'Time Bomb'
A place for Buffistas to discuss, beta and otherwise deal and dish on their non-fan fiction projects.
I'm fondling it like a baby. And Betsy's in the thanks (quite a few more of you will be in the thanks page for the next two, but this one predates my return to Buffistas). ANd and and - shit, I am a happy woman, I am.
Must ping Dan Kotler at Minotaur and tell him my book wants to have his babies.
WHOOHOO! Lovely!
On a much less cheery note, I was reading Neil Gaiman's blog and found this:
Gaiman mentions that his work for the Del Rey anthology *Shadows Over Baker Street* was copyedited without his knowledge, but that he's not greatly troubled by the edits. However, he links to a friend of his who is greatly troubled.
Yesterday I got my first look at /Shadows Over Baker Street/, the anthology of Lovecraftian Sherlock Holmes stories to which I contributed "The Drowned Geologist." My story is written entirely in epistollary form, a letter dating from 1898. As I always do when writing period fiction, I took great care to write in a voice suited to the time. This was, of course, a lot of trouble. And now I find that someone at Del Rey, who published the anthology, has "corrected" a good deal of the purposefully antiquated language and spelling in the piece. They didn't ask first. They didn't show me galleys. They just fucking did it. I've run into this sort of shit from Del Rey before. Worse, actually. My story "The King of Birds," first published in /The Crow: Shattered Lives and Broken Dreams/, was essentially /rewritten/ by someone at Del Rey. I entirely disowned the story as it appeared in the original hardback edition. It wasn't mine. It wasn't what I wrote, or what I sold them, or what I'd granted them permission to print under my name. I bitched a lot and the story was restored to /my/ text for the trade paperback. Anyway, it's always disappointing to see this, that some editorial feeb has taken the liberty of undoing something I've done, something I've done /on purpose/, and once again I'm tempted to disown the story until such time as it appears in the form in which I meant for it to be read. Indeed, it's tempting to post the text of the story to my website, so you have the choice of reading it as I meant it to be read. I think /Shadows Over Baker Street/ may be the last Del Rey anthology I agree to write for. The world is annoying enough without have to contend with publishers who think they're writers.
Copyediting is a part of life. Not getting to check the galleys? Terrifying. Del Rey? Slimy bastards.
Del Rey should be taken out and shot.
Man, I wonder if Mart saw that? CK is a good friend of hers.
CK is also a friend of Jilli's.
Betsy, I shrunk your links.
Well done, Plei.
I hope she takes a stick to these people. A big, legal stick.
WOO HOO!!! Congratulations, Deb!!!
Deb! I'm so excited about your book being in your hands.
Whoo, Deb! Yay for the beauty! Yay for the reality of the book in your hands!
First of all, all of you "real" novelists...new respect here.(Well, I always respected it, but I'll stop asking "Why doesn't Writer X get on with it and write a new book, already?) Plot Question: My character has just been caught in a Big Lie, and worse she came between a mother and her daughter to do it(I know. Danger! Danger, Will Robinson!) But the kid begged her to keep her secret, so she did. And it came out. And I want them to work it out, but not in a phony afterschool special way.