One Percent Of ????

I’ve spent the last week working mostly on copy-edited manuscript and page proofs. The copy-edited manuscript was easy. The editor and copy editor both asked for only a few changes. This is the kind of manuscript I don’t mind coming back. The page proofs were harder. By this time you’ve been back over the story enough times the eyes miss things because you know how the story should go, so you have to do a slow, close read. I’m not the greatest at catching typos, anyway. This particular book happened to have more typos than usual. For some reason someone along the way replaced “killer” with “packhorse”. I’m not sure how that happened, but I sure do hope I caught all of them. Yep, just imagine having a packhorse sneaking up behind you . . .

On the family front it’s been a relatively easy week other than I did get a frantic phone call from my father. I was there just the day before and it is very unusual for him to call. My father is hard of hearing and has always had my mother do all the calling. Now that my mother has Alzheimer’s, he has had to learn to do a lot of things. They had gotten a letter from Medicare about the prescription drug program my mother was signed up with. As it turns out she was signed in late and there is a penalty for this. He had it in his head they had done something wrong and that they were going to get in trouble, possibly even go to jail. A few phone calls and a couple of connections to the Internet cleared things up. Since she didn’t have prescription drug insurance before signing up late with Medicare, she has to pay 1% of the national average prescription insurance bill for the seven months she was late. The penalty came out to $20-$25, and no one is going to jail. Actually calling the number on the letter only came up with the information that she had to pay 1%. They didn’t know what that percent came off of. It took searching on the Internet to find the answers. I wonder how any of the typical non-computer-savvy elderly find out anything. I swear the government did their best to make the drug program as difficult as possible.

The actual writing is coming along. At this time I’m working on a new mystery series for Kensington set in Atlanta, Georgia. This book is in first person, which is a total change for me.