I’ll try to offer some insights into the editing process. I will use the first two paragraphs of the book as examples, then I will tell you about the editors I paid. I was hung up on the first sentence for more than 20 years! Should I start with the word “It?” as in “It was the most rain…” The word “it” makes the sentence sound more passive, less powerful, so I went straight to the date. But in the first sentence, the era is set, the time of day, the location, and the weather. Weather is a theme throughout the book because it was important to my family for weather related resort business. I studied the writers’ reference books regarding grammar by Strunk to do my own grammar edits. I still wonder about the phrase, “flood of the century.” Some reference books on editing say that when the words call it or called it precede a phrase or a word, then the phrase should be in quotes. I used “Stay off the streets,” the announcer warned as a foreshadow because the stage I was setting is dark. The rest of the paragraph is fully memory and instinct, describing my emotional state exactly in contrast to what was supposed to be a cheery time of year. More suicides are attempted (and completed) around Christmas than any other time of year due to the pressures of being in a family like a Hallmark card or Maxwell House coffee commercial, and I wanted to depict that dreadful feeling. As for grammar, again, it is by way of studying the grammar reference books. By the time I’d hired the second editor, she said it was grammatically perfect, which was music to my grammar police ears!

***That night, December 20, 1978, the radio reported the most rain in Phoenix in one hundred years. Broadcasters called it the flood of the century. While I was driving, I listened to reports of accumulated rainfall and road closures. “Stay off the streets,” the announcer warned. The wet pavement reflected the colored holiday lights that adorned cactus. Seasonal garlands, heavy with the weight of rainwater, drooped to the gutters. Carols interrupted newscasts, followed by the countdown: “Only four shopping days left until Christmas.” I felt a pressure as intense as the rain that pounded on the windshield.