Not sure a modern Frenchman or Frenchwoman (hereby known as Frankistas) would know anyway. After all, how many modern English speakers are experts in 14th century English?

look at the gorgeous medieval woodcut Nic found!

I am in love with the copy editor they gave me this time. He's brilliant, he's English (Thank you, Jebus!) and we are moment for moment in synch on corrections. I've done a third of them already - not actually a lot of changes, but doing a page by page read.

Know what? Famous Flower of Serving Men is a fucking brilliant book. I'm a damned good writer, but I can't believe I pulled this one off. It's making me very very happy.

It's making me very very happy.

Yay for the edits, yay for the happy, and it definitely is brilliant.

Do you have plans already for the cover?

(nodding furiously) Oh yes. Brilliant, definitely.

Ooh, what Nilly said. (Hi, Nilly!) Do you know what the cover will look like?

Doesn't it feel good when you read something months later and can still think, "By God, I nailed it."

Here's my sleep drabble. This one is way outside my comfort zone, but here it is.

She had always slept on her stomach, balling up two pillows to keep her body off the bed. It was bad for her back, she knew, but the comfort of holding something soft helped coax sleep to come.

She lay on her back, narrow pieces of tape lined up across her chest. Two bulbs, half full of cherry-red liquid, were pinned to her gown, chosen for its snaps up the front. She shifted and felt a sharp tug on a tube coming out of her skin.

If I could only sleep on my stomach, she thought, everything would be okay.

Oh, Ginger. That's heartbreaking.

Deb, if you haven't found an answer to your question about the French yet, you might find it here:

[link]

If not, you might find useful links on one of these sites: [link] [link]

Ye. Still hate dreaming. A sleep drabble.

It brings out my insecurities. It makes me feel that what’s real, is not. It preys on my weaknesses. I am sad, upset, crying. I feel not worthy. I feel unloved. I am betrayed and lost. It is happening again. I am unchosen, I am not right and he leaves me.

Even when I know it is all bullshit and he does love me and does choose me and he is here and he is staying, sleep has the power to change it. It can make me feel small and alone and scared.

I need sleep. It helps me believe.

Is BtVS not shown in France?

It is. Sometimes subtitled, sometimes dubbed. In the dubbed version, Xander becomes Alex. Also, Mr. Pointy is M. Pointu. (A few years ago, when I hadn't taken any French classes in a year and was starting to feel like I was forgetting it, I started reading random French websites to keep the language in my brain, and hit on a French site that included, among other things, Freudian analysis of many characters. M. Pointu was mentioned frequently.)

The table of contents from a book on publishing from 1928. Plus ca change, as they say ...

The ruinous policy of large royalities -- Why "bad" novels succeed and "good" ones fail -- Are authors an irritable tribe? -- Has publishing become commercialized? -- Has the unknown author a chance? -- The printer who issues books at the author's expense -- The advertising of books still experimental -- The story of a book from author to reader -- The limits of the book market -- Plain words to the authors and publishers -- On editorship -- On writing.

Thanks, all. The cover is supposedly following the theme set in Weaver, peeling back the page to reveal the history. I think it's going to be a theatre. I do trust them implicitly when it comes to covers -they've never let me down yet.

Aimee, that piece had a nice duality to it.

Ginger, oh Jesus, that's powerful and harsh. That one's a woodcut, all by itself. I know just what you mean, and also what you mean about it being outside your comfort zone; two of mine were, as well. But it's oddly cathartic, isn't it?

(deep breath)

You know what I find interesting? Looking at the really raw emotions in some of these, and seeing where we, as writers, distance ourselves for safety. Mine are all first person - this is less brave than it is almost habit, because I forced myself to learn how to do it as a kind of self-induced therapy for grief, years ago. Ginger is observing the woman in the hospital bed, third person - someone who didn't know Ginger wouldn't know whether it was personal experience (although personally I think it's powerful enough to be clear that it's the writer doing, rather than the writer watching) and yet, even with the safety buffer, the piece is wrenching and real.

There have been some intensely powerful things written. Once again, Teppy needs cookies and hot and cold dancing boys and whatever else she'd like to make her happy, by way of thanks for this community.

Off to edit. Still have 170 or so pages to do. I want to shame them by getting it turned around and back out in one day.

edit: D'OH! Deena, those links are bookmarked. Heading to read in about five minutes. You ROCK.

Aimee, that piece had a nice duality to it.

Thanks. Def outside my comfort zone since my dreams almost always deal with stuff I'd rather die than talk about.

Writing the drabbles has been so good for me these past 2 weeks. I've taken them to my therapist and we're working the writing into my homework. She's also giving me assignments on a weekly basis. This week, as inspired by the drabble on my OBC, we are going to be working on that for the next while as he seems to be the source of my rage.

Anyway, it feels so good to write again and I'm pissed I ever gave it up.