When I Came West (Part Thirteen)
On January 11th, I heard from Matt saying that he was sorry to be delayed with his editing but that he was looking forward to getting into the manuscript in detail.
In early February he reported that he was half way through and felt that he had caught some matters that would improve the narrative and he also was going to offer some minor content recommendations. On February 9th, I had Matt's lengthy editorial report come via email and I waited for the hard copy of the manuscript with editing on the pages to arrive in the regular mail.
I queried Matt about any deadlines for my revised manuscript to be back at OU Press because I was deeply involved in revising my new novel, plus I had manuscript revisions to make for another memoir that was coming out from the University of New Mexico Press. Matt assured me there was no deadline, but as soon as I could resubmit the work he would begin searching for readers once more.
By the end of February I was able to report back to Matt that I had gotten a slow but sure start on my revisions, that I had completed the first chapter and felt that I had been able to understand the flow of his suggestions, but I needed a decoder ring for his handwriting!
Matt sent back plenty of encouragement and felt that we would have a stellar book to present to the approval committees in the end. He also added his good wishes to me for the fact that my poetry book Across the High Divide had just won the Western Writers of America Spur Award.
