Book Hell

Book Hell is more than just a state of mind. It's an actual place, I'm thinking it's somewhere south of Downey, Calif. (home of the Blasters and the Carpenters), where decent hard-working writers/wives/mothers go to get singed by the flames of burning manuscript pages that demand to proofed/revised/de-hyped/rewritten for the $%^&*^-th time. You don't actually drive to Book Hell, you descend there, sometime between the time you finish the line edit and the copy edited manuscript arrives. You show up with a blindfold on thinking, "C'mon, how long can this pass through the manuscript take?" and "What was the show that replaced 'Savannah' on Sunday when the WB launched its Monday night slate in 1996?" So that's where I spent my weekend, and probably most of next weekend too. I'm lucky my husband and daughter haven't thrown me out for good.