Curve Ball and Victory

When the Garda press office replied to my last email question, I found out a little about their weapons regulations laws, and the news was a bit disappointing, at least in terms of my book. Let me see if I can clarify that without giving away the farm:

My main character needed to use a certain weapon. Turns out, the weapon is illegal in Ireland. That was the curve ball I got thrown at the eleventh hour and for which I had to come up with a work-around, just hours before I needed to leave for the crucial Moxie meeting. The ladies were going to view my last two scenes, which included the major climax. No, I couldn't just let things ride, bring what I had and try to fix the problem later. They needed to read the crucial scenes in as final, polished a condition as possible, because I intend to mail the complete manuscript off to Bob within a week and a half or so. And yes, the weapon in question was crucial to the climax scene. Terrific.

I did find the work-around, with a little help from the Huz. We took an earlier idea of mine and a new one of his and combined them, to good effect. Disaster averted for now. The Moxie ladies each have a copy of the complete manuscript to read this week, and we're meeting again this next Sunday. In the meantime, I'm going to read through the manuscript once and make my own corrections to whatever I find. I always do a final check to eliminate as many of the extra occurrences of "and", "ing", and "ly" as I can. Barring the Moxie finding any previously unnoticed glaring errors, I should have the edits and final polish done by next Wednesday or Thursday. Then it's off to the Post Office and we'll see what happens.