awake
dire_epiphany yesterday, a frantic plea for assistance. Apparently the printers of the Dragon*Con program book et al. bumped up their deadline, and they wanted all of the documents (guest bios, performer write-ups, etc.) today. She was expected to have 100+ pages of text edited and ready to go in like, negative time. So, Matthew and I were enlisted in the great editorial marathon to help get everything spell- and grammar-checked, and consistently formatted. Actually, I like editing. I thought it was fun.
dire_epiphany still did the lion's share (and we're talking gigantic, mammoth-eating cave lion here, not the little bitty modern-day lions). I hope she was able to get some sleep last night . . . But it really sunk home that Dragon*Con is right around the corner. Eep.
Writing Stuff:
Received yesterday:
-An email from Ann Crispin asking if I'd do a little talk on the business of submitting short stories during her Dragon*Con beginner's workshop. 1. I'm totally stoked she asked me. 2. I'm also totally terrified. Did I mention I've got an acute phobia of public speaking? I'm going to do it, but I'm waiting until I don't get the shakes when I think about it to reply to her email
- A request to synopsize another novelette for Scrybe Press. Going to work on that today.
- Checklist form reject from Highlights with "It is not suited to our present needs" checked. Probably just as well. Highlights buys all rights, and while they pay well for them, they don't pay as well as Cricket, who just buys first print and non-exclusive reprint rights. 'Course Cricket passed on this one. But after further consideration, I don't think I'm happy with the idea of parting with "all rights" to anything of mine. It also might be time to trunk this folk tale. But, on an amusing note, there were some checklist items that one normally doesn't see on genre forms. My favorite was "We do not publish material that requires or encourages a reader to mark on the pages"
- Two more critiques of "Caught Between" (including yours,
canadiansuzanne, thanks!) Still seems to be going over reasonably well. Coolness. 