I have had a couple of questions about where I am in completing the next novel. I have been asking some of my readers if they would like to proofread it for me. The story is 65,792 words long for a mystery novel, which puts it in the upper two-thirds of terms of length. To hire a professional proofreader would cost somewhere between $2000 to $4000. I find if I can get three or four people at the minimum to proofread it for me, they catch 99+% of the errors.
The title of the novel is Darkhouse Lure. I am sure the word “darkhouse” is unknown to most people. Here in the north, people will spear fish in the winter. They put up a small house on the frozen lake with no windows. The water below the house is lit by the sun. They will use a lure, a darkhouse lure, to attract fish and then spear them. Our hero makes himself into a darkhouse lure of sorts in hunting for the killer.
I use Grammarly as I write and rewrite. It catches all the grammar errors, including punctuation. That makes the proofreading job much more manageable. I am looking for what I call “stupid errors.” In rewriting and rewriting, silly mistakes appear. For example, a woman might go to a party wearing a green dress, and someone compliments her on her red dress. In many dialogues, someone might call someone by the wrong name, or I might have inadvertently written the wrong name. That is something that Grammarly cannot catch. I send the novel to my proofreaders in either Word or PDF format. A website, https://www.lifewire.com/free-word-processors-1356338, gives you many options to edit Word documents. There is also a website for free PDF software that allows you to edit a PDF file. The website is https://pdf.wondershare.com/top-pdf-software/free-pdf-editor.html. It’s not fair to people who are willing to proofread to make them by software when there is free software available.
