Barb! Congrats!!!

Such an excellent day for Buffista authors! Congratulations, Sox, and Barb, that's awesome. Was this at BEA, or a separate thing?

I had a big line! And we ran out of books, which was wild, but also sort of sad, because there were about a dozen people left who looked totally bummed. And so many librarians, which is thrilling. (I never really expected the romances to be acquired for many libraries.)

I'm now exhausted and barely coherent. Lonnnnnng day. Oh, and I met P-C's author friend, Mira Grant!

OK got feedback from senior editor. Need to do one more round of revisions. But the feedback was she went over two chapters and pointed out where there poor transitions, and lack of clarity and so on.

And then she told me go through the rest of the book and find where the same problems were through out. And OK poor transitions I can find. But would it be unreasonable to ask her to go through the rest of the book and point out anything she finds unclear? Because while I understand that stuff that is clear to me might be unclear to a reader, it occurs to me that pointing out where this is happening is something an editor might do. Am I misunderstanding the role of an editor?

OH and total congrats to Barb! Been a bit distracted.

Congratulations Barb! That's awesome!

Go you Amy! Running out of books is a great problem to have.

Congratulations Barb!

That's wonderful, Barb!

And go, Sox!

But would it be unreasonable to ask her to go through the rest of the book and point out anything she finds unclear?

An editor should be editing your entire book, not a representative sample. She should absolutely be pointing out which parts she finds unclear, or thinks might be unclear to a reader.

Given the conversation in Natter (on Plan B), Maggie Steifvater's two recent blog posts about the publishing industry and writerly jealousy are really timely.

The second one is the one I linked -- the first one is linked within the post.

Some comments by JZ on her parish have inspired a bit of flash fiction.

The Cats and the Birdhouse.

There was once a mighty birdhouse built by One who greatly cared for his sparrows. And that birdhouse contained an endless source of sustenance that never ran out. And the sparrows visited it daily and were thereby nourished. But, cats soon noted the great sparrow gathering and made their homes there and preyed upon the sparrows and declared themselves Princes of the birdhouse.

And most of the sparrows soon took it for granted that a birdhouse should be surrounded by cats. After all it was a special birdhouse built by one who greatly cared for them. So they continued to feed there generation after generation. Both the sparrows and the cats ate their fill.

Occasionally a sparrow would say that it was not right that Princes of the birdhouse should prey upon those the birdhouse was built to nourish. But even those sparrows continued to flock there; for they were brave sparrows would not be driven away from a place built for them. Then one day an especially wise sparrow gathered the other sparrows unto her and said: "Let us seek nourishment somewhere else. For, lo, these many generations, the birdhouse has ceased to be a bird feeder and served as a cat feeder."