Yesterday was better than today. It's not that today wasn't just as dull, because it was. However, the dullness had an oily sheen – and here I'm thinking of the oils of especially potent peppers – of anger, and that sorta spoiled the usual blandness one associates with the dull. But the weather was nice, at least. We didn't get any rain, and the temperature went above 80˚F.

I spent a chunk of the day checking over all the copyedits to "La Belle Fleur Sauvage," scribbling STET every few seconds (or so it seemed). And, likely, that accounted for a goodly chunk of the oily, angry sheen that stained the day. And it's why I really got nothing else but the copyedits done. On a related note, this is something I posted to Facebook yesterday, because I knew today was coming:

Of all the hideous indignities visited upon me as a writer in the last decade or so – and it's a long list – being expected to use "track changes" in MS Word to address copy-editors' (who no longer even know proper CE symbols) changes is likely the worst. And I refuse to accept this one. I've been fighting it now since 2015, I think, back with Dark Horse. I will not do it. I also don't do "electronic signatures." Ever.

This morning, I printed out the file, wrote my replies to the CE in ink on paper, and now I will mail it, by USPS, back to the publisher.

Tonight, we watched John Schlesinger's Midnight Cowboy (1969), because I hadn't seen it in a very long time and Spooky never had, and we followed it with Adam McKay's truly brilliant Vice (2018).

Later Taters,
CRK




1:27 p.m.