I have been off-blog for the past week for two reasons. One, my life has been absorbed by semester-end administrative tasks. Two, I received the following Amazon customer review for The Rabbit Skinners:

This story is compelling and well constructed. Toward the end the author confused a few details but the intent was easily discerned. I highly recommend this book.

The nice things she wrote were decimated entirely in my neuron-challenged brain by the bit Toward the end the author confused a few details. Confused? Wha-? Which details? So I spent the few short, spare moments (and they truly have been short and spare) poring through every page of my (second) novel again trying to locate the “few details” I had “confused.” And I COULDN’T FIND THEM!

The reread was helpful because I did find quite a few small errors I could fix (missing end-quotation marks were especially numerous–horror!) and could also improve the book in about fifty parts with various tweaks. I added some sentences here and there to clarify structural links in the text that were perhaps insufficiently obvious. BUT I STILL COULDN’T FIND THE DETAILS I CONFUSED AT THE END!

Dog-eared from Editing

I guess I need to read it yet again to search even more carefully. I hope I can find the details the reviewer was referring to. I won’t be able to sleep well until I do.

If you happen to be one of the three or four intrepid souls who have actually read my book, it would be wonderful if you could point out these details, so I can fix them in the service of providing an excellent literary product!

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“The Rabbit Skinners embraces themes of good and evil, courage and fear, prejudice and love, and an unexpected touch of romance. Mystery readers will find it a compelling read from beginning to end.” –Midwest Book Review