You know the sayings: "A man's home is his castle."  "Home sweet home."  "You can never go home again."

In my newest release Restored Dreams my hero Buck doesn't want to go home again. He walked away from his father's questionable business practices and never once looked back. Even after his father's death he refused to run his corporation, or live in his marble and glass mansion with the coldly modern décor.

No, Buck never felt at home in his father's house. Seemingly abandoned by his mother and ignored by his father, Buck was shipped off to private schools, received his allowance from servants, but from the stableman learned a love of horses he capitalized on by joining the rodeo circuit a while back. 

Home to him now is the toy box he tows with a Peter Built truck, his horse tucked safely in the stall he built for Satan inside his RV, too, and instead of home being "anywhere he lays his hat", it's anywhere he parks his rig. 

Most recently he parked it at Restful Dreams Campground just outside of Lakeview, California, and he's thinking about sticking around. He feels he owes the good people of Lakeview at debt he'd like to repay with the millions he inherited and never intends to spend on himself.

Fifty years back his grandfather, a fast-talking charlatan, swindled some of the residents of Lakeview and made off with their life savings, money he'd convinced them to invest in a railroad never intended to come through their town.

Buck has his eye on Treasure Montgomery's stately old Victorian house. The pretty teacher's home needs a new roof, but she is stubborn as his grandmother's mule. He'd gladly re-roof Treasure's house for free, thanks to his bulging bank accounts, money he doesn't want and would please him to see go to a good cause. Treasure's too proud, though. She's determined to pay her own way.

On a teacher's salary? She's not thinking straight, but maybe Buck can make her listen to reason. He spent summers with his grandmother in her classic Victorian farm house, and hopes to bring Treasure's house back to its original beauty, one rusty pipe and rotted board at a time.

Man, he wishes the little lady wasn't so hard headed. Like the idea she sprang on him about him taking her to bed. Unless he's mistaken, Treasure has a hidden agenda, one he hopes she'll reveal while he courts her. The idea of being courted surprised her, but she warmed up to the notion about as fast as he warmed up to her.

Now, if he can just find a way to spend time with her without giving in to her demands he'll be a happy man, and might have even found a happy home.

Somebody claimed "home is where the heart is".  How could he go wrong giving his heart to the big-hearted woman just named California's Best Middle School Teacher?  Maybe then she'll let him restore her home.   

You shouldn't. Writers often think something is on the page when it isn't, a word they meant to type, but didn't.

This is contest judging season. One recent contest entrant wrote, "She looked away in discuss," when the author meant disgust. Spell checker doesn't catch this kind of mistake. Another pair of eyes perhaps would.

Updated software versions make a writer's life easier. I often type it's when the apostrophe is not needed. I turn on the 'Non-Print Formatting Characters' when I write. My word processing software underlines anything the software authors consider a problem. If I've typed it's and should have typed its, a little green line shows up under the word. All I have to do is figure out why, and correct my mistake.

Learn to use all the features of your software. Then, as the final step before submitting your manuscript or posting a blog, ask a trusted reader to read what you've written. Not a sister or good friend. Find someone who knows mistakes creep into our writing like ants sneak into my house on hot, dry days.  Your job as a writer is to identify the mistakes on a written page and eliminate them from the printed page.

 Twice while writing the paragraph above a little green line showed up, once to show me I'd pluralized a word that didn't need it, another time to show me to add an s to a word that should have been plural. Trust your software.

Let's see if my software catches a mistake in verb tense.  He look at her with a question in his eyes. Yes, a little green line appeared beneath look to show me there is a problem. If I make the present-tense verb past-tense, the green line goes away. I often see the wrong tense of verbs used when I'm judging manuscripts, and most often with the word look, perhaps because this word is often overused. 

The ease with which a word processor allows a writer to revise a sentence can also shoot you in the foot. Watch out for mistakes in verb tense.

In writing this I noticed a green line I could not explain beneath a word followed by a comma. I deleted the comma and the green line went away. I'm not sure I trust my software that much. I'd rather have too many commas than not enough. I want the reader to understand what I've written, not have to go back and read the sentence again to determine the meaning.

So, update your software, find a trusted reader you can depend on to find the numerous typos, missing words and punctuation errors we all make.