Last week my husband and I went on a week-long cruise in Mexico. And yes, I realize how very lucky I am to have had this chance. Beautiful port cities, food and drinks on demand, and lots and lots of relaxing (I love napping on a ship!). But take a look at this:

You see, we did a half-day walking tour of Mazatlan (which I loved). And although I diligently applied sunscreen beforehand, I forgot about my feet, which hadn’t seen sunlight for months. This was the result.

I’ve decided this makes a good metaphor for one aspect of writing: no matter how carefully you cover your bases, errors still slip through. Even when a manuscript passes through several rounds of editing.

One of my most common mistakes is mixing up character names. This shouldn’t be a surprise since I also mix up my kids’ names. Not that long ago my cat was doing something naughty and I yelled at her using my younger daughter’s name (Younger Daughter was not amused). Usually my editors catch these mistakes, but in a book that contains maybe 80,000 or more words, one or two name mixups may remain.

Sometimes the errors can be obscure factual problems. For instance, I have a novella set in coastal Oregon in the 195os. In my manuscript, I referred to Lincoln City, a place I’ve visited many times. The story was almost ready to release when I suddenly remembered that Lincoln City used to be five separate towns that were united in 1965 into one. In the 50s, the location I was referring to was actually Taft, Oregon. None of my editors could be expected to be aware of this oddity–like me, most of them weren’t even born in 1965, and none were from that region. But I bet if I hadn’t fixed this at the last minute, at least one reader would have caught it!

So what does an author do when she discovers she’s made a mistake? Sometimes it’s fixable. But sometimes, as with my sunburn, the damage is done, and she just has to be more careful next time. The day after Mazatlan, we did a walking tour in Puerto Vallarta–and that time I remembered to sunscreen my feet!

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Kim Fielding is the bestselling author of numerous m/m romance novels, novellas, and short stories. Like Kim herself, her work is eclectic, spanning genres such as contemporary, fantasy, paranormal, and historical. Her stories are set in alternate worlds, in 15th century Bosnia, in modern-day Oregon. Her heroes are hipster architect werewolves, housekeepers, maimed giants, and conflicted graduate students. They’re usually flawed, they often encounter terrible obstacles, but they always find love.

After having migrated back and forth across the western two-thirds of the United States, Kim calls the boring part of California home. She lives there with her family and her day job as a university professor, but escapes as often as possible via car, train, plane, or boat. This may explain why her characters often seem to be in transit as well. She dreams of traveling and writing full-time.

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