Well, I've finished editing what I have of the Blowfish anthology, and it's at 73,000 -- which is definitely at least 7K less than what I had, since I remember asking Christophe if we could push the word limit up from 80K to 90K. Which means I'm missing a minimum of two stories. Damn damn damn. I don't know what else to do at this point -- I put out the note on all the market lists I knew of. We're just going to have to go ahead and publish, and when it comes out, we'll get sad little notes from authors saying that they thought that story was accepted for the anthology? And we'll have to explain everything, and it'll just suck, because of course in addition to not selling to this anthology, that's like six months that the author hasn't been sending that story out elsewhere, thinking it had sold. Argh!!!I can probably cajole a 50% kill fee out of Christophe for those 2-3 stories if they do show up, but it's small compensation. :-(
On the very small plus side, this is nice for one author who I had originally wanted to include but didn't have space for; I've sent her a note asking if her long story is still available. But damn.
And damn me too, for being so bummed out and stressed about this whole thing that I've avoided thinking about it, and delayed almost two months on getting this dealt with -- edited and word counted and the counts to Christophe and the authors paid their money. I did remember one piece in the intervening time, so it wasn't entirely wasted, but really, I've been Ms. Sucky Editor on this project. Bad me. :-(
