And to be serious about it? Sending me 64 individual pages of the ms, with 68 queries, should only happen if every one of those queries are within my jurisdiction.

Yeah, we definitely don't bother the author with matters that are simply our house style, or layout-related. What does happen often, though, is an author will get pissy over our adherence to our house style, if a term or convention doesn't match what they think it should. We never use, for example, "side effects," instead using "adverse effects," because it's more explicit for the bad stuff. Some "side" effects aren't actually clinically "bad," per se, and since this is scientific publishing, we go for exactitude. But authors will bitch and moan about our use of the serial comma, our strange hyphenation rules -- anything that we would do to every single article (meaning, hello Mr. Author, you *aren't* a unique snowflake, and you *don't* get a dispensation) will end up being a huge point of contention with someone.

Again, my experience as an editor isn't applicable to anything that Buffistas have published/are publishing, because we're technical/science-based, and all y'all are fiction and/or popular non-fiction. And there's a hell of a lot more leeway with that.

Except it sounds to me like Deb got an editor who thought she had to do to Deb's *fiction* what *I* do to a pharmacy article. And that damn well doesn't work.

Teppy, that's it exactly. Also, this was the shmuck with the post-it notes. Remember that one? The one who kept quoting "the shortened OED" or whatever it was?

One of the things he/she decided to question - and write me a long, earnest note about, on EIGHT folded together post-it notes - was the spelling of "bated". He actually fucking wrote out all the definitions in he could find in the OED, to prove I had misspelled "baited".

Except, of course, for the fact that "bating" is what a hawk does, a movement of wings when startled. Which is precisely what I'd done, using the proper word with the proper spelling in the proper context.

I actually wrote Toni at SMP a note about it that began, "Dear Toni, Hoo, boy. You know, I may be the least diva-esque novelist you'll ever deal with, but right now, I'm just a skosh pissed off..."

Oh, and this was AFTER the pass-pages. This twit delayed galleys by three or four days.

What I will not get is "please use Gothic 11-point, take line spacing to 1.5". Too specific. Most layout people seem to be major league tree-pissers.

Layout people are specific, because it is their job to turn a nebulous layout idea into a specific, consistent instantiation. They're as niggly as proofreaders, for the same reason. (They're usually also talking to the comp in those notes, not to the author/editor at all, and thus talking in technical jargon to somebody they presume understands it.)

Usually, it is not layout's job to know whether the author needs to be queried or not; they query everything, and somebody higher up the food chain is the one who decides what to pass on to the author and what not.

(I work with one author who is Totally Involved In Every Step, including indents and all that, and it is crazy-making; most authors I've met, like Deb, are just as glad not to be bothered.)

Editors or prod. editors, the people with existing relationships with the author, are usually the ones who decide which [non-content] queries to pass on and which would just be clutter. It's a judgement call.

Congratulations to Gus on selling a novel to Baen. I will definitely buy a copy so I can self-importantly tell everyone that I know the author, and then segue into some weremonkey jokes.

Dunno if this will help with the blurbage issue, but Mercedes Lackey published her elves-at-the-racetrack stuff with Baen.

Nutty, I think I was unclear about it.

These were first galleys. They weren't my printed pages - they were already laid out and reviewers were waiting. I had already done the pass-pages, with detailed notes. All it needed was laying out, and what's more, this was the third book in an existing series. If this maniac had queries, all he or she had to do was look at the layout for Weaver or FFoSM.

Not only that, but this came FedEx with a request to have it back to them within 48 hours.

Um - excuse me? No. This stuff is supposed to get taken care of with the first round of pass-pages. And I honestly should not have been sent this pile. All that was needed were the four or five queries that were actually within my purview, sent to me via email. Instead there was stress and high drama, and, unforgiveably, a major delay.

I really don't want to be made responsible for doing their job for them, or having to tell them that they're either not doing their job or going way the hell over the line.

There weren't supposed to BE any copy-edits at that point. Pass-pages done. Queries on format, style, layout, etc? I need a stamp: "Not Within Author's Purview" or "Dude, Author Doesn't Get A Vote".

And I honestly should not have been sent this pile. All that was needed were the four or five queries that were actually within my purview, sent to me via email.

Reread what I posted -- I'm agreeing with you. All I'm saying is, it's not the layout person's job to decide what the author looks at; the layout person is supposed to kick it upstairs to an editor, who selects only certain queries to send on to an author.

That's the whole point of having an editor -- the intermediary between the "physical text" people (CE, proofer, layout, manufacturing) and the "idea" people (author), to translate between groups and decrease confusion. Usually, there are two layers of editors, one on the production end and one on the editorial end, because it's too much translation for one editor to handle.

In your case, either an editor was asleep at the switch, and sent you more than intended, or somebody lower down the totem pole sent stuff out without checking with a boss. But my point is, that's not the system working normally; that's the system not working.

Teppy, what you do sounds like what I do, right down to the strange house-style hyphenation rules. And the authors who will argue hyphens and indentations with me.

I'm agreeing with you.

No, no, I know. Mine was a vent. And hence the "Dear Toni" letter - she really was asleep at the switch.

In this instance, though, Mr. Post-It was adding editorial commentary and questioning things that were done, approved, stetted, stamped and approved by Ruth Cavin, whose purview all of that actually is. He was way over the line, he had no business whatsoever sending that sort of query at all, and he certainly had no business doing it at that late stage of the game.

Also, writing your questions out on post-its, sticking them to the BACK OF THE PAGE, and then not marking in pencil on the front of the page just where your corresponding query is? Dumb, infuriating and totally time-wasting. A post-it note that says "sp use/u line 18 para 6" means I have to turn the page over, count down the damned paragraphs, figure out what the hell he meant, realise that he was querying the UK usage of the "u" in neighbour - NOT HIS DAMNED JOB - and then type out a response?

No. Whether or not my editor's PA was asleep at the switch or not, this wasn't his job, and he threw timing issues at the publisher and stress issues at me.

Toni will get the hang of this, or she won't. In this instance, the snippy letter may have served as a clue-sticking.

New drabble topic!

Challenge #98 (Baby, You Can Drive My Car) is now closed.

Challenge #99 is the perfect vacation. Real or imagined, wishful thinking or travelogue. However you like.

A little off the drabble topic, but I have a vacation story that I think is funny even though it was embarrassing at the time. Trouble is, no one laughs when I tell it. Maybe it's my delivery. Maybe you just had to be there. I've given up trying to trim it to 100 words. What would make this funnier?

When I was little, Dad would sometimes make crêpes for breakfast as a special treat. We would eat them with powdered sugar, or jelly, or honey, or even peanut butter. But that ended after Dad got remarried and was no longer in charge of breakfast.

Years later, during the summer break after seventh grade, I had just turned thirteen when we went for a week's vacation to the island of Penang, Malaysia, and stayed at a resort hotel right on the beach. It was the poshest place I had ever been--even at breakfast the dining room had real china and fine crystal and napkins folded into fancy shapes. So perhaps I should have been a little more careful reading the menu our first morning there, but "crêpes" caught my eye and brought back fond memories, and that's what I ordered.

Heads turned throughout the dining room when the waiter strode in from the kitchen with a huge flaming platter held high. I couldn't believe it when he came to our table.

"What's this?" I asked.

"Your order, sah. Crêpes Suzette."

There was nothing for it but to put on a brave face, ignore all the stares, and dig in.