The one thing that continually surprises me is how many writers are unfamiliar with computers--even the word processing software they use! Now granted, some of the things in Word that aren't accessed often are not easy to figure out, but we're talking simple stuff here like creating headers or getting word count. How can you spend hours on a computer every day writing and not know some of these things?

It's not only writers, I know that. I work with people who can't figure out how to do anything new on a computer unless you hold their hand through it. And my cousin, who has an MBA, emailed me to ask how to upload a photo to Facebook! What? Sigh.

Writers loops, though, can be even worse. There are people who can't figure out Blogger or WordPress. I'm not talking about something more complex like perhaps changing a theme or adding plug-ins. I mean they can't figure out how to schedule a post in advance. It's enough to make me weep. And knowing the smallest things about their websites? Forget about it!

It's not that I'm an expert. I'm not. There are things I don't know how to do because I've never had a need to learn them and other things I could be making better use of, but the basics of my programs? Those I know. And what I don't know, I make a point of learning.

One of the first things I did after selling was take a class on web design. I signed up for and finished HTML 1 and 2, CSS, and took a class on Paint Shop Pro so I could manage my graphics. I can't create my own graphics--a sad lack of artistic talent--but I can work with photos and do rudimentary images. I can update my site on my own, I can find things that are wrong and fix them, and if I have to, I can create new pages. Since I had my website redesigned by a professional, though, I let them make new pages because it saves me time.

A lot of the questions I see asked aren't only easy, but simply pulling down a few menus would show them how to do what they want to do. They don't pull down the menus and try things. I have a writer friend whose desktop computers are constantly being repaired and replaced because they die on her. (She's a self-confessed techno-dummy (her term, not mine.)) I've had one motherboard burn up and need to be replaced, but all my computers still run. They might be slow and old, but they work. I can only assume that it's how she uses them that causes all the issues because she's not buying inferior brands and the odds of always buying the lemon has to be low.

I think it's fear that holds a lot of people back on computers. They're afraid they'll mess something up and not be able to fix it. I'm nearly fearless. Which might not always be a good thing, but I always go with the supposition that if worse comes to worse, I can wipe the drive and reload everything. It's never reached that point. :-)

I think that statement just scared a few people. Hey, you should wipe your drive every year or two and reload. It'll get your machine running faster again, so in a worst-case scenario, it's only a short-term inconvenience. However, I will confess that I've only wiped my drive and reloaded once. It was just too much work to get all the files off and then put them back on again. In fact, some of the files never did make it back on that computer.

Anyway, writers, pull down menus and the help menu are your friends. Use them. Googling how to do something is another good alternative. There are even sites with free tutorials. Take advantage of them and get to know your software.

Shortly, I'll be putting my money where my mouth is.  I'm going from Office 2003 to 2007 and it's drastically different.  I have a pretty good idea that I'll end up frustrated and using the help menu frequently.  So maybe y'all will be having the last laugh when it's all said and done.

Summer is a really hard time for me to write. I'm not sure why. The days are longer which means I don't get tired as early and that should equal more writing time, right? Only in summer, I want to be outside. Maybe that's a Minnesota thing because our summers are so short and our cold weather goes on forever. But it's more than just a desire to be outdoors, my brain also seems to move more slowly in the heat.

I find this strange in these days of central air conditioning. And it's especially strange this summer since Minneapolis had a very mild, low-humidity season this year. Highly unusual and very comfortable, but my productivity remained at its usual summer speed--slow.

Fall, though, is another story. I'm productive in fall and get more done faster. Maybe it was bred into human genetics back when we were living in caves. We had to be productive in fall to survive winters where fields were barren and animals scarce. Or maybe it's a school-year thing. That was trained into us as children. Summer was for vacation and fun and fall was when we buckled down and got to work again.

What hits me hardest, though, is the time changes. I hate switching back and forth between standard time and daylight savings. Let's pick one option and stay on it year-round. I don't even care which one, just stop bouncing me between them. Right now, I'm struggling with the change back to standard time. I get sleepy at 7pm and have trouble keeping my eyes open. It's a good thing fall productivity is with me at this point, because if it wasn't, I'd be sleeping and not writing. :-)

Springing into DST, though, is worse. Much, much, much worse. I am literally a zombie for 2-3 weeks afterward. I hate it passionately, although I do love having daylight later at night. Writing until zombie-state passes is next to non-existent because my brain just doesn't work.

