Gremlins

 

There is no explanation for it, other than gremlins, but a certain phrase keeps disappearing, then popping up in my novel's manuscript in the strangest of places. I'm not sure how, since that phrase has a specific spot where it belongs, and only that spot. I'm here to report, however, that this is still happening, and it's really messing with the uploaded versions of my book...as well as with my mind.

The first time I caught it was when I was playing around with Spoken Studio's audio narration. Just for fun I uploaded my manuscript to see how its AI narrators would handle my story. As I was listening to the playback, I noticed that one sentence ended abruptly: "Next door was a log-hewn edifice." 

Oh. Well, that's informative...

That's not like me, I thought. So, sure enough, I went back to my manuscript and found that an entire follow-up sentence was missing. Damn. This required me, of course, to fix it, then re-upload my manuscript for both the ebook and the paperback. 

Well, guess what? Yesterday I found it! It was tucked nonsensically into another part of the story. And when I say nonsensically, yea. The sentence read like this: "I nodded and feigned ignorance about the inner workings of traveling bar bands. a musky odor of nicotine infused cedar." 

Because I had nothing going on yesterday, I decided to read through the flipbook I'd added to my author site. And there it was! How many copies had gone out that way? Well, luckily, only a few, but that was a few too many.

Fixing it required pulling up the Kindle Create file and correcting that, then opening my paperback template and fixing it, then re-uploading both versions again and waiting. I also had to delete my flipbook and start all over with a new one and figure out where to stick the embed code for it on my website (hate that!)  But wait ~ it gets worse. After I uploaded the paperback template, I realized I'd picked the non-corrected version, so that required waiting for approval of the wrong version, which took almost 24 hours, then uploading once again. (I'm still waiting for final final approval.) KDP isn't the only one who thinks I must be nuts; trust me.

What all this boils down to is, no matter how sure you are that everything is perfect, absolutely perfect, do not trust yourself! I both read through the manuscript and listened to the text-to-voice playback multiple times. Everything was great. No, the screw-up occurred somewhere in the final formatting. I have no idea how. I still say, gremlins. They're out to get me and foil my dreams of riches. 

Bastards.