Y, Sidney!

If you've read The Officer's Mess, you may have noticed a small and repeated spelling error in my book. I know a lot of you have because I've been emailed, PM'd and generally and rightfully called out on it.

Danielle is an Aussie.

I'm originally Irish, but I've lived in the UK for 33 years. My earliest knowledge about Australia came in the form of soap opera's. First of all, Return to Eden in the 80's which showed on television on RTE1 in Ireland as I was growing up and later, after moving to the UK, in the form of Neighbours and Home and Away, #homeandawaydidbobbybad! If you know, you know!

I fell in love with Australia. It's such a unique continent, with an incredible variety in environment and wildlife. It's on my bucket list under 'minimum month long holidays' so that I can see... everything! I've always loved the practical, down to earth nature of the people, the accent and their use of abbreviations for everything. It's a stunning country.

I'm usually extremely careful about spelling place names correctly. So, Y oh Y did my spelling error slip through my careful checks? Honestly, it's hard to know Y. I can only attribute it to word blindness, which often happens to me through the various editing stages. Should I have been spelling it correctly from the beginning? Yes, of course. But I often go through a first draft without looking back because finishing a novel is hard, but most of your work is in the editing, so I tend to drive myself through a first edit without checking things and then fix it in the edits.

Unfortunately, my usual go to, Grammarly, doesn't understand if I call Sydney... erm, Sidney! (internally cringes!) but I can't blame Grammarly; it's a great program and it's also... just a program. The blame lies with me.

Please be assured, Sidney has now been corrected to Sydney. You can delete The Officer's Mess from your Kindle and re-download it from Amazon to get the new updated version.

To my fans in Australia, I'm sorry.

Stay safe!