What’s The Dropon?

Here’s a quiz for you:

Q. What is ‘dropon’?

1)A Belgian software company specialising in delivery logistics

2)The title of a bootleg album by hardcore punk band Drop Dead.

3)A word that found its way into my manuscript for The Secret Millionaires’ Club sometime after the second draft.

A. All of the above.

It was the kind people at Kindle Direct Publishing that spotted it. ‘The book you recently uploaded to KDP has possible spelling errors’, and here it is: ‘Filling in the conversation gaps dropon the drive with Jason…’ Thanks KDP! It took me a while to work out what word had got mis-typed or mangled to result in ‘dropon’. I think it’s ‘during’. It’s proof that however many times you run a manuscript past beta readers, editors, spelling checkers, and  grammar checkers, the gremlins will always find a way to thwart you.

So it’s likely that there are other glitches lurking in what I thought was a squeaky clean, 81,000-word manuscript. Perhaps I should offer a prize to diligent readers who spot an error? Maybe not. I want people to enjoy the novel, not feel they are marking my homework.

So that’s ‘Dropon’. A bit of a drop-off, really.