It is hard to know what goes through a writer’s mind as they bring their story to life. Do they think about the publisher who will read it or the readers who read it after it’s published?

For certain, I would rather read a thousand manuscripts over reading one published book. It’s fresh. It’s new. Most of the time it is messy. There are no reviews on GoodReads with spoilers, no comments to discover on social media, which I don’t search anyway, and no celebrity or best seller list influencing my thoughts about the book, sometimes disappointing me.

A recent change in my routine of reviewing a submission is to run the three sample chapters through AI detection software. If AI was used, we aren’t going to publish it, so I’m not going to waste my precious time reading AI slop.

Once the sample passes the AI test, I clean up the mess. Hmm, I might have OCD! I put the first line of every chapter flush with the left margin. I run a search for places where two spaces are between sentences like we learned in typing class that no longer applies with keyboarding. Maybe it needs a page break between chapters, or to have the paragraph indent changed from five spaces (like in typing class) to three character spaces. Of course, it gets set to double spacing of the lines, if needed. Then I make the text flush with both margins.

Finally, the fun begins. I read the first line, then the first paragraph, and then the first page. How quickly was the conflict introduced? Over the course of the three-chapter sample, am I starting to care about the protagonist (main character), or do I care at all? If I care, I call my partner and see where she stands on those questions and whether we agree to request the full manuscript.

If we do request the full manuscript and it is still available, I go though the routine that I am starting to believe might actually be OCD, or maybe because I like things neat and correct.

It might be obvious that I haven’t mentioned reading the synopsis. I don’t know if my partner has read it, because I haven’t thought to ask her. Mostly, I’m trying to calculate the time zone difference between us when I am thinking of calling her. (Arizona does not have Daylight Savings Time, so it is a forced thought to remember to do the calculation of the time of day.) Wouldn’t it be fun to be able to meet for coffee for this discussion?

Most writers don’t seem to know how to write a synopsis. It is part of the package, so I don’t know why they don’t do better.

Then we go through the questions about the ms and finally discuss the author. I don’t deal well with divas. Maybe that is why God gave me all boys, or maybe because I have all sons, I didn’t have to learn to tolerate divas—I don’t know which. Regardless of who liked the manuscript before it came to our submission email, no one is entitled to Cactus Rain Publishing spending money on it. Our publishing contract has to be earned through quality writing.

And thus it begins. We decide to offer a publishing contract. Then we get to work!