Well, I send the b*&k back to casacorona and arcaedia. It may be a reeking pile of shirt (actually, I'm pretty sure that all I've done at this point is make it worse. It may have been incomprehensible before: now I suspect it's incomprehensible, boring, and clunky) but right now, it's not my problem.

I think I need a new line of work.

Because I'm not sure how many more times I can work on a project I hate this much and stay sane.

Don't get me wrong: I didn't hate this book when I first wrote it. Actually, at the time, I thought it was the best thing I'd written, and I might have been right. But since then, it's been through about nine revisions, four or five of which were major rewrites (complete POV changes, restructurings, alternate plot directions.)

I hate it. I don't even remember what it's about any more, and I certainly have no fucking clue if there's any merit in it. Honestly, I suspect not. (I hate it slightly more at this point than I hate Blood & Iron or Dust, and for those of you who sat through my horrendous screaming about those projects, you have an idea how much that is. I hate this book most of anything I have ever written, which is a lot of hate, because I am one of the class of artists who really, really, sublimely hates her own work.)

Add that to the fact that there was a lot of personal trauma involved, for me, in writing this book, and--really, I could never read a page of this crap again, and die happy. What a hill of tripe.

I swear, if this fucker comes back to me again for another major revision--which it probably will, because I can't imagine that anybody would publish a pile of shit like this--I'm just giving the money back. They do not pay me enough to deal with this level of emotional trauma.

I suspect worse books have been published. I suspect worse books have made it to the NYT best-seller list. But you know what? I didn't have to read those books twenty or thirty times.

Listen to me, kids. Go to school to be chiropractors. The pay is better, and the work is nicer.