Last week my publisher e-mailed me the proofs for my upcoming book, The Declaration of Independence from A to Z. I was blown away by how awesome the pictures were. It will be a spectacular book when done, and it’s coming out in hardback! Wow!

After I calmed down from the excitement of seeing how my book is supposed to look, I seriously set about reading through the text to find any errors. I read it through once, then read through it again to make sure I hadn’t missed anything.

That’s when I noticed something. No, this couldn’t be right. I pulled out a copy of the Declaration and compared a line from the proof to the one in the document. It was wrong! But did I make this mistake? I checked my manuscript. Yes, it was my fault. I had inadvertently misquoted a vital line from the Declaration.

Normally this wouldn’t be a problem, but the artist had incorporated my quote in his artwork. So my mistake had become his as well. The proofs check the text, from what I understand, not the art, so I was stressed. This was a crucial line and I had blown it. I sent off an e-mail that night and had a very restless sleep as I worried about the situation.

Thankfully, I didn’t need to worry. My contact at the publishing house felt it could be fixed. And I had even some interaction with the illustrator who told me if it couldn’t be done in house, then he could fix it. Yeah! The problem was easily resolved within a few hours.

No one told me how nerve-wracking getting a book published would be. There are so many situations that are new to me, so normal problems seem magnified in my eyes. But thankfully, with much prayer, I got through this problem and things are moving ahead. I’ll post the release date as soon as I get it.

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