Connie, my editor/publisher (Ruth Cavin) has the final say, so I said "sucks-boo to YOU, evil copy-editor-freelance person" and went straight to Ruth, who snorted and said, "tell them to go to hell and stet everything you want kept."

But I still have to go through this and correct everything.

Headache now.

David! 'allo, bebe.

Deena, composing something to you in email as we speak.

Deb, I'd offer hugs but it sounds like you need brass-knuckle backup instead. I've heard horror stories like this before, often enough that I fear for my manuscripts if and when they get sold.

Seriously, this is a freelancer picked from a pool of copy editors. Even Ruth says it looks as though I got a crappy one. She doesn't pick the copy editor in pre-production editing; the production department does that, so it's totally luck of the draw.

How do you get that job? I can poorly copyedit as well as the next guy!

David, what's scary is that I've come across far worse editors than this person. And I have my publisher behind me. Nothing will get changed unless I ok it, but crikey, can we stress me any more than we've done already?

How do you get that job? I can poorly copyedit as well as the next guy!

Bwah!

How annoying and presumptuous. Admittedly I know very little about copyeditors, but isn't it bizarre to bring something like that up after something has been accepted for publication?

David, what's scary is that I've come across far worse editors than this person.

That is scary.

I recall a story about a midlist horror writer whose ms was actually rewritten by a copy editor, to the extent that he couldn't fix it in the galleys. He was no longer midlist after that. The novel tanked and he hasn't been able to make a novel sale since.

How annoying and presumptuous. Admittedly I know very little about copyeditors, but isn't it bizarre to bring something like that up after something has been accepted for publication?

Well, I'm a copy editor for a newspaper, and Lord knows I've said some nasty things about some of what comes across my desk--including the senior journalist who misspelled "Worcester" in a story--but yeah, there's a big diff between a finished novel and newspaper copy. Still, all editors are opinionated. It's kind of in the evil contract job description.

Susan, this is the faceless nameless writer wanna-be who is responsible for checking for typos, stylstic glitches, spellings (oh, we've had the jolly little war over that) and whatnot, before it goes to galleys. I think I posted Ruth's story to me about the so-called expert on China, who didn't know who Sun Yat Sen was?

To be fair, this one made a couple of good catches; I accidentally dropped a crucial word while I was restructuring a sentence, for example, and since the word was "after", it made it look as though I thought Waterloo took place in 1816. So, useful for catches of that sort.

Questions about the writer's (or, more to the point, the characters') take on historical interests, for example, is NOT within the purview, and I rather pointedly suggested that if they felt they wanted a character who thought differently, they might consider creating their own, because these were mine and that's the way it is, period.

Victor, I edit rather a lot as well for other people, but I don't stick my own views into someone else's character's brain.

That just truly pisses me off.