So writing-wise we are in my best time of year, but personally, I'm not a fan of fall because autumn means winter is coming and I hate snow and cold. I hate snow and cold at least as much as I hate switching to DST. :-) Winter, however, is a fairly productive time of year because there is nothing else to do except write, sleep, and try to stay warm. There is no good reason to ever go outside in Minnesota from Thanksgiving until Spring.

Thanks to Mike (@storylet on Twitter) for the topic.

Disclosure: I received a copy of Liquid Story Binder free from Giveaway of the Day about a year ago (maybe longer) and this is the version of the program I took out for a test drive. Last night, I went to the website and bought a license for this software because I wanted to be able to upgrade to the current version.

I've had a story in my head since the early 1990s. (Actually, it's a trilogy idea, but one story is more vibrant for me than the others.) In the last five or six years, I've played with it off and on, trying to put together a proposal for my agent. It's mostly been lingering in the recesses of my brain the past few years, but a couple of weeks ago, the characters started talking again. Loudly. And with their resurgence came a plotting epiphany. This flash struck me as cool beyond belief...and it scared the hell out of me because it will be very complicated to write. Apparently, I'm a masochist because I decided to give it a try anyway.

I immediately made a list of things I'd need to do in the books and terrified myself even more. I also had a realization: If I really planned to tackle this idea, I was going to need some kind of writer's organizational software to help me because there was no way my current method was going to work. Last Friday, I went in search of a program that could do what I needed.

Every program I tried was either free, had a free demo, or something I already had on my laptop, including one I had bought earlier based on other writers' recommendations. Some of them I tried for a matter of minutes before ruling them out, but I had very specific requirements.

My must-haves included: The ability to make notes and find them easily. The ability to create a timeline. The ability to use images within the program.

Most of the software I tried lost out when it came to images. I still gave them a whirl because if I absolutely had to, I could live without immediate access to my pictures, but none of them impressed me with their other attributes. After hours of downloading and testing, there was one clear winner for me. Liquid Story Binder. (I'll call it LSB from here on out.)

I've had LSB on my laptop for at least a year, easily. I'd opened it a few times, clicked a few things, and closed it again because it was intimidating. I'm very good with computers and software, at least for someone who isn't in the IT field. I subscribe to the motto: If all else fails read the instructions and I almost never do because I'm able to figure software out by playing around with it. That wasn't the case with LSB. This program has a very steep learning curve, and after working with it for hours over several days (including much of the day on Saturday), I still only know a fraction of what it's capable of doing. A series of video tutorials would really help, but a search of You Tube and a Google video search turned up nothing.

What does LSB offer? Among other things it lets the user create timelines, story boards, and I can upload images and create galleries from those images. This totally rocks for things like my heroine's home because I can open the gallery and all the pictures are lined up in rows. Need a closer look? Click on the image and it comes forward full size. It allows the user to upload a song or a playlist, a cool extra since all of my books get theme songs and I know a lot of authors create playlists to listen to as they write.

It's a word processing program (although I haven't tested this feature yet and don't know if I want to stop using my copy of WordPerfect), it allows notes and brainstorming. It has character dossiers with basic information, but it also gives the writer the ability to add data fields to the dossier. (If I wanted, I could add every question from my character sketch.) My favorite part of this feature, though, is that I can add an image and have my character's picture right along side their description.

There's more it can do, too, although I haven't explored these features yet. Right now, I'm trying to learn the ones I really need. Probably the most awesome thing about LSB, though, is the flexibility. I can't imagine any writer who can't make LSB work with the way they write--if they can get past the learning curve. (Did I mention it's steep?) I found a tutorial online that explains how to use the program if you're 1) a linear plotter, 2) a nonlinear plotter, 3) a linear pantser, 4) a nonlinear pantser. That's pretty much everyone, right? :-)

Anyway, after working with version 2.9 (the version I got free from Giveaway of the Day), I decided I wanted the latest build (they're up to 4.something) and I wanted to be able to move it to a new laptop since I'm only months away from replacing my current one. The Giveaway version wouldn't let me do either thing, so I bought my own license last night. (Liquid Story Binder is currently 50% off.)

