sj, honestly, they meant well. They weren't being defensive. They took my screaming at them very nicely. They made notes.

But I did have to piledrive several bits, and that was one of them.

I'm using more adverbish attributions in my Lucy-voice than in my regular third person one, because her grammatical structure is a little different than mine. Part of the whole 1810 effect I'm trying for. That being said, I'd still like to cut about half of them out. That "defensively" from tonight, for example. Lucy's boorish cousin Hal has just said something that embarassed her, but is true. She feels her face heat in a blush. She blurts out something we know she'd planned to leave unsaid. If that's not enough to tell readers our girl is on the defensive without an adverb, I'm not doing my job.

Bedtime for me--I've got an early meeting tomorrow, and I slept poorly last night.

Sleep like a lamb, Susan. Diana's on the mend.

Ok, now, some of you may know that sometime back, I posted my intention of creating a disability pornathology. But I've gotten stuck on the how... I have: my one example of vampire porn. And the intention to make it all-inclusive preference-wise, except with at least one disabled character. I can: Ask friends, and run an ad looking for contributors. But is that really what you do first?(See, that's my thing...I always get big ideas and no idea how to make them happen.) I can see myself getting buried in smut and somebody asking "How's it going?" and I'm saying "Um, give me a minute..." Of course that's one way to get stuff to read, but I don't want to be sloppy. I'm just talking out loud here, but feel free to comment.

I'm part of an erotica crit group on Yahoogroups (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/erosworkshop/) where people post calls for submissions. Can't predict what your response rate will be, though. If you get buried in smut, I hope it's good smut.

The nice man with the nice wife and the very bad novel sent me a cheque for $400. They're very nice.

If they ask for a full read when they've done making the changes, I'm passing them on to Plei and she will charge them.

because even though I expect the thing will be better after a rewrite?

Me no wanna.

The nice man with the nice wife and the very bad novel sent me a cheque for $400.

$400, and you got to yell at them. Go you.

I think they sent me $400 instead of the agreed-upon $100 because I yelled at them. That, and the fact that I knew what I was talking about and had the five book covers to prove it.

But I have now done my bit.

That, and the fact that I knew what I was talking about and had the five book covers to prove it.

I was in no way implying that you weren't worth every penny. In fact I think you probably deserved even more for the aggravation.

Hee! No, sj, that wasn't what I meant. They never actually got to see the book covers, anyway; it was all about the Eddie Izzard trick of looking and sounding fierce. But they knew that had they argued too hard, I might bring out Plainsong or Eyes and brandish it at them.

Truly, though, I think they want to make the novel better. That's a good thing.

I hope they do, too.