Happy Halloween!

Because this is a great day to get spooked, in both little and big ways, I decided to share my Ghost Neil story. This is the first time I’ve ever told this story in a public setting. It’s a little personal, and somewhat intense, and it actually inspired a character in my book WIVES AND SISTERS. (If anyone can guess which character, and I haven’t already TOLD you the answer, please email me at Nataliewrites@aol.com, and I’ll send you a signed bookmark. Actually, even if I have told you the answer, I’ll still send you one!)

I worked with Neil for many years, and always had a lot of fun chatting with him, and being around him, but he was quite a few years my senior, and I was trying to stick to men a little closer to my own age, since I was rebounding from a nasty failed marriage to an older idiot with an allergy to work and an addiction to alcohol and backhands.

Still, Neil persevered, and let me know his intentions while we were on a group cruise with a bunch of friends. (I was rooming with three other girls, so we had not gone on this cruise together.) I was young, just 28, and it was a heady time, with all the attention from the single men on the cruise. Neil patiently stood back and watched me play “life of the party” girl.

After we returned home, and none of the men who had been “so in love” with me on the cruise ever touched base, Neil let me know, again gently, that he was waiting in the wings.

He knew my fear about the age gap, about the fact he lived with and cared for his aging parents, and just the general fact that I did not have a lot of faith or trust in ANY man, due to a rough upbringing and some unfortunate choices on my part. But he didn’t back down.

He slowly and consistently convinced me that he would treat me better than any other man had ever treated me, and that whatever I wanted–the world–it was mine.

I didn’t really want the world, but I knew it would be nice to have someone faithful, consistent, kind, and loving in my life. And slowly I caved in to his pressure. One night, I finally told him I was willing to give it a shot. I wasn’t making promises, like he was, but I would try…..

The next day, one of his best friends came up to me at work and told me that he had been rushed to the hospital that morning. He had been stabilized, but he was in intensive care.

We walked in through the front doors to find our good friend, Rick, standing there sobbing. He told us Neil had suffered another massive heart attack and died just a few minutes before we got there.

I never got to say goodbye.

I tried not to dwell, not do the “why me” thing, but it was a little hard. I made myself feel better by making Neil my “angel,” and I swear sometimes I could feel him there, especially during the rough times, a constant and steady calming presence. He taught me, in a short time, that it was okay to be treated well. That it was okay to like ME. And when he was taken so suddenly, I knew that I deserved what he’d promised me. I knew I needed to not settle anymore.

In short, by leaving, he taught me to stand on my own two feet. No one else had ever done that.

I still feel his presence, sometimes, but the only time I heard his voice, at least when I’ve been wide awake, was when I was driving a four-wheeler in rough terrain, shortly before it rolled over on me. That time, I clearly heard the words “Get her off,” in a male voice. I made my youngest daughter get off the back of the vehicle, and not one minute later hit a tree branch, and the four-wheeler rolled over on top of me. I suffered some minor injuries, but she was totally unharmed.

I think he was following through on his promise–taking care of me, protecting the most precious thing in my life.

I still dream of him, very lucid dreams, and we have some interesting conversations. I think I’ll keep those to myself. But is he a ghost? A spirit, maybe. He’s there. His energy is still out there. Making it impossible to ever forget him. And I’m grateful that I won’t and can’t.

In honor of Halloween tomorrow night, let’s talk about ghosts.

I’m not exactly sure what I believe, except that I’m not arrogant enough to believe I know it all. Who knows what exists? It’s what makes life so interesting, and it’s what makes fiction so compelling—the possibilities

One of my sons was watching a movie about ghosts and asked me if I’ve ever seen a ghost. Nope. Not that I can remember.

I did hear one, once.

So here is my ghost story:

I was a teenager, I’m guessing about 15 years old. I lived with my mom; my dad had died suddenly the year before. My one sister and two brothers were adults and on their own. Two of my girlfriends and I went to a nearby stable to ride horses. I had a tame mare that was cooperative but she wasn’t thrilled to be out on the trails. After we rode most the trail, we were heading back to the stables. My mare was getting anxious, and somehow she stumbled.

