Don't forget, you have until Friday to leave a comment on Kris Bock's post and be entered in the drawing for her books, so scroll down. Also, in conjunction with my generous donor of copies of What's in a Name? I'm extending my donation until Sunday, so there's still time to help cancer research. Buy links here.Late Tuesday afternoon, I got my first round edits from my new Five Star editor, for ROOTED IN DANGER, my 3rd Blackthorne, Inc. novel. So, it’s back to editing. And back to Track Changes.
First step was to go through all the ‘insertion/deletion’ points, which were virtually all things like punctuation. I did notice that she’s a ‘sparing use of comma’ person, whereas I tend to use them more liberally. Those are easy enough to accept. Then I read through her comments and dealt with the easy ones first. I like her eye—she pointed out several places where I’d used the same word more than once in a brief passage, or was inconsistent with usage, such as having both R&R and R and R in the manuscript. My heroine came from money, and I’d referenced the “Society Pages” in the manuscript. My editor questioned their existence, and I had to stop and poke around a bit, to see if newspapers still reported on the social scene. They do, but it meant a bit of tweaking to get the wording more up to date.In several places, she thought a word or phrase I’d chosen didn’t suit the character or situation, but she merely pointed that out, and didn’t suggest more appropriate wording.
NOTE: all copies have been claimed. But don't stop -- there's a lot about the Rule of Three below. 
Yesterday's post mentioned my donating a percentage of my sales to Team In Training to honor mothers and my daughter's efforts (and she's training for an ironman, so her efforts are considerably more than simply asking for donations!) to help raise money for blood cancer research. One reader, who wishes to remain anonymous, bought 20 copies of What's in a Name? She kept one for herself, but asked that I donate the rest.If you'd like a copy of this e-book, simply email me, with What's in a Name Giveaway in the subject line, and tell me what format you'd like. If you have a Kindle, I will gift you a copy. If you prefer to shop via Smashwords, I'll give you a free coupon. If you want an e-pub format, I can send one your way.First nineteen responders will get the book. 
As for writing. I've started another manuscript. In anticipation of getting rights back to two of my books, I've decided to write a third. There's something about the 'rule of three' that seems ingrained in us as human beings, from Three Little Pigs, the Three Stooges, to the Third Time's the Charm. (Did you notice the use of three examples?)Repetition helps readers remember. Things presented in threes just seem to stick with us: Faith, Hope. and Charity. Winken, Blinken, and Nod. Blood, Sweat and Tears. Stop, Look and Listen. Stop, Drop and Roll. How many more can you name? Dozens, at least, I'm sure.
We're now in the midst of Hanukkah, and this one's unusual in that it's not only the two of us. We're in Colorado, first, to celebrate our grandson's second birthday. And, as long as we were going to travel, we decided to do some preliminary relocation scouting.It just so happened that our visit coincides with Hanukkah, and so we actually have family around. Or, rather, family has us around. With everyone scattered, and with a holiday that gets little recognition from employers as being worthy of time off, we don't usually have the opportunity to celebrate face to face. Our kids are grown, and we've long since cut back our gift exchanging to immediate family, and even then, we rarely go all out. We've reached a point where "it's the thought that counts" much more than a tangible gift. But because we were going to see two of our kids, and it was going to be during the holiday, I asked if they had any special wishes. My daughter-in-law suggested a donation to her favorite charity. We decided that was an excellent idea, and that is what we're giving to our kids this year. Donations in their names. To me, that's the true spirit of giving. (And the fact that you don't have to hit the malls doesn't hurt either.)Be sure to come back tomorrow when my guest, Mary Ricksen relates a tale about how she saved her dog's life by refusing to give up.
What I'm reading: Broken Prey, by John Sandford. Yesterday, we spent our usual Sunday morning at Panera with friends. We were talking about getting rid of "stuff", and what we were finding as we went through our "stuff" and the conversation segued to "I remember when…" 
Both the men are scientists, and they were discussing the advent of the calculator that could do simple math. Now, how many people can do any sort of math, much less complex calculations, without a calculator. But then, a small machine that could extract a square root was a marvel. We came from the slide rule days. Anyone else remember those 8-foot slide rules mounted above the chalk board in math class? 
I can still see Miss Rose marching back and forth in a Vanna White manner as she moved the slide and the hairline gizmo and showed us how to multiply, divide, and find things like sines, cosines, and logarithms. I still remember looking those up on tables in a book. I think math homework took a lot longer in those days.Keep Reading...
And phones. Leonard Nimoy tells a story of being on a street corner when his phone rang. He pulled it from his pocket, flipped it open to answer, and passersby pointed, saying, "Beam me up, Scotty." Or what about Uhura's earpiece – Bluetooth?
Or television sets. Our first television was housed in a piece of furniture, although the screen itself was probably no more than twelve inches across (and not square.) It was powered by tubes, and repairmen were called out to replace them as they burned out.
Another memory – lettering charts. No Powerpoint in those days. They used rapdiograph pens and Leroy lettering sets to label their charts. As a matter of fact, our son owes his name to one long session where my husband was creating graphs. The X axis was months of the year, and hubby was abbreviating, using only the first letter of each month, on countless graphs. He came home that day and said, "If it's a boy (another 'good old days' thing—no ultrasound, You didn't know what you were going to get until birth day), we're going to name it Jason, because I've been writing it all day.
July August September October November.
I've got another pickup scheduled for Friday, this one by the Salvation Army. And I've "freecycled" my sewing machine, and a modest collection of LP records from the 60's. While it's true that one of those records might have some value, I opted to let someone else discover the possible treasure. They were all very well-worn. Nothing pristine, and we don't even have a turntable anymore. We'd copied most of them to cassette tapes, and now have them on CD or on our iPods. Not worth moving.
But yes, there's always the possibility that we're giving away something that would have been worth the trouble of researching value, advertising, shipping to a buyer. My father got rid of my brother's Lionel train set, and there was a run on them after they stopped making them. We let our kids play with their Barbies and Star Wars toys. Probably the biggest "oops" was when my folks tossed two pictures they'd had framed and hung in our childhood bedroom. They were freebies—a gift from a friend who was an artist, and he worked for Walt Disney creating animation cells. We had a picture of Pluto and Donald Duck that were original cells, and probably would be worth a pretty penny today.
My lazy streak says it's easier to type a one line header on an email and wait for someone to come take it away. Today I've gotten rid of a sewing machine that hasn't been touched in over 15 years, two Reebok slides leftover from a short-lived exercise fad, an ice cream freezer not used since the kids left home, and a box of cookbooks and recipes that haven't been used in at least a decade. I have enough recipes in the collection I'm keeping that if I wanted, I could have something different every day for the rest of my life. But I won't—we have our normal favorite meals, and although I try new stuff from time to time, I've found that reading cookbooks or even watching cooking shows, something I did endlessly years ago, merely results in spending too much time thinking about food, which leads to too much eating, which means I have to either spend more time at the Y or give up chocolate.
So, what do you remember from your personal 'good old days'?
Tomorrow, my guest is author Catherine Kean talking about dealing with her muse. Be sure to come back. She's giving away an autographed copy of one of her books – winner's choice – to one lucky commenter.
And don't forget my May contest. I'm finding all sorts of items to put into the prize package – and who knows. Maybe someday one of them will be a priceless collectible.
First step was to go through all the ‘insertion/deletion’ points, which were virtually all things like punctuation. I did notice that she’s a ‘sparing use of comma’ person, whereas I tend to use them more liberally. Those are easy enough to accept. 
