Monday, April 13, 2009

Work nightmare

(reposted belatedly from Blue Rose Girls)

My assistant Connie and I had just opened up a brand-new box full of copies of Grace's upcoming book, Where the Mountain Meets the Moon (pub date: June 2009). It was absolutely beautiful, and the gold ink on the cover was really striking...but then I noticed that the book had somehow been printed with the wrong title!!! Printed on the cover in brilliant, beautiful gold ink was one of the other titles Grace had tossed around when we were brainstorming different title ideas.

Before Grace completely panics, I have to say that this was all in a dream I had Friday night.

So, in my dream, it took me a while to realize what had happened. I freaked out and said to Connie in a panicked voice, "It has the wrong title!!!!" I had no idea how this could have happened. The ARCs had all been printed with the right title, we had all reviewed the proofs and the title had been right then. I frantically checked the interior, and the title was okay there, so it was just the jacket. That was a small relief. We started running around the office find the appropriate people to notify, and eventually determined that we'd have to print the jackets over...

And that's when I woke up. What a relief.

I'm not surprised I had this dream. Last week was a stressful work week (unrelated to Grace's book), we've had some printing problems with finished books lately (one book had been printed without the last 16 pages, another had the author's byline mysteriously gone from the front cover--in both cases, it was deemed to be the printer's error, and the books were reprinted at no cost to us--whew!) and I also found out that Where the Mountain Meets the Moon is printing on Tuesday (yay!). So, everything combined, it's somewhat natural that everything going on resulted in the nightmare. But man, I'm going to be nervous the first time I see a finished copy of the book! But the designer, the brilliant Alison Impey, will be going on press to make sure that the colors are just right--and I'm sure she'd notice if the title was wrong. Grace, don't worry, we'll get it right!

What types of anxiety work dreams do you all have? I have then all the time, sometimes funny, sometimes scary.

3 comments:

SWILUA said...

before the start of a new semester, I invariably have a dream where it's the first day of class but the students aren't listening to me and are being all crazy/naughty; so in the dream (and I only act like this in dreams, I can't even yell at my kids in English--if/when I do yell, it comes out in Spanish, which I can't explain!) I start swearing and then I start throwing desks at people and through windows and I yell at the top of my lungs at them. they usually just ignore me, which just makes me sputter awake all ticked off.

Anonymous said...

I have the one where I'm teaching a class on a subject I don't understand. So, just like in the real world, I make it all up. And it works! But then I turn around and the professor is standing behind me, slooooowly shaking her head.

Shelli (srjohannes) said...

last night I had a drteam about an agent trying to date me (i wish :)and a published author was giving me advice on my WIP. it took place in Florida - dont know why and I was looking for a place to rent. all wierd i know.