Everything went into slow motion.

I felt her stumble, felt her struggle for endless seconds trying to get her balance. I know it was only seconds, but it felt like long minutes as I tried to figure out what to do. I was not a good horsewoman, just an amateur. A better horsewoman might have been able to help the horse. All I knew is we were going down. Sheer instinct had my dive off the horse.

I hit the ground and lay there stunned. The horse was still stumbling. And then I heard it.

“Roll Jen!”

I didn’t even think, I rolled, literally feeling the brush of the horse as she fell and barely missed me.

The horse was fine! Don’t worry, she got right up, they checked her out, she was fine.

I had torn a muscles or something in my arm and was basically fine. I didn’t even know I was hurt until the next morning.

My two friends were stunned. They saw the whole thing and they swore that horse was going to land on top of me. I mean they were freaked out. They said I was lying motionless and at the last second, sort of woke up and rolled out of the path of the falling horse.

Guess whose voice I heard yelling at me to “Roll, Jen?”

My dad. I didn’t see him, but I sort of felt him and I heard him as clear as if he’d been standing there yelling at me.

So was it real? A ghost? Or was it just my mind reacting to a shocking and frightening set of circumstances? I don’t know. I do know that for the next few years as I grew up without a dad, I carried around that memory, letting myself believe he was “around.”

What about you all? Share your ghost stories! It’s Halloween, let’s have fun!

So, I’m tagging everyone who reads this blog (you can tag back here)!

Here’s what you do. Pick the fact number of mine below you think is the lie, then write five facts about yourself, one being false, and we guess which one is the lie

I’ll start:

1. I’m full blooded Irish and proud of it!
2. As a teenager in Switzerland, I got so drunk with my friends at the airport in Lucerne waiting for our flight to NYC, security had to come escort us to the plane that was about to leave without us. We laughed our asses off the entire way home.
3. In the seventh grade I beat up a six grader who was a notorious bully and twice my size because he was picking on my little brother. I broke the kid’s nose, and knocked out his front tooth.
4. As a kid, I showed both Western and English (that’s horse shows). I sucked at both. But hey, I had fun!
5. I always wanted to be a doctor.

Don’t be shy! C’mon and play.

Okay, admit it. You’ve read books replete with errors. With typos and missing words and things that just don’t make sense. Who’s the first person you blame? The Author. Right. Been there, done that.

It’s not always the author’s fault.

Page proofs are the final stage before publication. You get the book in typeset form. For my publisher, this means a mock-up of each page, complete with printer marks, chapter headings, what-have-you. The dedication, the acknowledgments, and my favorite page–the inside page that tells the reader that this is a work of fiction, and it’s bears my name next to the copyright.

That’s cool

Page proofs (also called “galleys” or “first pass pages” and a host of other names) are the author’s last chance for changes. And most contracts specify you can’t make oodles of changes, usually 10-20% (though what THAT means, I don’t know.) All the changes–some major, and sometimes with complete scenes inserted in the text–made at the copy edit stage are incorporated into the page proofs (and this is my best reason to always submit in courier–to make that transfer of information easier on the production manager!) Mistakes can happen. They might miss a word or two. They might misspell your character’s name. They might not make a small change that will have huge repercussions down the road in the story. In THE PREY, I changed the name of a secondary character, and FBI agent, to Quinn Peterson to bringing a the connecting element to THE HUNT. I did this in the copyedit stage. Either the CE or myself missed one “Eric” and I caught it in the page proofs.

ARCs and bound galleys are made from the page proofs. This is generally the version that gets sent for review. You’ve probably seen them: UNCORRECTED MANUSCRIPT PROOF or ADVANCED READING COPY.

At Random House, two professional proofreaders read the manuscript along with the author. The proofreaders are responsible for, well, proofing, but also making sure that the changes from the copyedits made it on the page proofs. Their copies of the proofs are put with mine and one person is responsible for transferring all the changes to the master production copy and that goes to press.

When I read the proofs of THE KILL, many of the changes from the copyedits hadn’t been incorporated. I called my editor. The production manager was already aware of the problem and fixing it.