Pros: Very customizable to any writer's style
Great features and lots of them
Can use only the features you want and ignore the rest

Cons: Steep learning curve
Not intuitive
Daunting at the start

I've tried a lot of writing software over the last five years or so because my organizational system isn't the best. I have notes in at least 4 places on my computer and another 2 or 3 places for my hardcopy notes. I frequently can't find what I need despite my best efforts and get frustrated. I want one place where I can put everything and LSB is going to let me do that.

LSB is not perfect and I can imagine a lot of writers giving up before learning how to use it. I printed out the PDF instruction book and had the tutorial open in Firefox and I still messed up twice as I tried to setup my first book. I deleted and started over both times. I think this program is worth the effort it takes, and once I'm familiar with it, I think I might be in my own personal organizational nirvana. :-) I'm already in semi-nirvana.

There's a 30 day free trial period and the program is on sale right now for NaNoWriMo. The LSB website. You can find the official LSB tutorials here, and here are some unofficial tutorials written by other authors here, here, here, and here.

Bottom line: Two thumbs up for Liquid Story Binder. Highly recommended.

I am totally phone-phobic. I hate it and do everything I can to avoid using it. This is one of the reasons it amazes me that people spend like every minute in their cars on their cell phones. Hello? This is the place you can go to get away from the damn phone.  (I do own a cell phone, but it's never turned on and I never think to check for messages.  Once, I found a voice mail from a friend from months earlier on it.  Talk about embarrassing.)

Tracing back my dislike of the phone gets murky. I know I hated it in high school because I had a job after school where I spent four hours a day on the phone, placing calls to stores. There's a good chance, though, that I hated the phone before that because I have a vague memory of not calling my friends in junior high and not exactly being thrilled when they called either. In fact, I have pretty clear memories of giving short answers in the hope the other person would end the call faster.

Imagine that--a teenage girl who didn't like spending hours on the phone. My parents didn't know how good they had it. :-)

This phone aversion has continued. For instance, right now, I have a iPod speaker dock thing that isn't working. I ordered it from Woot, and only read their return policy after the fact. It's basically deal with the manufacturer and only if that fails will we allow you to return the item at your cost. Um, nice. This is going to make me think twice before buying from them in the future, but it leaves me with a problem--now I have to contact the manufacturer.

I tried their website first. No help there on making the speaker dock work. They offered an email for help option and I jumped on that one. The response came quickly enough, offered a few suggestions, and then said if nothing here helped, that I should call customer service. I have a reference number.

Call! Gah!

If I wanted to make a phone call, I would have done that to begin with. I don't. So now I've spent about a week trying to psyche myself up. Yes, it takes me time to build up enough courage to pick up the phone. Sometimes too long and I've been known to let things slide indefinitely because of my phone-phobia. Of course, I have a tendency to let anything I don't want to deal with slide.

While I work to reach a point where I can call customer service, I have a messy kitchen, the box for the iPod dock/speakers is on top of my island. The directions are open on my dining room table. The dock itself and a couple of spare iPod trays are on my china hutch. I want that stuff gone and I can't make it go away until I use the phone! Makes me wonder what will win out--my dislike of clutter or my dislike of the phone.

Stay tuned.

When authors talk about Point of View (usually abbreviated as POV), we mean whose head are we in as we write the scene. Are we seeing things unfold from the heroine's perspective? The hero's? A secondary character? Writers hear all kinds of rules about POV, too. The most popular is write the scene from the POV of the character who has the most at stake.

That's not how I choose whose head to be in when I write a scene because I don't always know which character has the most at stake when I start a scene, and let's face it, not all scenes have something at stake. At least not in the way that I interpret that.

So how do I decide which POV to write?

There are a few factors that can be quantified. Balance is a big one. If the two previous scenes are in the heroine's POV, I'm going to lean toward doing the next in the hero's head. If he cooperates. And considering the trouble my characters cause me all the time, it's not a sure thing that he will.

The other factor I consider is the need for secrecy. :-) Some information needs to be kept away from the reader even after one of the characters knows it. In that case, if I have a scene that's going to be skirting close to what I don't want revealed, I'll write in the other character's point of view.

Sometimes I just go on instinct.

But the biggest consideration for me is which character is talking the scene in my head.

I hear my characters--their dialogue, their inner thoughts--and if I'm hearing my heroine run through a scene for me, I'm most likely to write it in her POV.

This doesn't always work. In the story I'm working on now, I started the second scene of the third chapter in my hero's head because I was seeing the later part of it through his eyes and because it would be more difficult technically to write the scene in my heroine's POV.

