Important Story Note for Readers

This is infuriating.

I am about ready to murder Microsoft Word's autocorrect. It silently corrected the name "Celaena" to "Cecilia" in Chapter 21 of The Elf Who Would Become A Dragon, and none of us – none of me and my test readers – noticed.

I've fixed it now, but as you can probably guess, it's relevant to an upcoming chapter. Here's the section of Chapter 21 as it should have read the first time:

In an instant, Kylantha appeared beside her. “Let’s go!”

Saphienne jumped, but her hand had been taken and they were walking through the flap, and then they were running behind the pavilion while Kylantha giggled with glee, and the golden day made the younger girl’s braided hair gleam like a crown of triumph.

“Where were you?” Saphienne asked once they left the clearing. “I looked for you, but I didn’t see you anywhere.”

“In the crowd.” Kylantha spoke matter-of-factly. “I told Celaena I’d do whatever she told me. Then I stood on my tiptoes and hid behind her team. I had my back to the door, and I pulled my hair over my ears.”

This ought to make a later exchange between Saphienne and Faylar in Chapter 38 make a lot more sense:

“You saw Kylantha, didn’t you?”

She blinked, and a second time, and then a third, her heart hammering in her chest.

“Saphienne?”

She felt him take hold of her hand.

“Saphienne? Can you hear me?”

Her voice was scarcely more than a whisper. “How do you know her name?”

“I knew her. Well, not really. Celaena knew her; I only knew her from a distance.” He moved closer on the couch. “We talked about you. Before today, I mean. When we were walking home together, that day after you brought her to the library. I was telling her that you were awkward because you didn’t have many friends, and she said that the only person she ever saw you spend time with was Kylantha.”

Memories of the puppet show at the solstice festival flickered behind her eyes: Celaena and Faylar had both been there, before she knew them.

“She left, didn’t she? Or at least, that’s what people said.” Though Saphienne couldn’t see his face, she could hear the uncertainty in his voice. “One day, she wasn’t around any more. I never really noticed, but Celaena asked Madris, and she told her that Kylantha had left to be with her own kind, and not to dwell on it. I wondered about that… what it meant for you, if the two of you were close…”

I am extremely upset that this happened. I've been very good about catching Word correcting "Iolas" to "Iona," and nowhere else has it even tried to correct Celaena to Cecilia!

Together with the way it does weird things to possessive words sometimes, I think this is secretly some AI-powered bullshit in their spellchecker going wild. Oh, what I would give to afford an editor for this...

I'll soon be issuing a similar note to readers on all other platforms. All I can say is: sorry.

Thanks for reading despite this,

LJ