12 Books in 12 Months

As regular readers may be aware, I go on about how editing takes longer than first drafting to the point of being really quite boring.  It deserves attention, I trill, it is the most time consuming of all the things if you want to do it justice.

With that in mind, I have lately realised that it may have been a wee smidge Colossally Stupid to tell people who submitted their lovely entries to the book of fairytales for Homespun Theatre that I would get back to them all with a yay or nay in the two days following the submission deadline.  We got a bajillion entries and I didn’t get through them that fast, so by making that promise I turned myself into the horrible expletive of a person that interviews you for a job, promises imminent feedback and then leaves you hanging for a week.

But in my defence, picture the scene.  By 5pm on Friday I had just under 40 fairytales to read, and only two days to do it – plus the usual generic household chores one has of a weekend, and four days’ worth of NaNoWriMo to catch up on.  It was a classic example of No Forward Planning Whatsoever.

Well, that’s not strictly fair – I had hoped to get the Friday and Monday off work, but lack of staff meant that dream was not realised…  So it was more a case of Initial Attempts At Forward Planning Thwarted, and I didn’t have a Plan B.  You should always have a Plan B when you’re editor of an exciting new eBook, kids.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, I have been reading fairytales for three days, interspersed with Fear And Loathing in Las Vegas (I know right, another example of my brilliant timing), and my dreams have gone a little bit weird.  But on the plus side, I think I’ve now managed to email all the contributors (mainly at around 11.30 last night) to check they are still happy for us to use their work.  Now I just have to edit the stories a little, work out a running order and publish the thing to popular and critical acclaim.  Piece of cake.

By which I mean SLEEP IS FOR THE WEAK.