It feels as though I have reread Dead Weight one-gajillion times, and every time I do, I catch that last, nagging typo and the copy is finally, blessedly cleansed. That is, until I read it again and happen upon one more mistake. Some trivial thing — an extra period at the end of a sentence that I can’t stop obsessing about all night as I toss and turn in bed.

I really didn’t want to pay somebody to copyedit the book. My friends read it. My family read it. Agents read it. They all helped me rid the pages of any persistent error. I wouldn’t need an editor, after all.

So after a lifetime of self-editing, I published it. And now this — oh, spoiler if you haven’t read the book yet:

Do you see that shit? Do you see that motherfucking shit? Do you! Yes, someone is reading my book on an iPhone — and more power to them — but that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m referring to that yellow highlight. That’s a gods-blasted typo! And it’s not the only lingering, tainted asshole of an oversight in the book, either. By some accounts, there are at least four others. Which means there are probably lots more.

This irks me more than anything. More than people who destroy the word ‘literally’ in daily conversations. More than people who say that they ‘could’ care less. More than people who repeat sentence structures to make their points.

Anyway, I hired a copyeditor to retroactively beat the shit out of Dead Weight. Fingers crossed she’ll be able to pound it into shape without murdering it. I’ll know for sure in about two weeks, and then all the versions of the book — Kindle, iBooks, Paperback, Nook (Lolz) — will need to be reformatted and republished. Which, you know, is pretty much as bad as it sounds.