No Strings Attached

Comments

17 Responses to “Ask me a question”

1. Pamela Jarvinen says:

   May 17, 2004 at 11:29 am

   Kathleen, this is an easy one…
   Do you ever travel with Peter to any of the Comic-Cons?
   With all of our editorial expertise and function on the boards here, I am sure you would have your own groupie patrol lined up and waiting

2. Kathleen David says:

   May 17, 2004 at 12:07 pm

   I go to the conventions when I can. With kids in school and toddlers, we have to pick and choose. I will be at Shoreleave, DragonCon, and DreamCon. There maybe a few that I will add later. I am not going to San Diego this year but probably next year since I had plans for that week that are about 2 years old.
   Kath

3. dj says:

   May 17, 2004 at 12:38 pm

   As an editor, what popular contemporary genre novelists (and I’m thinking of folks like Stephen King, Clive Barker, Jean Auel, George RR Martin, etc.) do you think could benefit from better editing? And, as a follow-up question, what editorial advice would you give them?

   dj

4. Kathleen David says:

   May 17, 2004 at 12:55 pm

   DJ-
   I think a number of them could, but I am reluctant to name names since in this crazy industry I might be editing them now or in the future. One thing I would say to many of them would be what story are you trying to tell and do you think you have over thought your story. So many novelists are lost in the forest looking at only at the trees. An editor’s job is to look at the forest as well as the trees to make sure that the forest is health and not overrun.

5. Jonathan (the other one) says:

   May 17, 2004 at 3:37 pm

   “Please no Unladen Swallow questions or temporal physics. I can’t answer Star Wars questions either…”

   Gee, and I was going to ask you to estimate the mass of an unladen swallow caught up in a non-causistic temporal loop initiated by a rogue Jedi! Guess I’ll have to come up with another one…

   😉

6. Rob says:

   May 17, 2004 at 10:36 pm

   I was going to ask something extremly profound, but it left me and won’t be back til next week.

   So I’ll ask this: Have you ever had an work you’ve edited be so bad you’ve had to force yourself to finish it?

7. Tom Galloway says:

   May 18, 2004 at 12:06 am

   Think I asked this in the last thread, but after you’d stopped answering. Curious as to when you were at Yale. I doubt we overlapped, but I was there for a year in ’81-2 as a grad student in CS.

8. Alan Wilkinson says:

   May 18, 2004 at 6:10 am

   Kathleen, three questions (if I may be so greedy)

   1) Did/do you watch the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon (with Tiamat and Venger) and which weapon would you have if you had the choice?

   2) Do you play Duel Monsters (from Yu-Gi-Oh) or Duel Masters and (if yes to either) what deck do you use?

   3) …Ðámņ, forgot it. No matter.

9. Kathleen David says:

   May 18, 2004 at 8:54 am

   Jonathan (the other one)
   Why 42 of course

   Tom-
   I was there from 87-90 at the Drama School. Use to go to Pepe’s Pizza with Richard Pini when he would come through town.

   Alan-
   1)Yes I did watch the D&D cartoon and I wanted to be the acrobat.
   2) A couple of time and I find that a dark deck works best for me.
   3)OK but no questions for you One Year…Grin

10. Kathleen David says:

    May 18, 2004 at 8:59 am

    Rob-
    Well there were a lot of manuscripts we were looking at that I never made it to the end. Actual editing, I would say there was one book that was a disaster being to end but it was my job to make it better so I went through it and worked harder on that book than any other I had done before. I finally came to the conclusion that there was no saving it. So we paided the kill fee and let the manuscript go if the author wanted to try to get it published elsewhere. I do know from the grapevine that another version of the manuscript made the rounds with most of my edits and rewrites in place which according to one editor made it readable for a change. I don’t anyone else picked it up.

11. Tim Lynch says:

    May 18, 2004 at 9:55 am

    Pepe’s forever! (No, never went to Yale, but grew up close enough to New Haven that Pepe’s was something of a mainstay. To this day I tell students of mine who’re Yale-bound to stop off at Wooster St. their first week and dig into some Pepe’s goodness…)

    TWL

12. EClark1849 says:

    May 18, 2004 at 12:35 pm

    I have a question:

    How much do you charge to edit manuscript? I probably can’t afford you, but I’d like to at least know the going rate.

13. Tom Galloway says:

    May 18, 2004 at 1:48 pm

    Tsk, Tim. You should tell them about The Spot, the Emergency Pepe’s Backup with shorter lines (i.e. owned by the same folk, also on Wooster, so essentially the same pizza but without the cachet of the original so useful when lines at Pepe’s and Sally’s (OK, so I never took strong sides in that particular pizza battle) are too long).

    The other useful thing to know about Wooster is that Italian bakery down at the far end of the street that’s got to be a money laundering front given how low their prices are. Don’t recall the name though.

14. Tim Lynch says:

    May 18, 2004 at 3:59 pm

    I’ll tell ’em about Pepe’s. If they’re really that bright, they can figure out about The Spot on their own. 🙂

    TWL

15. Tom Galloway says:

    May 19, 2004 at 12:09 am

    Hey, they’re bright enough to get into Yale, not like it’s just some state school Ivy whose marching band is unoriginal enough to march in straight lines. 🙂

16. ObeeKris says:

    May 19, 2004 at 12:12 am

    Since this just passed, how was your Mother’s Day? Anybody do anything special for you?

17. Tim Lynch says:

    May 19, 2004 at 9:35 am

    “Hey, they’re bright enough to get into Yale…”

    coughcoughDubyacoughcough

    I’m sorry, you were saying?

    TWL
    who promises to behave himself after this, honest