At least 25 years ago, I was living in Hong Kong. I'd meet Gerd Balke at the Foreign Correspondents' Club. He'd have a printout of his new novel and a stack of cash. He'd give them to me.
Next meeting, I'd return the marked-up novel and get the next one.
He was a highly gifted author writing in his second language, and I edited five novels this way.
In one novel, a patient was in the hospital with a broken leg. To break up the boredom, he'd point his crutch at passing people and pretend to shoot them with it, like a gun.
And every single time Gerd wrote a certain phrase, he wrote "machine gun crotch."
#SpellcheckCannotSaveYou