You Can't Milk a Heifer!

A Can of Peas was finally published and I was thrilled, until a kind person pulled me aside to tell me, "You know that you can't milk a heifer."
"What?" I said. "Why not?"
"A heifer is a young cow that hasn't given birth yet. Like people, cows don't give milk until they have a calf."

I was stunned. I'd edited books for years and prided myself on catching such errors in other people's books and yet the most basic of things I failed to catch in my first novel about dairy farming, no less.

If I'd simply looked "heifer" up in the dictionary I'd have saved myself the embarrassment, but I didn't. And apparently my editor, copy editor and proofreaders all failed to look it up too. The problem was that by the time the book came out it was too late to fix it. I'd used "heifer" dozens of times incorrectly, so it would've been costly and it simply wasn't worth it to the publisher. So farmers across the country could tell that I was ignorant on farming terminology--and many wrote to tell me of my faux pas!

But the blame still lies with me; I'm the author. My name's on the cover so I take the blame, like Kennedy in the Cuban Missile Crisis. "I am the responsible party."

It's the very reason publishers have the author read the very last copy of the book before publication. When your name is on the cover you bear all the blame along with all the glory (even if your editor rewrote your whole book for you!).

I've gotten smarter in my ensuing books. I have a long-time farmer and friend read all of my books to add his expertise to my writing. He let me know how to use chains in delivering a calf, the proper height of a hay wagon's load, that Virginia would've turned the heat lamps on a day before the baby chicks arrived so the heat would be at the proper level well in advance of their homecoming... I've also added a practicing nurse to my roster of readers--she explained how physical therapy would work for someone after a stroke, how to lift such a person into a wheelchair, the proper medicines for depression in an elderly person...

Now I can write with more confidence, knowing that experts will follow behind and clean up my messes! And my readers can know that I finally "got it right!"

More later,
Traci