Work and play

A quickie before I dive back into the copy edit of Naked City--a copy editing query is sooo ignorant that I just came to a stop.

I know there are great copy editors out there and I've worked with some but more often I've had copy editors who have no ear for voice, tone, or the difference among multiple stories in an anthology. I have to say that the CE on NK takes the cake.

She (and I just went back to the front of the ms and discovered it IS a she) queries the phrase "high yellow skin" saying "Not sure what is meant by 'high yellow'--does it mean dark yellow, bright yellow?".

Now even if she is so ignorant of the racial description that she's never heard of it, it's the very first item that comes up on google. She has used googled some of her fact checking (poorly for the most part) throughout the copy edit. I've googled all the addresses/names/brands etc she couldn't find or queried to change through HER googling and 95% of the time I've discovered the author is correct.

The play part is that I had some wonderful lunches and dinners last week with friends--twice at Tea and Sympathy, one of my favorite local restaurants (British) and watched some movies. Finished the fourth season of Dexter last night--thank you S, who gave away a MAJOR spoiler--although it was kind of foreshadowed. (I'm being ironic).

I also watched Waitress, as so-so little movie about a waitress in an abusive relationship (for way too many years) who is a marvel at creating pies. The sad thing is that the writer/director/co-star Adrienne Shelly, was murdered in my neighborhood right before her film was accepted by Sundance, where it won awards.

Spider Forest, a South Korean psychological thriller that I didn't like all that much either. A man wandering in a forest comes across a house where a man and woman are brutally murdered. Before he can escape back to civilization he's attacked by the murderer, left for dead, is hit by a car, and ends up in a coma. Complications ensue. Multiple levels of reality (not as well done as in Inception, although of course those were technologically induced, in this movie it's all brain trauma/memory, etc induced). I found it not only confusing (although I figured out certain things pretty quickly) but full of plot holes. Sorry, whoever recced it to me. It was a bust as far as I'm concerned.

Back to work.

Haunted Legends reviewed on the Black Glove website

Here's a brand new review of Haunted Legends at The Black Glove.
Just for the record, urban legends are often ghost stories but not always. The "Chucky" story by Ramsey is based on a real life murder of one child by two others. The story by Carrie Laben about the legendary "big bird" is based on sightings of a mysterious winged creature. I have a hard time getting my head around several reviewer complaints that 1) the stories aren't all ghost stories) or 2) the stories are all ghost stories --very odd ;-). In any case, I just hope readers will enjoy the book and find the stories scary--whether ghostly or not.