Coming off nights, I'm writing this before I go to bed - the one good thing about nightshifts is that I get to drive home to go to bed while the normal people are trudging through the rain to get to work.

The draft manuscript for the sequel to Blood, Sweat and Tea has been emailed to my publisher. More news on this as it comes.

Monday's question for you is this -

If everyone has the ability to write a book - what is the first sentence of your book?

When I emailed in my draft manuscript I also posted a little note for the copy editor - I include it here the for comedic value of all the 'gotchas' that I am blissfully ignorant of.

Note for copy editors –
Just some notes to help guide you and alert you to some of the horrific liberties I take with the English language
The [[text like this]] is formatting instructions, not me having some sort of conniption. It’s text that should be rendered in a fashion that makes it obvious that it’s a later comment on the previous post.
I’m particularly poor at getting lying/laying right, sorry about that. Normally I write myself around using these words but I may have missed a few.
Also ‘was’ and ‘were’.
And ‘which’ and ‘that’. I wish I’d paid attention in school.
I like hyphens, en-dash or em-dash, I can’t seem to get enough of them – if possible I’d like them left in as they are part of my ‘voice’ even though I know that it’s not necessarily decent grammar.
I also like ellipsis… (Which I type as three full stops, Word may have changed them into the correct character – I have no idea).
Commas followed by propositions, but sometimes I can’t help myself.
I’ve probably missed a few chances to press my semi-colon button on the keyboard. I like semi-colons but I’m a bit daft about when to use them.
I try to avoid jargon, but sometimes I can’t help myself. If you want to change EMT to E.M.T. go ahead but ORCON isn’t an acronym and so should remain as it is.
Keep an eye out for ‘ and “ I’ve possibly mixed them up – sorry. I’m also a terror for missing or adding incorrect possessive apostrophes, blame my comprehensive school education.
I use newlines and double newlines for timing, I don’t know if layout is part of your purview but some of these double newlines are intended – please bear this in mind if you change some of them (and no doubt some of them are in there by mistake)
Thank you very much for putting yourself through the trauma of trying to beat this manuscript into shape, it’s very much appreciated.

I now have a week off work which means plenty of chance for me to get some of my other projects up and running, as well as a chance to do some administration on this site.

But first... sleep.