Mistakes can be made at any stage–author, copyeditor, production manager. I am very forgiving of errors in other people’s books (unless they’re huge and repeating) because I know how this happens.

I turned in the page proofs for SPEAK NO EVIL the other day. I’ll admit, I love this stage. Seeing the book in its semi-final form. Being able to tweak a bit, change a few words, cut a repetitive thought (or ten). It makes the book so real.

So what kind of errors did I catch?

The most blatant was changing the hair color of one of the victims. That I caught it was a miracle in itself, but it jumped out at me. I also used the wrong word (this is under “stupid Allison mistakes”)–I said that no defense attorney would allow their client to SUCCUMB to a DNA test without court order. It’s SUBMIT. (And I didn’t even catch it, my husband did!)

I cut some phrases and sentences. Once I cut two paragraphs because it was almost identical to something earlier in the chapter. I changed a minor character name because it was too similar to another character and threw me when I first read it. I changed words when, as I was reading the text, I realized I’d used a blah word. I double-checked my timing and made sure it flowed.

I found once that a door was open then in the next paragraph it was opened again. Hmm. I fixed it.

So I guess the purpose of this post is to share a little bit about this stage of the process, and to share RELIEF that this book is over. Done. On it’s way to the printer. Yeah!

Also, if you see a few little mistakes in books you read, be forgiving. I’m not talking about the big ones, but sometimes even though several people proofread the book, mistakes happen.

Now, time to have fun. What’s the BIGGEST mistake you’ve seen in a book? You don’t have to give the author’s name. I have two to share:

1) A book that referenced the Gospel of Thomas. I thought it was a major plot point (there is no Gospel of Thomas in the bible, it’s a gnostic gospel). Because the missing person was a minister, I thought this was a HUGE plot point and would lead the protagonist to find her. Um, no. It was a mistake. But it was distracting because I THOUGHT it was important.

2) I have a hardcover that was printed upside down and backwards. It’s a keeper. You never know if it’ll be worth something someday!

This week I’m heading east to speak to a group of high school students in Miami, Florida. The event took months of planning, and I’ve been fingerprinted, background checked, telephoned, and debriefed about school policy ad nauseam. Understandable considering the rash of violence and gun slinging that’s been going on in schools lately—which brings up an issue for this post.

Having done the high school circuit for the last three years, I’ve met many authors who follow that same circuit, each committed to literacy and wanting to do whatever it takes to get more kids reading. That commitment hasn’t kept us from complaining, however. We commiserate about the challenges that face us, the distractions that steal a young adult’s attention and force us to have to do more with even greater conviction so they’ll hear us. Even amidst the griping, though, most of us just cowboyed up and did what we had to do to get the message across—until now.

Too many authors and hope-bearers don’t want to deal with the hassles of getting into the schools anymore, and that saddens me more than I can express. It’s bad enough our children are forced to deal with violence in the first place. Now, because our society has become so adversarial, even the sprinkling of hope we had to change the paling face of literacy is being compromised.

I can understand the need for people to uncomplicated their lives by dropping projects or issues that seem to bring more hassle than hope, but I can’t understand giving up. If we all throw up our hands and say, “It’s just not worth it. This war is too fierce, and there’s no hope for success,” isn’t that the same as surrendering? Doesn’t that mean that we’re handing over our children, our future leaders, so they become permanent prisoners of war? How can we do that when we’re the ones responsible for dragging them into the fight in the first place? And we did it in the name of democracy and with a bad case of constitutional hemorrhoids. We stopped prayer and hampered discipline in schools. We allowed pants that hang below butt cheeks and skirts no longer than a sideways bandanna. We allowed cell phones in classrooms, cursing in the hallways, and threats to teachers who try to make a difference. Just what did we expect all this ‘freedom’ to generate in our society? Peace—love—harmony?

Okay, so the hassles (and dangers) are greater when it comes to getting into schools—so what? These kids need us. We just need to cowboy up once again and push through this new set of challenges so some of them will have a chance to hear a voice of reason and calm, an echo of hope. If we don’t, we could lose many of them forever, and that’s just friggin’ unacceptable to me.