Susan, you may be glad to hear that the alternative paper here published my letter to the editor (the corrected spelling version I sent them) that pointed out that Jane Austen was NOT a Victorian writer, but a Regency writer.
That's so cool!
In my own writing news, I accidentally discovered that I'd given a minor secondary character in the wip the same military rank and last name as a secondary character in the Sharpe books. Which wouldn't by itself engender a freakout, because there's tons of Sharpe books, and it's hardly surprising that two writers' minds would occasionally run on a parallel course in choosing an appropriate and fairly common last name for a person of a certain background and ethnicity. Problem is, the character in question appears in the first few pages of the first book--I've generally been avoiding the Sharpe books and movies while I write the wip to prevent accidental borrowing, but I happened to be playing with "look inside the book" on Amazon while trying to pick out a few books to send for my dad to read while he's getting chemo. And there it was, jumping out of me.
I swore. A lot. And then checked IMDB and discovered I could've avoided the mistake if I'd just had the sense to look at the cast list. Which in the future, I will.
None of this would be a big deal at all if I hadn't already entered my first chapter in three writers' contests. One has already been judged, so I'll just have to hope none of my judges noticed. But the other two I'm still before the deadline on, so I sent off frantic emails to the contest coordinators. One has already told me, "Sure, send me a replacement version, totally understand, hate it when that stuff happens." Still haven't heard from the other, but at least that's three fewer people who'll see my original goof.