Neptune Salad - with a Little Erratum!

Those of you close to me know that I am putting the final touches to my book, Bumpy Road To Texas. Keith has been a fantastic editor, reading almost daily. We have been correctly formatting errors and well, I have to tell you, we have had to correct a few “Canadianisms”! Whoa, that might not be a word! 

In one place I talk about the Texas expression, “fixin’ to” and I thought I had it down quite well until Keith suggested that I spell “plow” the American way instead of “plough”. Now, I just looked the word up, and I think we would have been okay with “plough” but it would not have been worth our marriage to question it and I did not! 

You want a book about a Canadian in Texas, well, folks, for sure you have one! 

I am about one-quarter through reading – really reading it now – and I have to tell you that I can see first off that my writing eight to twelve years ago is different from how I write today. You might not see it, but I do. That’s all right. That’s also what the book is about: how I have changed since I got to Texas. 

We think you are going to like this story, but don’t let anybody tell you that writing a book is easy! 

One of the major differences for me is that I have to format it on the website myself. It sure is good that I know a little bit about computers! I say “a little bit” because no one is ever ahead when it comes to technology. We just learn one thing and how to operate it and it is time for a new version.

Speaking of this, in my book, I am describing how I was driving over to Cobourg from Port Hope, Ontario, Canada (20 minute drive) to take two computer courses. It was very tiring because I did them back to back with only a 15 minute break. 

So, I would call on – yes, yes, I actually had one – my cell phone and order a Neptune Salad from Dover Seafood House. By the time I would be passing there, it would be ready and I would take it home for a super treat! 

Well, there I was proofing that page when I noticed I left the lettuce out of the Neptune salad description! Now it’s just a description of what was in the Neptune Salad, but some of you readers sure would have noticed that there was no lettuce! 

Then, it crossed my mind that probably thirty years ago plus, often when you purchased a new book, there was a little piece of paper in there that was headed up “Erratum”. It had the name of the book and the pages and lines where there were errors. (I looked up “Erratum” and it simply means a printing or writing error.) 

You know, I don’t believe they do that any more! Hmm . . . we don’t make any errors these days . . . ?