Greetings, Loyal Reader!

Today I continue my line-by-line edit of Hero Wanted. It is a cold, rainy day — great for editing! I just finished marking up chapter 10. But I realize a blow-by-blow account of the editing process is not an attention grabber. So let’s talk color!

Specifically, that color somewhere between black and white that rhymes with hay. You know how some people see the world in black and white and others see all the shades of this particular color in between? That’s the one I mean.

I’ve always spelled it G-R-E-Y.

That happens to be the preferred British spelling. Now the typical American spelling is G-R-A-Y, so you may wonder how it is I came to favor the Brit spelling. I blame Gandalf.

As I’ve mentioned before, I read the Lord of the Rings trilogy numerous times as a young lad. My favorite character was Gandalf the Grey. Tolkien, of course, was English and spelled words the English way. I also read many works of Edgar Rice Burroughs, such as the Tarzan books. Although an American author, ERB tended to favor (or is that favour?) the British English spelling for many words. I never picked up colour or shew or defence because they looked wrong to my young American eyes. But I guess I absorbed grey without realizing it. ((Oh, and there was Jean Grey, of course. The reason redheads are my kryptonite.))

Loyal Readers of the Pan Books editions of the Jason Cosmo books may be scratching your heads at this point. No, I am not crazy. The good editors at Pan painstakingly translated my books into the Queen’s English, adding all the extra u‘s and whatnot for the reading comfort of those of you in the Commonwealth. That, actually, is the point of my story today.

I pulled the original copyedited manuscript of Jason Cosmo out of the vault last night and was reminded how the editors at my U.S. publisher changed all my grey to gray throughout. I remembered that irritating me at the time.

Still, the check cleared, so I didn’t complain.

But I did do a fist pump of victory when I first got a look at the Pan edition and saw that my U.K. editors, God love them, had changed all those a‘s back to the original e‘s.

For the forthcoming Trove Books edition of Hero Wanted, I give you fair warning now. I’m spelling it G-R-E-Y.

And no editor is going to change my preferred shade of grey this time. ((Here is a warning for Commonwealth readers too–everything else will spelled American style. I don’t have a translator this time around. Sorry. But I hope you’ll still find it a good read, even if a few of the words look funny.))

Best regards,

Dan McGirt