For those of you who like beach reads during the summer, I’m offering Finding Love in Seaside as a free download. It’s a prequel novella to my Resort to Love Series. Click here to download.
The downside to having entire the series now available as one download on Amazon is that readers often speed read through it and notice a certain mistake I made. Let me explain…
See, the series follows the love stories of five brothers, but I didn’t originally intend to write all five love stories. I wrote the middle brother first. Love Finds You in Sun Valley came out in 2010. Five years later I wrote sequels for the younger brothers. It wasn’t until after those released that readers wanted more, so I went back and wrote stories for the older brothers. Enter my OOPS.
Finding Love in Eureka is the second oldest brother’s story, but I wrote it last. I didn’t remember that when I wrote Sun Valley years before, it briefly mentions how Matt married his high school sweetheart. Anyone who reads the books chronologically reads about Matt meeting Gen (who was not his high school sweetheart), then they read the next book and get totally tripped up by that one little line. None of my editors or I caught this because it had been so many years between books.
It’s similar to how the TV show Friends gave Rachel Green’s character two different birthdays. It happens to the best of us. Or that’s what I like to tell myself anyway.
In fact, I asked other authors to share their oopses with us, so I don’t feel so alone. They’re actually kind of fun. Here we go…
“I have a typo that says this guy is talented at fixing cats. The word should be cars.” –Sarah Monzon
“I put my dad’s name as a placeholder for my heroine’s dad’s name until I found a better one. After a while, I just got used to seeing the name there and totally forgot that it was a placeholder until I was reading the final edits for the book before it was published, which by that time, it was too late to change. So my heroine’s dad’s name is accidentally MY dad’s name. Totally not intentional.” –Krista Phillips
“I have in a published book, something like, the pilgrims landed in America in 1492, right? The other character replies, Right. Ahem, that’s Christopher Columbus. The Pilgrims landed in 1620. I wrote that. I revised multiple times and didn’t catch it. My editor revised and sent corrections and she missed it. Then I made those corrections and missed it. Then the editor and I both did a final read-through and missed it. Then it arrived, all printed and published in the mail. I sat down and read it and AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!! Now after missing it that many times, why couldn’t I have missed it just once more?” –Mary Connealy
“My husband is reading my manuscript and asks me, ‘did they have trucks in the 1860s?’ I roll my eyes and reply, ‘of course not.’ He points at the page. ‘Then why does this kid have a wooden truck?'” –Stephenia McGee
“I once had a seagull with talons show up in a book. I don’t know how it made it through all of the edits, and I knew better than to describe a seagull that way, so I don’t know how it got there but there it is for all eternity. Agh!” –Bonnie Leon
“In my first book, Summer Plans and Other Disasters, the main character’s last name is Stevens. It’s been out since 2018. I JUST noticed that in chapter four I spelled her last name Stephens and the only way I know is because my narrator said Stef-ens instead of Stee-vens. NO ONE has noticed it or pointed it out (including the publisher, my editor there, the proofreader, or any readers).” –Karin Beery
“A reader said, ‘what kind of book is this supposed to be? Check page___, paragraph _,’ The word was supposed to be gentle but I had written genital instead.” –Melissa Wardwell
“I found this one in proof edits, thankfully, so it didn’t make it to readers’ copies. But there’s a big difference between a gentleman who shows up ‘neatly dressed’ vs. ‘nearly dressed.'” –Karen Barnett
“I had a reader let me know that I gave someone four children in one book and three in another.” –Connilyn Cossette
We try so hard for you guys, but occasionally an oops gets through. Thankfully I did get my mistake corrected in the audio book for Finding Love in Sun Valley. I’d like to think that there will be no typos in heaven, but on earth, we are always going to have oopses.
What’s the funniest/worst oops you’ve found in a book? (Please leave off title and author because I’m not trying to shame anyone, just trying to make myself feel better about silly mistake.)
Angela Ruth Strong survived breast cancer, works as a flight attendant, and uses her own crazy life experiences as inspiration for the stories she writes. Her books have earned TOP PICK in Romantic Times, been nominated for a Christy, won the Cascade Award, and become Amazon bestsellers. She and her husband also got to play extras when her novel Finding Love in Big Sky was adapted for film. To help aspiring authors, Angela started IDAhope Writers where she lives in Idaho.
I cannot tell you how many times I type “to” when I mean “too”. And then I won’t catch it even after multiple readings. I’ve only written one novel so I haven’t had to deal with continuity problems. I’ve also been slow and pedantic about self-editing and rereading to catch the PUGS. One thing I had was to go back and change a character’s last name after many chapters of writing because it took that long to realize that his name was so similar to the main character’s name that it caused confusion.
If it’s any consolation, I’ve read the whole Resort series (and *really* enjoyed it) and I don’t remember catching that oopsie. Very often I will just chuckle or shake my head over something like that and move on. The story just overpowers the majority of the slips.
