‘Tis done.
At 9:05pm I hit the last “send” key in Gmail, emailing my formatted-for-print 700-page edition of The Middle English Metrical Paraphrase of the Old Testament off to Russell Peck and the other good folks of the Middle English Texts Series. I don’t suspect that I’ll start getting corrections until the new year, and I’m frankly glad for the time off from it.
Seriously, my brain is fried. I spent all day today wrapping up a handful of notes that required combing through a two-inch thick stack of (sometimes badly) photocopied pages from a thoroughly massive Old French manuscript. And while I like manuscripts as much as the next medievalist (who am I kidding? I love manuscripts!), but what Old French I know is self-taught in times of research such as these. In other words, my French ain’t speedy. Add in the bad manuscript scans and you get magnifying glasses and two dictionaries in hand for hours and hours on end.
But done. Now a day or two of rest before a return to fiction — either a half-finished Science Fiction piece (a prequel to my Writers of the Future winning tale) or Caesarion. I suspect it’ll be the former first, but I daresay I’m in no present condition to make such decisions.
Congratulations!