The Black Hole

So, where is Yvonne, you may wonder? Stringing festive lights and building gingerbread houses?

Not exactly. She’s in the black hole of revision and she isn’t speaking to me. You know how women giving birth sometimes turn on their husbands in savage rage for getting them into that situation? It can be like that with co-authors, too.

Some writers enjoy the revision stage. We’re not among them. Fortunately, we’ve gotten off lucky with most of our books, and normally have light revisions. This is probably because there are two of us: the two-headed monster goes over a manuscript so many times that we catch most big problems before an editor has to point them out.

This time we ran into a problem. The book had a mind of its own and along the way, we sprouted a third head. The new one looked like Medusa, with snakes dancing all over.

Yvonne bravely took the first shift. Down she went into the hole, armed with a machete to decapitate the third head and kill as many snakes as possible. It’s a disgusting job, but someone has to do it.

My role at this stage is to stand beside the hole shouting encouragement and helpful tips: “Don’t kill Brody! We need him.” Or, “Try a scavenger hunt! Everyone loves a scavenger hunt!”

Yvonne may not be speaking, but she can still flip me the bird. I don’t have to see it to know it’s there.

Yesterday, she emerged from the black hole with 70 pages and a sour expression. “I’m going to decorate my Christmas tree,” she said, handing me our baby. “Good luck with this.”

I waited till I had a grande mocha in hand before uncovering it. It’s a good thing I was at Starbucks or I might have screamed: the baby is unrecognizable. Limbs were severed and major organs replaced. There’s blood on every page.


At the moment, this is one ugly baby. But on the bright side, most of the snakes are gone.

Now I must descend into the black hole of revision and charm the rest of them. Hopefully Yvonne can locate a pungi on eBay—the wind instrument made from a gourd that snake charmers use—and toss it down to me.

If she knocks me out, all the better. I don’t want to be awake for this.