Making mistakes - and important matches

Yesterday I made a big mistake.

I sent an email to my editor.

Now normally this isn't actually a mistake. I just wanted to let he rknow that I will be away for a few days next week. On Monday, with the BM, The Offspring and his partner, I'm heading for Dublin for a few days. The BM has to do research for the latest in the Grim and Gruesome series - the upcoming Foul Deeds and Suspicious Deaths in Dublin, so we're all going along with him. I shall meet up with delightful Abby Green and maybe also - fingers crossed - lovely Trish Wylie if she can drag herself away from the book she has to write. I'll be away from Tuesday to Frida

So I thought I'd let my editor know. After all, she had the Black Angel on her desk and she might want to let me know what she thinks. She might want to send me revisions - the dreaded 'tweaking' that is never really just a tweak. And we usually have to turn those around pretty fast. So I emailed to tell her.

And she emailed back to say she was reading the book already and was about halfway through. Which is a comment guaranteed to send any author into instant panic. We know that editors read our books - that's what we send then in for. But ee - or certainly I - don't want to know that she's reading it right this minute. I don't want to imagine her sitting at her desk with the manuscript in front of her - reading . . .

About halfway through . . .Where is about halfway through a 194 page manuscript? Page 97? 94? 99? Paranoid authors need to know these things. I was fighting the urge to open my copy of the ms and find page 90 something to try and imagine what she was reading - how she was thinking.

She also said she was very much enjoying herself. Now that of course means the Paranoid Author here is waiting for the But. 'I'm very much enjoying myself . . .but . . .'

It's that question that every other author at an earlier stage in their career always asks - and every other not yet published author always asks too. 'Does the waiting get any easier?'

Answer - no - and particularly not when you know that your editor is reading the damn thing right this minute!

On another topic - I made another mistake - I took Sid to the vet. Sid has a chronic mouth problem. apparently some cats react badly to their own teeth - they develop gingivitis - swollen and sore gums. Sid has had all his teeth out but he still gets chroinc sore gums. So every couple of months he needs to go to the vet and have a steroid injection to reduce the inflammation. I can tell when he needs the injection because he goes off his food - and Sid never goes off his food unless his mouth is sore!

So when he'd been off his food for a couple of days I took him to the vet. He had the injection, no problem. But now his mouth is so much better, he's back 'on' his food again - back with a vengeance. He wants to eat all day every day. And all night. After all, he missed a few meals while he wasn't feeling too great and that means he hasn't had his fair share of nice fishy cuts in jelly. And when he's hungry in the middle of the night he sits outside my bedroom window and YELLS. And I have to go down and let him in or he wakes up the neighbourhood. He's stuffed himself on fishy cuts now and is sleeping on the desk. Peace at last.

Now I'm off out for the day. I'm going to be the literary wife today. The BM is appearing at Wold Words Literature Festival in his guise as poet and author of An Angle from Above. So I'm going along as support team, 'bring your own audience' , bookstall manager and general helper.

Keep your fingers crossed that any one turns up - you the event is not on at the very best time this afternoon.

There's some ruby match on at the same time.