Painful or simply complex?

Editors are amazing. Fabulous. Brilliant. I got my copyedits back yesterday and did a quick initial runthrough of the suggested changes. There were many magical changes that the wonderful Melissa wrought in order to shine up my manuscript to a bright polish, but among them was a subtlety that has escaped me through all these years of reading and writing:

torturous: causing torture; very unpleasant or painful; painfully difficult or slow.

tortuous: marked by repeated twists, bends, or turns; marked by devious or indirect tactics. (Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary)

Kiiiiind of an important distinction.

Happy writing!

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Summer Rain

I was going to blog tonight, but after a day of editing, writing emails, and feeling particularly grumpy about the rain all day long, I don’t have the motivation to do it. I’ll be taking part in the “Meet My Character” blog tour in the very near future, but I just don’t have the brainpower tonight. So instead, I will leave you with a new vocabulary word very pertinent to this Washington rain that’s been pouring down nonstop since before the sun came up:

 

Petrichor:

The pleasant smell that rises with the first rainfall after a long, warm dry spell. Originates in the 1960s, built from petro (relating to rocks) and ichor (the blood of Greek gods).

Also, the name of the perfume that Amy Pond models for.