copy edits

I suspect, but I do not know for certain, that other writers do the same thing I do when working on copy edits, which is to say, they talk back at the copy editor. “How *dare* you remove my italics,” I say (out loud). (This is an important moment for this character. It *requires* italics.) “No,” I say out loud, “I don’t *want* an em-dash there.” (God knows if I did I’d have put one in. I am not afraid of em-dashes. Or semi-colons. Or colons. Or serial commas.) And so on and so forth, page after page, muttering at someone thousands of miles away from me. Thus far I have refrained from calling the CE any names. My mother, I’m afraid, likes reading my copy-edited manuscripts after I’ve gone through them, because of the vitriolic notes I sometimes leave in the margins (on manuscripts I don’t actually have to return, obviously; I wouldn’t do that if the CE was going to *read* it).

Also, I require grep for my published novels so I can check them easily to find out things like whether or not I let the CE change “spy-master” to “spymaster” in THE QUEEN’S BASTARD, so those words are consistent from one book to another. (That one I found easily, actually, and I did go with the change. But mostly I need grep.)

The weekend was good. We got quite a bit of Christmas shopping done, and enjoyed ourselves at the convention. We saw for the first time since we moved, had dinner with and Kate and others, saw and I went into Chapters to sign books for them, and we got to catch up with the ever-charming /Paul Cornell and his as-far-as-I-know blogless wife, whom we hadn’t seen in far too long. At one of the writing comics panels I was asking about how to break into Marvel, and Paul gave “Take A Chance” a shout-out, which was really, really nice of him, and which, as a piece of information, stuck with enough of the pros that some of them talked to me about it, so that was very cool.

Also caught up with C.B. Cebulski, who is (among other things) Marvel’s talent search guy and a writer of fine comics himself. I’d run into him at San Diego, and although I didn’t ever manage to buy him the drink I’d promised at DCC over the weekend, he none-the-less got interested in Chance and actively admired Ardian’s work in the first issue (of which I had a print-out), which made me very happy. (Have I mentioned recently how *proud* I am of Ardian?) So it was a good and worthwhile weekend, and I did indeed learn things about pitching to Marvel, which makes me *very* happy. (I know. I know. Slowing down; explain it to me again?) But yeah. Good weekend.

Oh, and the hotel we stayed at, the Royal Dublin, which is right on O’Connell Street, was *quiet*. It was *amazing*. *two thumbs up to them*!

miles to Dunharrow: 42.5