Great question 😂

Fun ("fun") new variation on the AI author scam: just got one targeted to me as an academic, trying to sell me on a "structured interpretive reading model".

😂😂😂

The cover of Never Thought I'd End Up Here by Ann Liang.

April 19, NEVER THOUGHT I'D END UP HERE, Ann Liang (🇦🇺).

This feels at once like a classic YA romcom and a fresh take on it.

That's basically where I've landed. I don't like doing it, but it's just... one of those things.

Obviously I have to file that away for a future book now, as simply nothing could be more romantic than that 😂

I won pretty easily on that one when I found the fairy lights category on the Walmart website (after all, what's more American than that?).

And honestly, much as I dislike it, it probably saves a lot of bother in popular reader spaces - I've heard about so many self-pub authors here who have to write in US English (in terms of spelling etc) so their books don't get reported for errors and taken down.

I don't like doing it either - and I've got a pretty firm line about keeping the dialogue as authentic as possible - but it's just part of the price of entry for non-US writers in the US trad-pub market, alas.

And Christmas lights are objectively a different thing, right? Colourful rather than twinkly and silvery?

I really dug my heels in on that one, because I could simply not have my protagonists sleep together for the first time under the glow of... Christmas lights.

Like everyone writing into the US market from outside it, I don't particularly like doing the Americanisation edit - but I am quite proud that I've got a trad-pub book into the US that depicts Christmas in summer (complete with seafood platter & white wine in the sun) & the Boxing Day test match.

In my last book, "fairy lights" was the biggest and most surprising sticking point (I was asked to change it to "Christmas lights", but didn't, on the grounds that those are different things*). Language is fascinating.

*and also that there was a "fairy lights" category on the Walmart website

I've turned in these edits now - thank you to all the Americans who've helped me out!

The biggest recurrent sticking point throughout the ms - which I never would have guessed - turned out to be the notion of going "out the back" vs "out back". (I won.)

"hen do" is a bit more British (rather than Australian), but the vibe is pretty much the same!

This is exactly what I want it to mean, so good to hear - thanks!

That's exactly what I want it to mean, so good to hear!

And another one! US pals, does the term "soft drink" scan to you (and what would it mean to you, at a glance)?

US copyedit question of the day - American friends, are you familiar with the idea of being run off one's feet? It's been flagged in my ms and I had no idea it was a local idiom (if, indeed, it is)?

Goon of Fortune - Wikipedia

"goon" is fairly immortal slang here because of the role the goonbag plays (alongside another noble Australian invention, the Hills Hoist clothesline) in the drinking game Goon of Fortune

I was prepared for a lot worse, honestly - and I usually get to keep the dialogue the way I want it - so... shrug, I guess.

I would very much love to simply dig my heels in like that, but alas, I don't have enough clout for that to fly.

That is very much more the vibe of a hen's night!

No. Outside of the TV show The Bachelorette (which is a riff on the American one anyway), "bachelorette" is simply not a word we use. Hen's night/buck's party are standard use for pre-wedding parties for bride and groom respectively.

I would love to leave the books as is, but this is, alas, extremely standard procedure.

The vibe - from my perspective, anyway - is that it's getting a bit less heavy-handed than it has been in the past, though.

There's plenty of context which I hope will do the heavy lifting - it's more a matter of whether my editor believes that too.

"hen do" is a little more British, so would make sense that it crops up there!

I'm going to see if they'll let me keep "hen's night" on some pretty obvious context grounds, but there's a strong chance they might not.

The US equivalent is a bachelorette party, but I'm trying to get around using that phrase if I possibly can.

I bought a copy of this for my baby niece, and maybe it would be an interesting counterpoint 😂

The Australian equivalent in terms of vibe is not our possums but rather the ibis - affectionately known as the bin chicken.