Dah dah de dah de…Do you remember that song? My mother used to rock my cradle to it..

Lies, apart, (fantasies, Susan, PLEASE!) I’m wondering if authors feel things more than they should

There I was, having lunch with friends who decided they were going to celebrate my USA Today moment with champagne, when my iphone trilled.
Better answer it, one friend suggested – might be Hollywood.

Yes, dear friends, we all laughed.

Do you feel okay? she pressed. Did you eat something?

A rather large slice of humble pie, I replied.
Yes. My revisions had just come in. And on my new phone they registered as 12 pages

Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat??????????????????????

I left them to go and do some serious shopping to dull the pain – ending up at Marks and Spencers – where it occurred to me, when I had passed the same smiling assistant ten times, that I had better *put* something in my trolley.
I grabbed things down from the shelves, wondering if they would notice if I was sick in their freezer.

My baby – my beloved baby *sniff sniff* had gone out into the world only to be rejected -
How could I cope *gulp*

By making a list, I concluded, adding some steel to my drooping gaze.

Having propped up my eyelids with girders, I paid and marched out to the car. Only to find a ticket stuck to the windscreen. Hey ho.

On arriving home and loading the revisions onto a ‘proper’ computer they had miraculously shrunk to 2 pages. Bigger screen, you see.

All that fuss – and a ticket – for nothing.

Courage, mes braves!

Though quite what the family is going to think of a birthday cake, three jars of strawberry jam and a giant-sized bag of chicken dippers for supper is anyone’s guess

Sxx