All around the map

Geographically-challenged authors

Was it in third grade that kids used to learn to read maps? The Snarky Editor seems to remember having it drilled into her that the top was always north — and she still has to rotate a paper map to orient herself.

Do schools still teach geography at all? Because The Snarky Editor has been running across a number of world-challenged authors lately.

Columbia, South America.

No. The country in South America is Colombia.

… some sort of bug infestation in Columbia….

No. The country in South America — which happens to be the top exporter of flowers to the United States — is Colombia.

No.. The country in South America — which is the world’s top producer of Arabica coffee beans — is Colombia. (Are we seeing a theme developing here?) Kona coffee, on the other hand, is grown and hand-harvested in a very limited area of Hawaii, and the low supply and high labor costs make it far more expensive. The author is right that if someone could pass off Colombian coffee as Kona, they’d make a very tidy profit from the scam.

I’ve traveled to Chili….

Well, not unless he’s rafting across a bowl of beans and tomatoes. The soup is chili (or chilli, if you’re in England) but the country in South America is Chile.

… and moved to Savanna, Georgia.

One can only hope that when this person writes to Mom, she spells the name of the city correctly — Savannah, Georgia.

The rare, sunny day delivered unparalleled views — down the Thames nearly to Windsor Castle. As Buckingham Palace and Big Ben came into view…

The Snarky Editor has been puzzling over this passage for an hour now, and she’s still confused. (Some would say that’s her natural state.) It’s been a few years since she took the longboat trip along the Thames from the Embankment to Hampton Court Palace, but she’s pretty sure she couldn’t see Buckingham Palace from the river. She could see the Palace of Westminster, of course, which includes the tower of Big Ben — but that’s an entirely different duck. And since it’s 21 miles from Buckingham Palace to Windsor Castle, along a very twisty river, it would have to be a very, very rare and very, very sunny day to deliver that unparalleled view — which in any case would be UP the Thames, because it’s looking toward the river’s source, rather than DOWN.

But the main point is that the Snarky Editor was so wrapped up in figuring out whether the views were possible that she forgot all about what was happening in the story, lost interest, and put the book down. Even the hard planes of Andrew’s chest couldn’t draw her back in.

Last summer, she’d visited Edenborough and wished she’d stayed longer.

The Snarky Editor would like to think that if this woman spent any time at all in Scotland, she’d have learned to spell Edinburgh — though the author does get points for knowing that the last syllable of the Scottish capital isn’t pronounced “burg”.

She has taken control of the armies of the Western Aisles…

The Snarky Editor is having trouble not seeing diminutive, flame-haired Ultana Siobhan MacGregor charging through Wal-Mart taking control of the aisles. But of course what the author meant was islands — the armies of the Western Isles.

The Snarky Editor comes out of hiding occasionally to comment on the awkward, silly, and sometimes hilarious editing errors found in published books.

#snarkyeditor #everybodyneedsaneditor

Leigh Michaels is the award-winning author of more than 100 books, including historical and contemporary romance, non-fiction books about writing, and local history. More than 35 million copies of her books are in print in 27 languages and more than 120 countries. She is also a writing coach and book editor, though she promises to be snarky only in regard to published books.

To find out more, check out https://leighmichaels.com.