Catspaws and Muddled Lyrics

We've all had them—the typos, the malaprops, the unintended innuendos which make us blush and want to crawl into a hole or convenient oven. No matter how often we reread our stories, the little demons manage to sneak in. They're treacherous fiends with the ability to be invisible to the writer but glaringly obvious to the reader. If you're extremely lucky, you have a writing partner like Penna to help ferret them out.

We've been performing gremlin-patrols for each other for over five years. It's an uneven contest. The mountain of typos in my stories is approaching the proportions of Mount Everest while Penna has only a paltry hillock to her name. But we know that neither one of us can relax our guard. Over a year ago, we decided to name the rascals catspaws. If they're only minor imps, they're known as kittenspaws. The names have made the process of rooting them out much more enjoyable.

I wish my mistakes were more entertaining, but sadly most are not. I sigh with envy over the hilarious bloopers of more skilled authors. Christina Dodd has a list of her funniest mistakes on her blog that makes me sigh with envy.

But every once in a great while, I'm gifted with a plot bunny concealed within one of my catspaws. It's a true moment of bliss to be savored. Here are some of my favorites:

• The Woman in Blue: When Noelle and Joe take a walk in the woods surrounding the Burke cabin in the Catskills, Joe proposes to Noelle. Afterward, she wants to burst out in song like Julie Andrews in The Song of Music. Oops. That typo was the inspiration behind Sara muddling song lyrics in The Locked Room where I had her sing of starlings instead of starmen in the song "Woodstock." In Cinereous Skies, she sang "The Bridge over Troubled Warblers," making me wonder if I was having a little too much fun with my catspaws.


• The Musicians: Mozzie joined the game when I wrote about him assuming the writing mantra. I think that one may count as a Freudian slip. Everyone knows who Neal's love guru is.


• Unintended sexual innuendos seem to be one of my specialties. In The Queen's Jewels, Neal inadvertently leading André Renard to believe that the man he knew as Gary Rydell was in love with Neal Caffrey was an Easter egg to my unwanted talent. In The Musicians, Klaus got to take part when I had him handle Neal rather than hand him a shirt.


• In my latest story, Night Music, Crowley's use of G-Minnows to refer to FBI agents was the result of a sentence typo. I left out the space between "men" and "now" and Crowley seized upon G-Mennow as the latest slang expression.

Thanks to all of you who have pointed out bloopers in my stories. I expect I'll soon have updates to this post.

Night Music on Archive of Our Own
Night Music on FanFiction