Detour!

I've been going through "Riverbend" looking for typos and such and guess what? I found a huge, glaring error that if let slide would have had hundreds of readers contacting me to let me know how wrong I was.

Ahem. That's if I get the book published and it actually garners hundreds of readers. However, I am optimistic. You have to be in this business or no one would ever write anything.

In the novel, I write about an attempted murder and a trial. The murder weapon is a saddle girth that the villain has cut so that it tears apart and throws the rider. I tell that there might have been a mistake when the villain mistook the son's saddle for the father's.

As I re-read it, I said to myself, "A nine-year-old boy would not be using an adult saddle on his pony."

For one thing, I doubt the pony would put up with it.

So I'm going through the story again to remove all references to the doubt about the intended victim.

Because I really don't want to get angry fan mail. (In which case, can it be called "fan" mail?)

Have you ever come across a glaring error in a book and been tempted to write the author and correct her? Or did you decide never to read another of her books?

Either way, I'm glad I caught this error. And if I have any more, I hope my beta readers will catch them before I begin sending the manuscript out. If an editor catches it, the chances are "Riverbend" will never see print.

Even optimism can't overcome carelessness.