Author Hell.. well, editorial hell. Or... aw hell

[JackBQuick]

OMFG I typed a shit ton and accidentally swiped the bluetooth mouse and the whole thing disappeared. So TECH SUCKS.

 

Surgeons suck, especially when they don't listen to me and do things and then accuse me of abusing narcotic painkillers. Seriously?! Rich asshole, listen up. Had morphine 3X in my life, all three in the hospital when I was in blinding ass pass-out level pain. I don't take painkillers on the whole because they don't fucking work on me anyway. Plus they have this dumbassed arrogant attitude that gives them the moxie to tell me, this is a complication free procedure, what you're describing can't be happening. Well tell that to the ER doc who took one look at my knee and calf and drained 200 cc of blood out of it and tells me its a fucking normal complication, rare, but it can happen. Surgeon ends up next day draining 120CC blood out of my knee that filled up again in seven hours—and yells at me because he gives me the smallest single hit of lidocaine [sIC] so I'm climbing up the damned walls in pain. I usually can't do locals because I can take like ten doses and still feel every goddamned thing they're doing. But he uses that as a basis to tell That Woman I Live With I'm a drug abuser. Awesome. Surgeons can really suck.

 

It took me four weeks to get the surgery— two weeks over the 100% rapid recovery outcome for a dude my age with that injury. All because some rich asshole on a medical group's insurance panel says, it's not medically necessary. Seriously dipshit?! I RUN for a living. It's my fucking JOB.  So insurance people suck too.

 

Anyway, being injured for two months and another 4-6 weeks in PT & rehabbing the knee I should be able to go back to work just in time for league finals and HS season. Yay! An entire season without income also SUCKS! (more so when you suddenly have to hire a defense atty to protect your son).

 

So I had even more "free time" to work on the fiction author stuff. One of the four novels is a stretch piece. I've never written a Romance or Erotic Romance before. I did an initial round of queries to pubs, get the ole chestnut, 'love your work send us more... but this one we can't use right now.' yay. Whatevs. stock and trade. Not that big of a deal.

 

But I want this thing out there and off my shoulders. So I want to go the indie route but I need an indie editor. I need some beta readers too because I've been celibate against my will for 14 years so I have no fucking idea beyond my research (reading a shit ton of other people's EroRom work) what's "hot" to the median 39yo female reader and fan of EroRom.

 

I friend who's a copy editor some how decides after like a year of my going on about this friggin story asks me for the logline. I pitch it. She loved it. turns out she's a huge fan of EroRom. Her guilty pleasure YAY! progress, finally!

 

Chapter 3 is the big rip roaring floor furniture and chandelier chapter. and I have no idea if it's laughable or legit. She gets to the end of Chapter two and her life blows up. OFFS. So I get 8 beta readers. mostly not the demographic and only two admitted EroRom readers. One person stops at chap 1 and says, hate it. Awesome I figure I got 7 others and two I really need to listen to. Weeks, months go by. I send inquires of them. SILENCE.

 

So betas readers who say they want to read and don't  and don't even have the moxie to say, I can't do it just totally SUCK too.

 

The other three novels and now five shorts over the summer I have regular betas for. Suddenly this week as I'm ready to send them stuff they've been asking for all summer as I worked text me and say, 'sorry, I'm out, my life blew up (divorce dead parent, etc.).' Aw fuck. What can you do, right?

 

So a friend at a Con says, hey I know this editor who's between things and she loves your work. Awesome. I contact her. She gets back to me and says, I'll do it, but right now I have three friends dying of cancer in MT, VA and PA. Hopefully by December but I definitely want to do it. YAY.... December. I have four novels, five stories I'll have completely editor ready by Oct 1st.

 

Sure I'll still be pounding out content in the meantime, I'm a workaholic and I work around the clock since I can't work games until my knee is 100%. But the shorts could be out there now if I had the editorial support that I lost. At least one of the novels could be out there too. The production plan was Oct 1st but everyone's lives blew up.

 

That totally fucking SUCKS.

 

Oh yeah, my website disappears on me, and the ISP domain host can't figure it out and when I tried to reupload it something weird happened and it's inaccessible. Awesome. I meet with a designer friend who said four months ago she could help with the platform tech. YAY. This week she says she's retiring "to follow her bliss."

 

Jeebiz fuck me. Now that I've wasted an hour writing this rant, I better get back to work. When the dam finally breaks I don't want to be all, 'uh, i bailed out.' I just have no one to talk to so... yeah.

Edited September 30, 2014 by JackBQuick

[Chimako]

sounds like a suckfest.  it can only go up it sounds like.

[JackBQuick]

That's the hope. Sounds crass and I probably don't really mean it and would never say it outside CBs, but I hope that bigger time editor's friends go peacefully and soon because I so need her.

[Bad Haiku]

One scribbler to another:  Never ask your friends for any sort of polishing, editing, or first-read.  They'll never be honest.  Ever.

[JackBQuick]

Gotta use what ya got until ya earn enough to pay for the pro. That's where numbers come in. Easier to filter. But yeah.

[crtclms]

One scribbler to another:  Never ask your friends for any sort of polishing, editing, or first-read.  They'll never be honest.  Ever.

I copy-edited the galley proof of a short story for my best friend. Why are there so many errors in galley proofs, I thought they were almost ready to go? Anyway, he also copy-edited an article I had published in a Law Review. It helped that he is a phenomenal writer, and I am a better than average writer.

 

I copy-edited the first few chapters of his novel before I left Pittsburgh. Then when I bought the novel, it was eerie as hell to read those chapters, I'm not sure why.