It makes me think of the Jewish preparation for Passover. They will clean and scrub the whole house to get rid of all the leaven. Then, at the end of the process, they declare that if any leaven remains, it shall be as though it was not there. In other words, do your best. If there’s a problem, God should worry about it. It’s His kingdom.
The funnies ones are things out of their time. Electronics tend to creep in way earlier then they should.
I read a historical books set in Australia with Far North Queensland 2 hours drive from Sydney. Even today its closer to 24 hours drive.
Another was a historical in England (a friend mentioned this on a review I wrote after she read it) They mentioned having tea and at the time period tea hadn’t been introduced to England.
I can’t tell you how much I loved reading all this! In my first book, my MC went away on a trip to an island resort. Midway through writing, I had her decide to leave her cell phone at home. Of course…later in the book on the island, she pulled out her cell phone. No one caught it but we were able to correct after a reader pointed it out (ugh).
I love that we’re all flawed, but can still strive for perfection and give grace when we miss the mark!
I proofread for some authors, and some of the funniest I’ve seen is using the wrong word for a description, which really changes the sentence! The most annoying for me is getting the character’s names mixed up. The absolute worst error I’ve ever seen was in a book that was traditionally published where they totally changed Veterans Day! You can NOT change a major holiday! I still haven’t figured out how that happened!
Hi, the only thing I have found is using like the word to for two, and I sure didn’t mind it because things like that happen and that is fine with me, I for sure make a lot of mistakes, but that is the real life. Thank you for sharing this , I enjoyed reading it. Have a great rest of the week and stay safe. God bless you and your family.
I’m so glad you didn’t catch my oops! I do the to/too thing sometimes to. ;-) Since chemo I’ve really been struggling with question marks for some reason. Keep up the good work! The world needs more male romance writers.
This is why I don’t write historical! I have enough trouble getting my own era accurate. LOL
Ack! That sounds like something I would do. I had a river flowing the wrong direction once. Now I have PTSD when it comes to writing rivers.
Ugh! Yes, it’s nice to hear that we’re not alone with our oopses, huh?
Did they mean Memorial Day or Labor Day?
Thank you! And thank you for being such a gracious reader. <3 Wishing you a lovely day two. (See what I did there?) ;-)
In one of my Love Inspired books, Falling for the Millionaire, I have the heroine getting a ride to work with a neighbor during a snowstorm. Then at the end of her work day, she gets in her car to drive home. No one caught that, me, line editor, copy editor, or proofreaders, but a reader did. I’ve requested to get the rights back for that book, and I hope to correct the error. I should know in a few weeks whether I get my rights back.
No, they kept planning for Veteran’s Day, but moved it about two weeks early! Which also meant they moved Halloween, which I didn’t care about, but Veterans Day you don’t mess with!
Don’t worry, it happens to all of us. I was reading a book once where the main character was being spoken about but they had the wrong name for the character. Then in the next sentence when he was mentioned it was the correct name.
They didn’t just skip to it? I am perplexed!
Oh no! You must have had them all really sucked into the story. Good luck getting your rights back. <3
I think I’m guilty of this too… *hangs head in shame*
No! Which is a big part of why I was upset! Plus, this author makes a big todo over how much she likes participate in things for Veterans, so I was really irritated that she messed up Veteran’s Day! I’ll admit I also emailed the publisher because that wasn’t the only mistake in the book, and they blew the whole thing off. I read a few more of her books, though.
I cannot think of one atm that happened..maybe a missing word or something.
You know, I am not sure that I remember any oops. If I see anything, I just let it go and keep reading. We are all human and mistakes will be made this side of heaven. God bless.
Hi Erin!!~!
One that trips me up constantly is trail and trial. I follow a LOT of trails in my westerns. Not so many trials. But it ends up trials a LOT. I’m paranoid and think I’ve caught it most times.
I will be looking for this on your books from now on! 😂
That’s nice actually.
I appreciate that!
Ha! It’s nice to know we all have our kryptonite!
Ha! It’s nice to know we all have our kryptonite!
on one page she was drinking a coke and on the next page–same scene–she was drinking an iced tea.
Some things I wouldn’t pick up but so many of the facts were so wrong. I have read other books set here before the internet without fact checking and you get use to it. I was so happy to read Robin Jones Gunn’s Sisterchicks downunder set in NZ and Australia and she wrote it from an American visiting the area so made it so much better like tasting vegemite for the first time and different things like chocolate Fish which are marshmallow fish with chocolate and yummy. She didn’t try to be an aussie or Kiwi she did it as a tourist. It works much better that way.
It happens. Lol
I’ve seen a lot of oopsies … 😁 some were funny, I can’t remember anything in particular but the latest one was the mix up with the body of water…it was a river, which became a lake later in the book.
These are hilarious!
I recently read a book that described Belgium as a landlocked country in Europe. Oops! It really bothered me since I know it has a coastline.