The scene started out fine and then sputtered to a halt last Friday. I spent Saturday not getting anything accomplished, and the instant I turned out the lights and got into bed that night, I knew the problem was because I was in the wrong POV. I had to write the scene from my heroine's perspective. I restarted the scene on Sunday and was tearing up the pages fast and furious all day and on Monday during my lunch hour at the Evil Day Job (EDJ), too. And then Monday evening I was stuck.

At first, I thought it was because I couldn't remember where I was going with what I wrote hours earlier. I left off mid-scene, but not necessarily a good stopping point. I didn't have much choice since the EDJ expects me to be back at my desk when lunch is over. I spent last night trying to figure out what I thought I was going to do and came up with no answers. I finally cut the last little bit I wrote with the intention of starting over today, saved the file, and went to bed.

And as soon as I turned out the light and got under the blankets, I realized I needed to switch to my hero's POV. I even immediately knew the place where I needed to transition from her head to his.

Why didn't I get this information hours earlier when I could have done something with it? Sigh.

But with this new epiphany, I cut what I had, rewrote it from my hero's POV and finished the chapter.  Yea!

I have a guest blogger today, Crystal Jordan.

The first time I "met" Crystal was when she asked me to be part of a workshop on Science Fiction Romance at Romance Divas. That was in 2007, I think. Fast forward. We reconnected on Twitter, became friends.  She's funny, smart, insightful, and I'm lucky enough to count Crystal as one of my best book writing buddies. 

For a more formal intro:  Crystal Jordan writes award-winning erotic paranormal and futuristic romance for a variety of publishers including Kensington Aphrodesia, Harlequin Spice, Samhain, and Ellora's Cave. Her latest release, Untamed from Aphrodesia, was released today!  To read excerpts and find out more, visit Crystal's website.


And now here's Crystal:


I love writing futuristic romance. Or, more specifically, futuristic erotic romance, which is how all my published futuristic work would be categorized. I’ve written both distant future with colonized planets and spaceships as well as near future post apocalyptic with some technology gained and some lost. I can’t say I have a definite preference, since they’re both a ton of fun to write!

My first experience with distant future romance was my novella “In Ice” in the anthology Sexy Beast V (which is followed by Carnal Desires in the same setting). The idea came from a lot of different places, but the two I have to give most of the credit to are Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern series and Robin D. Owens’s Celta series. (By the way, if you haven’t read these series, run, do not walk, to go buy them.) What I loved about these series was the concept of going so far into the future that you’d actually gone back to something reminiscent of an older Earth time period. For McCaffery, it’s medieval Europe…with dragons. For Owens, it’s a little Three Musketeers meets Celtic mythology. Both are phenomenal.

What I did in “In Ice” was go back to a cross between Inuit people and warring Scottish clans. With shape-shifting bears. Why? Because I like shape-shifters, and it seemed like an interesting twist I hadn’t read before. I got the idea for this world a long time ago, but it wasn’t until the shape-shifters came into the mix that it all gelled for me.

Then I tried my hand at post apocalypse with my new release Untamed. Everyone should try it at least once, right? Right?? Okay, maybe it’s just me. I have to say, it was totally worth it. I might even have liked it better than the distant future book (which I loved). I get most of my post apocalyptic inspiration from movies rather than books, and I have no idea why. But films like The Day After Tomorrow, Judgment Day, Children of Men, Road Warrior, and Blade Runner have sucked me in and made me wonder what would happen if war or famine or Mother Nature or technology made the world radically different from how it is now, and yet…people are still here, being people.

With Untamed, I went with the idea that biological warfare brought out the primal, beastly nature in humans and created—you guessed it—shape-shifters. Predator shape-shifters to be exact. So the world is half clean, new nanotechnology, and half gritty bombed out post-urban-warfare. Plus, inside every person lurks a dangerous animal just waiting to be unleashed. I had way too much fun with this story, let me tell you.

So, the thing I think I love best about writing futuristic romance (of any subgenre) is that the possibilities are pretty endless. If you can imagine the world would be one way in the future, then it could be. But then…it could be something totally different. You can really let your imagination run wild.

Last night, I watched 1776 a musical with William Daniels, Howard Da Silva, and Ken Howard. It's actually one of my favorites, but that wasn't what I planned on watching on an October weekend. Unfortunately, what I did plan to see left me bored, and after studying my DVD collection, this was the title that I felt like watching.

