A few weeks prior to my release date, I received an email stating there was no differentiating the chapters in my manuscript.  Whoa!  How could that be? Someone’s having a little fun here.

The chapters were right there – in my mind.  How could I have forgotten to insert them?  No one forgets that. I knew just where I wanted the breaks in the manuscript.  I’d been over it numerous times – in my mind, which it appears is a vast and wondrous place and not totally reliable. How could the chapters have been missed?  You want to know how?  Because I didn’t insert them!  Oh, sure, I thought I did . . . but noooo, I had not.  No writer can make that mistake.  But I did and, to make matters worse, I’m a new author with Touchpoint Press.  I wondered what they thought, for about a split second. Best not to know some things.

But, on the up side, the chapters are now there . . . thanks to the calm, cool, composure of my editor, Kim Coghlan, so you’ll see all twenty of them, placed on the actual pages of Because I’m Worth It.

-Linda Nielson

When I finished editing Because I’m Worth It, I emailed it to our senior editor with a smile on my face. This is a good book, I thought. Little did I know that I’d receive a panic-filled email a few weeks before the novel’s release date.

Originally, the novel was split into four different parts, and I didn’t know that Linda had already envisioned separate chapters but forgot to include them. But I knew I had to act fast. Release announcements, book signings, press releases. A release-date delay can be as catastrophic as an exploding volcano. The horrors! This was Linda’s baby—a novel that she spent hours writing, reading, and editing. And I was proud of her—the book was fantastic. So we came together, created the chapters, and forayed what would have been an inevitable, devastating delay.

As an editor, I’ve learned to become one with my authors. No, I’m not speaking of a cult-like union that involves chanting and deep breathing…but something close to that. When you’re tasked to edit an author’s manuscript, you’re reading more than words—it’s an echoing of the author’s soul. Basically, editors have a grave responsibility—to make manuscripts the best they can be, without altering an author’s vision. Yes. A good editor isn’t a dream crusher.

So when I used my secret, psychic editing powers to help Linda insert chapters, she may have been amazed that she and I were so in tune—that I could read her mind, knowing where chapters should have been delineated. But I wasn’t surprised. And now you know the secret. Editors are super heroes.

-Kimberly Coghlan

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Linda Nielsen’s first novel, Because I’m Worth It, will release March 2, 2018. It tells the story of two very different families – one raised in the south and one raised in the north – and how their lives are forever changed by their interactions with one another. These Southern Belles may not be as sweet as they appear to be, and all that glitters is not gold. Because I’m Worth It will be available for purchase on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and other major retailers as well as the TouchPoint Press Bookstore.