Well, I'm glad there's a copyediting process. Today, while doing one more editing pass on the DTI manuscript, I discovered something that I and everyone else involved somehow managed to miss despite multiple passes through the book: A scene begins saying that Character A only knows Character B by reputation and has never met him, and then three paragraphs later has Character A telling Character B, "We've met." What's more, later in the book, I elaborate on that first meeting. This is a hazard of making stuff up as you go. Sometimes you change your mind about something along the way, and if you're not careful, you can forget to change what you wrote at the start. I don't think I've ever had it happen within three paragraphs, though.
The thing is, even with multiple eyes going over a manuscript time after time, there are a heck of a lot of words and ideas in there, and it's hard to catch every one. Usually one person will catch what someone else missed, but sometimes something slips by everyone. Anyway, I finally caught it and it's fixed.
I also found another subtle inconsistency arising from a similar cause, a matter of timing, but on reflection I decided it was fine the way it is. After all, not every character in the book necessarily experiences events in the same order.
Take it as a compliment that it took this long to catch it. It means the story is so engaging and well written that it's been sucking the readers in so deeply that they just skip right on by the inconsistency.
