The King is dead! Long live The King!

So I've been doing copy edits on the seventh DIY mystery, HOME FOR THE HOMICIDE - due out December 3rd and available for preorder HERE - and I ran into a conundrum about Elvis Presley.

You know, Elvis the Pelvis. The King of Rock'n Roll.

In the text, I referred to him as "The King."

The copy editor thinks it should be "the King."

I think "the King" could refer to any king of any country, including my own. I'm a Norwegian citizen, and Norway is a constitutional monarchy. We have a king. King Harald. Long live the King!

A statement which, to me, is quite different from "long live The King."

Of course, The King is dead. But still.

I took a Facebook poll, and most people agreed with me. Elvis is The King, not simply the King.

He's also The Pelvis, not simply the Pelvis. Unless he's Elvis the Pelvis, and then it's OK.

The Chicago Manual of Style disagrees, it seems. It says that "the," when run into a sentence (particularly with places, but also names), is lowercased.

I'm thinking rude thoughts about the Chicago Manual of Style right now.

In copy editing, there's something called STET, though.

Per Wikipedia, STET is a Latin word that means "let it stand," which is used by proofreaders and editors to instruct the typesetter or writer to disregard a change the editor or proofreader had previously marked.

In connection with this usage, STET is also sometimes used as a verb, e.g., "Stet that colon."

I'm so stetting The King!

Home for the Homicide Cover Reveal

Looks like it's official, since this showed up on Amazon yesterday. It's the cover for Home for the Homicide, DIY-7, scheduled for release December 3rd.

No, Mischa the kitten (on the floor with the Christmas lights) still doesn't look like a Russian Blue. And Inky (on the table) is more gray than black, while Jemmy (the tiger striped Maine Coon) isn't on the cover at all this time. Nor do I have a creepy shadow, it seems.

However, all that aside, it's a beautiful cover as usual. The book is available for preorder at the moment, for $7.19 (a little off the cover price of $7.99) - on Amazon.