Real quick, because I don’t want you to think I’ve forgotten about you. This has been an extremely difficult weekend. I have been up till 3:30 a.m. on Friday and Saturday nights, and didn’t go to bed from last night till 8:30 this morning. My book editor and I have been working like mad to finish the Dante book. For reasons too complicated to get into here, we faced a rock-hard early deadline. It’s 4pm this afternoon, so we’re going to be working till the very last second. I’ll have more to say about the process when we’re done, but let me say this right now:

I have seen this book go through three, literally, three, iterations in the past week. It has gone from “uhhhh, this is so sprawling and rough, how can this possibly get into publishable shape in only a week?” to being a very, very different work. This would not remotely have been possible if I had not been working with an extremely gifted editor. I was routinely put in awe by her talent and insight. She drew out of me the very best I had to give. I have never been tested as a writer like I have been on this book — again, for complicated reasons — and there is absolutely no question that getting this done, and done so well, would not have been possible if it had not been for her.

All week I’ve been thinking about what she saved me from. If I had not had an editor — I mean, if I had published it online, as a straight-to-e-book thing — it would have been an indescribably inferior work. This is no false modesty; I could show you the manuscript as it stood two weeks ago, and you would know what I meant.

I have to return right now to processing the track changes in the MS, creating chapter titles, and all that, but before my brains run out of my ears and/or they cart me off to the crazy farm because I’m hallucinating, I want to put in THREE CHEERS for traditional publishing. That is all.

More later. Thank you for your patience.