Adventures at Home and Abroad

I'm polishing my completed manuscript of A Certain Deceit so I can send it to editors and agents. I was incredibly fortunate at HNS-2017: I pitched to two editors and they both want to see it (one partial read and one full read). I've gone through a hard copy, looking for nits, correcting grammar, and identifying any holes/issues to correct. I've had two other people read parts as well. It has taken me almost a month--I wanted to be careful and precise, not gloss over things. I bled a lot of red ink all over my text, then went into Scrivener and made my revisions. I copied my updated text from Scrivener to MS Word, chapter by chapter, and scrolled through each document, so I could see Word's editing function. This feature is handy and points out things I might have missed. I thought I'd done everything carefully. Then, as I'm preparing to send out the partial request, I saw an error! A big one, in the scheme of things, because it was on the third page (...

Dad came for his annual visit last week (he left today). The man is 83 years old and he's a golf-a-holic. Which means that John and I get to follow him around our course, spritely at the beginning and dragging by the last round. This year was no different, despite his health issues. We played one 9 hole round and three 18 hole rounds in five days. That's a lot of golf...I feel like I'm overdoing it if I play 2-3 times a week. He's a perfect example of someone with a passion and a goal. Each morning, he set goals for his overall score, the holes he'd improve upon, mistakes he'd avoid.  It was admirable, since my goals usually involve survival, or not dropping out after nine holes. I played fairly well, better than last year, so I was happy. I know it makes him happy to see me playing well. John played even better, which, after twenty years of being tortured on the course by my father and brother, was the most satisfying of all.