My book, Priceless Treasures and Ghastly, is almost ready to print. On three occasions I have assured my editor that I was ready to go to press, and then rewritten something. It probably isn’t something that I should do — the more changes that I make the more likely it is that I will introduce typos that will be uncaught, or delete things by accident. But I owe you, my public, the best that I can manage and I will deliver it.
As a child I remember being appalled that Tolkien made so many changes to The Hobbit while it was being printed that the printers had to break the plates and do it all over again. This, by the way, was the first edition of 1937, not the revised 1951 version that we read.
I do think that what I have now is as good as it can be, but I think that I put off pressing ‘send’ a few more hours and look it over one last time.
Thomas Olivieri 