Editing ruined me.

Since this is such a busy month publishing-wise for me, I was starting to feel as if I had been doing nothing but overloading my blog with promotional stuff lately. Buy this, buy that, buy...ack. Enough. But then I thought, that's kind of why I have a blog, and visitors probably expect it since it IS an author's blog and everything.

Still...even I'm kind of getting tired of hearing about all the new books to buy and sale items available in Linda Kage land, so...I'm not going to talk about how next week starts a new review tour for two of my stories over at Tasty Book Tours...no.  I will not.

Let's talk about... 

Chocolate.

Yeah. Chocolate is wonderful. Tastes great, makes me happy. Wish I had some. Man, I don't have any chocolate.  Now I want chocolate. Ugh.

New topic. How about editing?

I was reading this story that other day, and some things in it began to annoy me. These things never used to annoy me. In fact, I probably never would've noticed them if I'd never had a critique partner, or never had a story edited, or never read a self-help writing book. But I have, and these issues have been drummed into my head as do-no-do's. And now I'm ruined. Ruined! If I see them in a story these days, I'm all like, "ummmmm, that author wasn't supposed to do that. I'm gonna tell my editor."

You know exactly what I'm talking about, don't you?  For example:

Instead of:
I felt myself lose my temper.
You're supposed to say:
I lost my temper.

The "felt" word was all over this story I just read, and since I've been told repeatedly to use "feel" as little as possible, it started to irritate me when I read "I felt myself" do all kinds of things four times in one paragraph. This didn't use to bother me. Heck, I probably wouldn't have even noticed it back when. But now I do, and it's miserable. I can't read some books without my internal editor clicking on. Damn you, proper-story-writing-etiquette.

Are there any editor-induced pet peeves you've accumulated since learning the "rules?" I think I have a couple.

--I freak when someone spells "to" when they need to use "too."
--Or "your" when it's actually "you're."
--"Laughed" and "smiled" are not supposed to be used as dialogue tags.
--Addressing a person by name in EVERY line is bad, mmm-kay?
--But when you do address them, at least put commas around their names! Geesh.

I know you have some to add!  Go ahead! It's fine!! (Even if it's how the overuse of exclamation points is taboo!!!!)

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I'm totally digging my PRICE OF A KISS countdown quotes that I'm posting at the bottom of every Tuesday blog, so I thought since it just released that I'd do teaser quotes for FIGHTING FATE on Fridays. It doesn't seem like cramming-my-story-down-your-throat promoting either, it's just fun. So, to celebrate the release week of FIGHTING FATE, here is my first quote to share.

If you've read the blurb for FIGHTING FATE, you might be wondering, "what kind of girl could possibly grow feelings for her brother's killer?" Well, here's a glimpse of just that type: