Monday afternoon, I got the first edits for the second of my short stories for the upcoming anthology. Publication has been delayed well over a year, so I wanted to try to get them finished before I left for a visit to my parents in LA on Thursday morning, and hoped the edits wouldn't be extensive. The story is only about 9,000 words, so it's nothing like having to turn around edits for a novel.
I found that the editor didn't ask for any revisions, so all I had to deal with was either agreeing or disagreeing with her changes. For the most part, they were technical or style things. Dashes, commas, and some differences in dialogue tagging. Nothing major and nothing I didn't agree with. But (there's always a but, right?) She did change a few words, and I really didn't agree with them. Really, really didn't agree. And, if you follow my Facebook page, you might have seen some of the discussion yesterday.
The story is a police procedural, told in first person by a seasoned homicide detective. Those of you who have been reading my blog for a while know that I researched all my cop stuff for all my books, and I talked to a variety of law enforcement officers. One of my first crit partners had been married to a cop for 20 years. I even had a cop read my story, and after making a few suggestions as to procedure, he proclaimed it "right."
So, this is my opening paragraph:
