RARGH.

[w_a_i_d]

So, I initially "finished" the book I recently sold late last summer. But we didn't sellit until February (and I didn't get paid until May, and am still due another chunk of cash from America) because my agent kept making me revise and tweak it, even when I was thinking "...surely it's at least sellable as it is? And I could do this editing with an

Comments

[snarryfool]

As dreadful as this must have been to live through, and it does sound absolutely dreadful, you enter realms of high comic wonder when you introduce the vision of a woman chasing mice around a solicitor's chambers with a riding crop in the middle of the night. Possibly you should be given a few rounds similar with your agent in the role of mouse.

[w_a_i_d]

Heh, yes. Especially as I was not actually trying to hit the mouse so much as scare it out of the room... She has apologised twice. Once in a slightly defensive "IT MUST HAVE BEEN WIZARDS" way and once properly. I am still pissed off but I guess I will get over it.

I did, at least, lose any propensity to jump and shriek if I saw a a mouse. Eventually a point comes where you just meet their eyes and are like, "Aww, come on. Not when the lights are on. Not when I'm right here. You are breaking the terms of our non-agression pact. Again."

[shezan]

THIS.

ION...

[wraithwitch]

An aside from your main point, but -

when someone thrusts a riding crop at you and says "Do you want this?" you say yes and put in the Weapons Corner along with the sword.

That makes me perversely happy - I thought I was the only one with a Weapons Corner - or for that matter a riding crop, randomly given for no good reason.

Yey!

Re: ION...

[w_a_i_d]

I did not think I was the necessarily the only person with a Weapons Corner but I did think I was the only person to whom people randomly offered riding crops because I ... give the impression of being someone who could benefit from having one? A quite ACCURATE impression, of course.

How are you? Aren't you ENGAGED?! I turn my back for five minutes...

Re: ION...

[wraithwitch]

I am quite certain dear girl that your verve is enhanced by the addition of a riding crop!

Ah, guilty as charged. *grins both happy and slightly sheepish*

Yeeeesss, I somehow am both engaged and quite soon to be married - it was actually a surprise to me too, I can tell you. It was also quite epic, fictional and crazy (biographically speaking) - as courtships go, which was doom and fun and wouldn't have worked any other way.

I'm just as pleased and excited to hear about you getting paid work and being a kickass author, because, well, you really do deserve to.
Blah, now I maybe sound like a valley-girl {you're like sooo cool and TOTALLY like er stuff and things} sorry, 2am, brain crash, neurons lose what little eloquence they ever had.

Should you be in london and feel like meeting for coffee (a bit odd, I know) then I'm about the next week before disappearing to the USA again. If not, that's fine too - I know there's a difference between 'typing friends' and 'talking friends' =)

Re: ION...

[w_a_i_d]

Thank you, I really don't think there s a bad way of telling me I'm cool.

It would be delightful to meet you! Does next week include next Saturday? I am in town then. (I am currently living in Hastings. After I got word to move out of the unheated office in the same month I moved into it, I took a hint and gave up. Trying to move back now.) I'm sure I could arrange something else if you're leaving then, however!

And many congratulations, I want to hear more of the Fun Doom Courtship.

[shezan]

1. Do tell us when to buy the book!
2. That story? Will be BRILLIANT in interviews when you plug the book. Seriously. The mouse, the riding crop, the agent making you lose 6 months, the unheated office building behind Kings Cross, EVERYTHING. I am a features writer and a columnist for a broadsheet, and BELIEVE me we pray for interviewees with lovely anecdotes like this. It will be picked up in later profiles of you from the mass of existing cuttings. I SWEAR IT WILL.

[w_a_i_d]

Heh -- thank you, that is a heartening way of looking at it, I guess. I will make sure my publicist knows! my editor already does, as I had to send her the latest draft all SO, FUNNY STORY.

[muffinbitch]

Oh dear, sorry it was a crap experience, but the mental image of you chasing mice with a riding crop is just too wonderful and hilarious! Oh well, at least you got some good stories out of it all? :D