I just got a call from my publisher. My bid to rewrite the current book for which I’m consultant has been accepted — sort of. They’re splitting the book up: the regular copyeditor answers all the obvious (and justifiably snarky) queries she put in for the author to clean up, and I get The Ultimate Chapter From Hell to change, alter, rewrite, and otherwise make professional and appropriate.

It’s not the answer I was hoping for, but I’ll take it. This abnormally long chapter constitutes a third of the book, after all. Dividing the rewrite gets things done twice as fast, and this book is already late; it ought to have been in production by now.