A strange thing occurred to me as I watched it. I suddenly remembered all the times I'd been asked: If you could meet anyone living or dead, who would it be? It's a question that I've never had an answer for because I'm not into celebrity and I couldn't think of anything else. Last night it dawned on me that I wish I could have gone back and talked to the founding fathers--John Adams, Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John Hancock, and the others.

Wouldn't it be cool to travel back in time and sit in a corner to watch the Continental Congress debate independency? To find out first hand what they envisioned, what they were thinking?

I understand that the real men are unlikely to resemble the way they were portrayed in the musical, but I still think it would hugely interesting. Jefferson was in his early 30s. Adams his early 40s. And they were part of one hell of a creation.

And when I went to bed after it was over, I dreamed about aliens invading Earth and blowing things up ala Independence Day, another favorite movie.  :-)  I don't know how my subconscious transposed a sweet musical with an ET invasion, but hey, at least it wasn't dull.

People sometimes ask me how I decide what to write or they ask why I haven't written a particular story. The answer is the same for both--I write the characters that are talking the loudest.

To use an example to illustrate, I was writing In Twilight's Shadow in 2007 when I saw a picture online and boom! Chaya showed up. It really does happen that fast and anything can cause a character to appear. Sometimes nothing happens and they still arrive. It's the way it is. So Chaya showed up in 2007 and pulled at my attention, but I was on deadline and she had to wait.

Over the next two years, other characters talked louder. First Shona Blackwood from Edge of Dawn and then Kel Andrews from In the Darkest Night. I wrote their stories instead, but Chaya and her hero never left. Because of this, I knew I'd be writing them at some point, but I didn't know when.

Then, after I finished Darkest Night, it was Chaya who was talking the loudest and I knew the time had finally come. Of course, over the two years, things morphed. Instead of being a stand-alone book, the hero's two friends decided they had stories, too, and it became a trilogy with an arc over all three books. I also kept getting brief flashes of this hero and heroine and learning more about them.

That's one of my favorite things--getting details from my h/h on who they are. When a set of characters pushes through the pack and grabs my attention (and if I'm not in the middle of another story), I go into a stage I call Pre Book. Pre Book is awesome. :-) At this point, my characters are pouring out information. It might not be about themselves, but it all helps somehow. Pre Book is also when I find pictures of my h/h, maybe their homes, maybe their cars, maybe other things. During Pre Book what I look for depends on how important said item is to the character. For Chaya, I had to find her car before I started the book, but I didn't need to look for her home until after I'd started writing.

BTW, Pre Book can last anywhere from a week to a couple of months. It all depends. But from this point on, my characters are in my head constantly. That's not an exaggeration, either. My h/h will be talking to me, showing me scenes, offering opinions every day and not just when I'm writing. Driving, showering, working at the Evil Day Job, anywhere, any time is fair game for them to come in and talk to me. Probably 10-20% of what I know about them makes it into a book. There's just too much I'm told that is interesting to me and helps explain who the character is, but isn't necessary for the story.

As an example, Chaya's hero has two brothers. They might be mentioned in the book, but at this point, I'd be shocked if any of the details I know about them make it into the story. It doesn't matter that I know a lot about his middle brother; unless it's important to the book, it won't go in. On the other hand, what happened to him while he was in the Middle East impacts him in a big way and that will play a role in the book.

After Pre Book, I start writing. This is more months with the characters, and if it's a book I'm doing a proposal for, I write 3 chapters, wait till it sells, and then write the rest of the story. In those intervening months, the characters are still there and still sharing details, although if I'm working on something else, the new characters will be louder.

By the time I go through revisions and edits and the characters finally depart, I might have had them in my head for a year or more. For Chaya, I'll have her and her hero in my head a minimum of three years.

I'm not complaining. I think it's so cool to have people telling me stories, especially when I'm bored. I love spending time with my characters and I love getting to know them so well. For me, this is the biggest perk of being a writer.

From the time I wrote my first published story, I've always gotten scenes that happen after the book is over. I wish that I'd written them down because what I've seen on the earlier books has faded now and I don't have a real good memory of what I was shown any longer. Why didn't I write a brief scene with what I saw?

