Well,
I'm embarrassed. I have a story in the Fantastic Creatures anthology.
That's not what embarrasses me. I was told to write a family-friendly
story, so I wrote one thinking age 6-8. So I wrote a very simple story,
simplistic even. The anthology is out now, and my story is the simplest,
aimed at the youngest reader story in there. But even that doesn't
embarrass me, though I now wish I had written something a little more
complex about a kappa and a maneki-neko. *shrug* What's done is done.
Here's what embarrasses me. Someone read the book and left a good review but let the editor know I had made a mistake. It's been thirty years since I lived in Japan, but I remembered the honorific -san added to names. Adding -chan to a name indicates affection toward a child. -san indicates honoring an older or more authoritative person. So I had the little girl call her mother mama-san. I didn't think to track down one of my far-off Japanese friends to ask them to read through the story. I should have.
The reader told the editor that mama-san means the owner of a brothel.
Ack!!!! Fixitfixitfixitfixit! I wrote to the editor every few hours until she said she had sent the correction to the formatter. In the meantime I don't know how many hundreds of people downloaded the free book before it was fixed. My kindle version still has mama-san. When the print books arrive, I hope the mama-san has been changed to mama. If not, I guess I'll go through and cross out the -san.
Oh, man....My oldest son is always editing my writing, telling me, um, Mom, did you know this phrase was dirty? And my reply is always, Really?... I don't even want to ask what I inadvertently said.
So, if you get a hard copy with mama-san in it, could you kindly cross out the -san?
https://smile.amazon.com/Fantastic-Creatures-…/…/ref=sr_1_1…
Here's what embarrasses me. Someone read the book and left a good review but let the editor know I had made a mistake. It's been thirty years since I lived in Japan, but I remembered the honorific -san added to names. Adding -chan to a name indicates affection toward a child. -san indicates honoring an older or more authoritative person. So I had the little girl call her mother mama-san. I didn't think to track down one of my far-off Japanese friends to ask them to read through the story. I should have.
The reader told the editor that mama-san means the owner of a brothel.
Ack!!!! Fixitfixitfixitfixit! I wrote to the editor every few hours until she said she had sent the correction to the formatter. In the meantime I don't know how many hundreds of people downloaded the free book before it was fixed. My kindle version still has mama-san. When the print books arrive, I hope the mama-san has been changed to mama. If not, I guess I'll go through and cross out the -san.
Oh, man....My oldest son is always editing my writing, telling me, um, Mom, did you know this phrase was dirty? And my reply is always, Really?... I don't even want to ask what I inadvertently said.
So, if you get a hard copy with mama-san in it, could you kindly cross out the -san?
https://smile.amazon.com/Fantastic-Creatures-…/…/ref=sr_1_1…
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