LifeAfterDx--Diabetes Uncensored

A internet journal from one of the first T1 Diabetics to use continuous glucose monitoring. Copyright 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016

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Location: New Mexico, United States

Hi! I’m William “Lee” Dubois (called either Wil or Lee, depending what part of the internet you’re on). I’m a diabetes columnist and the author of four books about diabetes that have collectively won 16 national and international book awards. (Hey, if you can’t brag about yourself on your own blog, where can you??) I have the great good fortune to pen the edgy Dear Abby-style advice column every Saturday at Diabetes Mine; write the Diabetes Simplified column for dLife; and am one of the ShareCare diabetes experts. My work also appears in Diabetic Living and Diabetes Self-Management magazines. In addition to writing, I’ve spent the last half-dozen years running the diabetes education program for a rural non-profit clinic in the mountains of New Mexico. Don’t worry, I’ll get some rest after the cure. LifeAfterDx is my personal home base, where I get to say what and how I feel about diabetes and… you know… life, free from the red pens of editors (all of whom I adore, of course!).

Saturday, January 24, 2009

Nightmares asleep and awake

I’m nearly too stressed-out to function. I’ve got car trouble, money trouble, wife trouble, work trouble, and child trouble. Not necessarily in that order. I’ve been waking up every day at 4am, unable to get back to sleep.

Somewhere in this list of things plaguing my sub-conscious is THE BOOK. Sometime in the next two weeks the Advanced Copies will be in my hands and the wait will be over. My creation will have transformed itself from the DNA of handwritten notes into a living-breathing-three-dimensional creation with weight and volume.

Now, not to sound like a sales pitch, but you need some background to understand the nightmare I had last night. The book is to be hard-cover. It is smallish and will have a “printed case.” That means the cover art is magically and wonderfully entombed into the cover with no need for a dust jacket. The spine is sewn, making it more durable than the glued models and more prone to stay open to the spot you want it open to. The pages are extra-thick coated stock so the book will be as much a pleasure for your fingers as it is for the eye.

All of this made the book heaps more expensive to produce than a paperback printed on nasty newsprint-like paper. But nothing less than the best will do for me. Books are sacred.

So bearing in mind what the book is supposed to look like, I woke up at 3am this morning drenched in sweat, heart pounding. I had just dreamed that the Advance Copies had arrived. I eagerly tore open the Fed Ex package and there it was. Not hard cover. Wrong size. Spiral bound. Leatherette cover. Cheap yellowish paper.

My hands are still shaking.

For reassurance that I had not succumbed to disaster I proceed bleary-eyed to my computer. Still dark outside, I opened up the cover file. And there was the beautiful cover art: red blood cells swimming in a first aid kit-style red cross. And at the bottom, on the cover, plain as day, glaringly clear: a typo.

OhmyGod.

We went through months of proof reading and editing to make sure every word was right. And here, on the cover, a misspelled word. As I write this the book is at the bindery. Misspelled cover and all. OhmyGod.OhmyGod.OhmyGod.OhmyGod.

Excuse me while I go throw up….







Ok, I’m back.

Now you can argue about whether the introduction of a book by an eminent professional in the field should be called a “Foreword” or a “Forward.” Both are commonly used, but for course “Foreword” is the technically correct choice.

But nowhere in the world is there such a thing as a “Foreward.” Until now. Yep, the eminent Endocrinologist (who will likely kill me in the near future) Dr. Kathleen Colleran has written a Foreward to my book. It says so right on the cover.

Now….where did I leave that rat poison?

4 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

If readers notice, they may assume it was an editing or publishing oversight. What is important is the content. People misspell and mis-speak all the time. Don't sweat the small things. I hope you feel better now.

7:43 AM  
Blogger Val said...

There, I finally pre-ordered - typo and all. Deep breaths, Wil - it will turn out fine.

7:07 PM  
Blogger Scott K. Johnson said...

Shit. That's it man. Cancel my order...


I'm kidding of course. I agree with Kelly - don't sweat it. Heck, you know how when you get all paranoid and start looking at words that ARE spelled correctly for so long they start to LOOK goofy?

This is no big deal, really. Let it go.

And I take it you were kidding about the wife trouble right? No man needs that on his plate.

Take care Wil!

9:42 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I received my copy of your beautiful book yesterday and look forward (or is that foreward?) to reading it cover to cover this weekend.

Had you not written this column, I would have never noticed the misspelling. In fact, after I opened the book and browsed through it, I thought "Hey, didn't he mention some misspelling on the cover?" Even with that clue, it took me a while to find it.

I hope that this will be the first of many books for you and that this "oops" will just be one of those insider jokes for you and your fans. Congratulations, Wil, and I hope that there is tremendous success for your book.

8:07 AM  

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