What Hank's Wroting: Too Manny Typpos

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: So the good news and bad news.

The good news, actually the fantastic wonderful brilliant amazing news, is: look at this! Here are the first pass pages of TRUST ME, my upcoming psychological thriller. Doesn’t this look amazing?

You know the first pass pages, right? They are the first time the word document manuscript turns into a typeset book. It always brings tears to my eyes when they arrive, and I always have it printed out so I can see how it will really look.

But "how it will really look" has a big hulking pitfall. Because somehow, even though I copy edited it, and proofread it, and so did the copy editor, and so did the proofreader, there are so many mistakes in this first pass that it is jaw-dropping.

Every one of these stickies is a typo or change. And I am not finished.

I suppose it makes sense, when you think of how many words, and how many letters, and how many spaces, and how many characters, and how many potential landmines there are throughout. A dropped comma, a quotation mark turned the wrong way, a line left out, a word left out, or a repeated word, or the wrong word, or a word or phrase that you never should've used in the first place and now it is in there three or four times.

In this manuscript, even more landmines. There's actually a place where "find and replace" did not work. It worked every other time for exactly the same change, but on these three pages, it didn't. See?

As a result, someone's name is changed, and what appears to be a new character just pops out of nowhere. For a page or two. All the Berlands got changed to Spofford. All except these.

We are trying to figure out what to do. Since early-early arcs are already being printed.

But onward. I am honestly reading this with a finger pointing to every word as I go by, because--and this may be a good thing--it's so much fun to read the story that it is tempting just to read fast to see what happens. Even though I know what happens. And there are moments, I will admit to you my dear friends, when I think wow, this is pretty darn good :-) and then I find yet another typo, or another place where I use the same word a zillion times or where there's a word that's an artifact, or a punctuation mark out of nowhere.

My dear Dad (a well-published non-fiction writer and career diplomat) used to tell me: “There’s always another typo.” True, Dad. Ture.

TRUST ME—a standalone, love that--comes out next August, so you’ll get to wait a while before I bug you to pre-order. And they are working on the cover now. So excited about that.

The first three chapters of TRUST ME are in the back of the paperback of SAY NO MORE, and that is really amazing to see.

Here's a tiny bit more… just for you.

Tell me if you find any typos.

Reds and readers, do you see many typos in the books you read?

                                                       Chapter 4

It’s not like I can’t leave the house. I do it when I need to. Even drive. But when I do I can’t avoid seeing the driveway, and our street, and that tree.  Four hundred and forty two days ago they took away the crumpled car. Took away my family, too. When I’m out in public, I can’t avoid people asking if I’m okay. I’m not. Of course I’m not.

           But now, alone at my desk and ready to write, I can focus on another little girl. Thanks to the relentless coverage, I’ve compiled a gold mine of material. Interviews. Photographs. Video from local and national news. Katherine had dropped off a stack of  revealing documents, including the Dayton police reports and inside investigative stuff her sources gave her, so now I’ll devour that, too. I’ll double-check the facts when I can. It’ll feel real, all right.

Instead of using today’s opening statements, I’ll open the book with an inside look at Ashlyn Bryant’s parents. A personal take on their then-missing granddaughter. After a chapter or two of build-up, I’ll do Day One of the trial.

It’s tricky.

The order of the book, chronological from beginning to end, won’t follow the actual order of the trial, which will go witness to witness. Two stories underway at once. Mine, and Ashlyn’s.

Two weeks after the verdict, Ashlyn Bryant will be sentenced.  As soon as the judge sends her away for life, the publisher wants my book ready to go. That means the two weeks between verdict and sentencing will be a writing marathon. And of course, I’ll have to add the ending.

            Ending? She killed her own daughter! My brain almost screams at me. While you were burying yours. 

             It had almost confused me, if I could have been any more confused fourteen months ago, when news broke that they’d found the body of a little girl on the beach. June--sunny, and sadistically gorgeous--and I had just managed to walk out of Dex and Sophie’s funeral. With everything else going on, Dex’s mom had tried to keep the story from me, best she could. Someone at the cemetery, I forget who, actually told me about Baby Boston. Of course back then, no one knew who she really was.

          Well, Ashlyn did.

          I look at my almost-blank laptop screen. I delete, letter by letter, “DAY ONE.”. I replace it by typing something else in the manuscript. The title I just thought of.

                                               LITTLE GIRL LOST

Where was their Tasha Nicole?

Sun-battered and dry as only western Ohio can be, Dayton was breathtakingly hot that summer day. Inside their modest Laughtry Drive split-level in a beige and concrete suburb, the little girl’s grandparents, Tom and Georgia Bryant, were telling a story that made no sense. 

Georgia--pale lipstick, a hint of brown eye shadow and wearing a sleeveless top studded with tiny pink pearls--was a devoted homemaker. Solicitous and insistently helpful.  She looked too young to be a grandmother. Tom, a retired insurance adjustor gone gray, sat silently on the gold damask couch, stiff-backed in shorts and a knit polo shirt, a glass of iced tea sweating in his hand. 

Georgia’s words tumbled out, as if she couldn’t reveal the mystifying information about their daughter Ashlyn quickly enough. Ashlyn Louise, their only child.  “I’ll start at the beginning,” she said to a reporter.