Second proofing comments input...

This worked out well. Going through the text just focusing on the comments and notes I got, I managed to add 400+ words and 3 pages to the length of the book. It's closing in on 137,000. I was pointed to a couple of spots where I got so lost in being true to Brendan's thoughts and vernacular, I forgot to make it clear what was going on. That's exactly what I needed.

I've also focused on making a few things consistent -- like one character's name. He's introduced as Brian and snaps "Boru, to youse," as a way to identify himself. So the guys refer to him as Brian Boru-to-youse from that point on, whenever they see him. It becomes a bit of a joke. Only I wasn't consistent with it. Sometimes no hyphens. Sometimes just you. Sometimes capitalized. So I worked that out.

And I decided to use dashes in a slightly different manner from what I've done, grammatically. When Brendan's stuttering in his dialogue, I'm using a single dash -- I-I-I kind of thing, or you-you. I'd been using ellipses there. Then I'm doing the em-dash at the end of sentences when someone is cut off, without spaces around them. Like "But you said—" And when it's a thought breaking into a sentence doing the em-dash with spaces before and after. Then Ma got a look on her face — not that Eamonn would have understood what it meant — but she smiled instead of scowled.

All of which may actually be proper English grammar, but it's been years since I read Strunk & White's Elements of Style so can't remember and don't really care. What matters is it's easy to comprehend what's being said. It's rather nice to be at the point where I'm more worried about proper grammar than I am about the meat of the story.

What's most illuminating is how I found a couple more typos they missed. I've got one more round of feedback I'm waiting for, and I'm sure this last one will find things I didn't see and the first two missed, but that's how it is. I've seen typos in books put out by major publishers, and it used to not be uncommon for books to be bound with a little erratum note explaining there's a misspelled or missing word on page 204, with the correction.

It's been said the best way to find a typo in a book is for it to go through the editing process, then proofing, then printing a galley, then more proofing, then getting printed and shipped to stores, where you go in, pick up a copy, open it to a random page...and see you've used it's instead of its.

What can you say? Nobody's perfect.