rattling around.
There, you needed to know all that, didn’t you?