Good question. Part of it was being tired from all the writing I'd already done and that these were scenes I would never include in the book. Part of it was I was certain I'd never forget. Except that I didn't factor in how many characters and scenes I would have after that particular book, including their after the book stuff and all the back stories on the characters. I know way, way more about each and every character than what goes in the books.

What has this churning for me right now is that the characters I'm working with at the moment are sharing nearly all scenes from after their story is over. Probably 90% worth. Another 9% is stuff from later in the story, which is totally not helping me with the beginning of their story. I'd be writing this down except that I'm busy trying to write the actual story. Maybe later. And this is no doubt where I'll run into trouble with this because while it's fresh in my mind, I'll think I can do it later and then it will be vague.

Maybe, though, I should make more of an effort because it would be a cool feature for my website for people who want more of characters they've enjoyed spending time with.

Unfortunately, with the older books, it's just too long gone now to be recreated. Here's what I do remember:

Ravyn's Flight: Ravyn and Damn have three boys. I'm afraid that's all that's left in my brain. Oh, and Stacey and Alex just have the one little girl.

The Power of Two: Cai's father likes Jake, but it takes her mother a lot longer to warm up to him. She remained suspicious of him for a while.

Through a Crimson Veil: Sorry, I don't remember any after the book stuff for Mika and Conor and this saddens me greatly.

Eternal Nights: A lot of this is tied in with Wyatt's team. There are stories for Flare, Gravedigger, and the Z Man that I haven't written. I hinted at some of this stuff in Troll's story, which I wrote for The Mammoth Book of Time Travel Romance. Troll is another member of Wyatt's team.

The Light Warriors Series: (In the Midnight Hour, In Twilight's Shadow, Edge of Dawn, and In the Darkest Night) These are grouped together because so much of the after the book interaction involves all four couples meeting and talking. You see, the Twilight Time prophecy is unfolding and the heroines of these books play pivotal roles. It's natural that they'd meet, discuss things, and get to know each other. Their men are there, too, of course, also with important roles.

I really like the peek in to see how my characters are doing after the end.  But seriously, I need to start writing what I see down.  Soon.

I'm not sure how it is for other writers, but for me, there are steps to a book feeling real. Simply writing a story, sending it to my editor, doing revisions, and edits isn't enough to make it feel as if it's a tangible thing. Maybe that's why I get so excited at the little steps along the way that make it feel solid.

The first step is when I receive galleys. This is a test print of the book from the printer, a last chance to go over it and correct any errors. Because it's a run off the printer, it looks like an unbound book, with 2 book pages on an 11 x 8.5 inch sheet of paper. Seeing my name, my book title, the copyright date, and my words all typeset is a big deal.

The second thing that makes a book feel tangible is when I receive a jpg of my book cover. It makes it even better when it's a cover I think is great, like the one I received for In the Darkest Night. This is a pretty big step on my reality scale because no matter how many stories I wrote before I sold my first book, none of them had covers, they were my words and nothing else.

Not that it isn't a big deal to finish a book--it is, because that is not an easy task--but I'd done that more than once before I sold. So yes, a cover makes it feel more like there is going to be an actual book. And when the cover is good, it's also fun to share it with others, both online and with friends.

Step three to feeling real just happened this past week--my book went up for preorder on Amazon. Yes, you can now go and order your very own copy of In the Darkest Night. I need to go over there and post a little about the book so people have a blurb to go by, but I've been hard at work writing and haven't taken the time.

BTW, Amazon is always the first of the online booksellers to post a new book listing so that's why they get the shout out rather than BN.com, Borders, or BAMM. It is also exciting to see the book appear on these other sites, but it's not as big a thrill as the first showing.

These steps are all helpful, but the book seriously doesn't feel 100% tangible until I'm holding it in my hand. When my author copies first come, I walk around with a copy. I keep picking it up, opening it to scan this section or that. Usually I sit down and read the book when I first get it. It's my chance to visit with my hero and heroine without having to work. At this point, it's sheer enjoyment reading their story.

Or almost. I always find things that bug me in my own work like duplicate words that I missed the bazillion times I've gone through the manuscript. Mostly, though, I can cringe and move on because I love seeing my h/h again. I miss them when they leave.

BTW, when I received author copies of my first book back in 2002, I walked around with a copy everywhere I went for two weeks. That's how long it took before I believed that I really had a book published. Sometimes when I read my work, it still feels hard to believe that my stories are right there for the world to share. How cool is that?