The Writing Life: Edits Approved, Sent Back for Strange Aeon/Dark of the Moon

Another quickie, though two or three days in the completing. Wednesday the email arrived from STRANGE AEON: 2021 (FEARFUL WISDOM): Welcome to the editing process. . . . Well, we know the routine, the story this time being “Dark of the Moon” (see July 31), originally published in THE CHILDREN OF CTHULU (Del Rey, 2002 — it being a reprint is important in that it means it’s been through a publisher’s edit before, with likely a minimum of changes to be asked for this time). The only problem: the vintage Computer Cave laptop wouldn’t open the file that came with it.

But that’s not new either, and more modern computers are at hand in the County Library. Except the next day, when I packed up an earlier printed copy (just in case) and, at the library, fired up their machine, the file still wouldn’t open! So all one could do was reply to the email, requesting perhaps an RTF or PDF file instead. Except. . . .

Except then I considered. Some of library’s terminals, installed at varying times, have on past occasions shown their own individual strangenesses. So, why not?, I tried another . . . and this one worked! I don’t say I know why, but all that’s important is that, as predicted, the changes and/or questions asked were few and, with only one request for a correction at my end, back the file went Thursday afternoon.