Have you ever had a crazy day when everything went wrong? When you had a dozen things to do, but then disruptions began to pile up, and the clock was ticking, ticking, ticking…

Sometimes, I find myself humming to an old song with lyrics similar to what my own mother used to say in jest.

Crazy days happen often enough in my daily life, because I have a tendency to write long to-do lists and then find that most of the tasks take longer than expected. That, I can work around. But when it comes to book deadlines, the stress is real.

This past week I needed to do a final proofing of DEADLY BETRAYAL, a new Christian Romantic Suspense book being released on November 14th. CLICK HERE to see it on Amazon and to buy on sale during its release day!

Yes, I should have had this all completed much earlier. And I thought I had. The book had been finished, then edited, and re-edited under five sets of eyes. Five! A main editor, a line editor, a copy editor, a final proofing editor at the very end, and me (again).

The content was all mine, of course, but editorial steps take care of things like inconsistencies, timeline problems, and even missing words in a sentence. How easy it is to think about a two or three-word while typing, yet not actually get it typed!

So just before submitting DEADLY BETRAYAL, I took one last, painstaking trip through the manuscript again, line by line. It all looked good. I set it aside for a day, then went through it again, and found an error! A comma instead of a period that had eluded us all. I fixed it, double-checked, and now the book is on Amazon. I am so relieved to have it done!

When you think of writers who are writing the books you like to read, it might seem like it’s easy for them: they just need to dream up a plot and characters and then it will all fall into place, right? But it’s actually a lot of work, even after the last page is written.

But my author friends and I do it because we love the joy of writing, and love sharing our stories with readers.

Have you had any crazy days when everything just piled up and drove you crazy? Leave a comment, and you will be in a drawing for a free Kindle copy of DEADLY NOEL (a book in the same DEA Special Agents series as DEADLY BETRAYAL.)

Best wishes and a Happy Thanksgiving to you all!

Roxanne Rustand
USA TODAY Bestselling Author