I’ve just had a friendly chat with a BAFTA official who said that–while members certainly have the right to make up their own mind about the issue–the Academy is very careful to preserve the anonymity of the voting process from their end, and they’d prefer that voters protect it from our end, as well.
This is certainly fair enough, and out of respect for that preference, I’ve removed the entries where I discuss the specifics of my voting. Henceforth, when I talk about the BAFTAs or any other award, I’ll be talking about the results in general, rather than my own votes. (And of course, it bears repeating that anything I say is my own opinion, and not the view of BAFTA, the WGA, or any other organization of which I’m a member. Except the Illuminati–I can definitely speak for them.)
So I guess this means that the officials of BAFTA are avid readers of your blog?
You can’t fool me. After you came to see the wisdom of my scathing comments on Episode III you took down your own comments in shame. There can be no other possible explanation.
Colin
PS — When is the Government Manual for New Wizards going to ship?
I’ll field this one, if I (ahem) “May” (as in May 1, 2006).
That’s the official publication date of WIZARDS. The book will be printed well before then, of course, and it might even be on bookstore shelves in April. SUPERHEROES had an anticipated pub date of October 1 but was on shelves in September. Does everyone remember that? Good times….
Jacob and I recently made our comprehensive comments on the so-called “first pages” (which isn’t a misnomer, despite my quotation marks). First pages (for all you laypersons) are the first fully laid-out pages with all of the bells and whistles and moons and stars (as opposed to the edited manuscript and the copyedited manuscript, both of which precede the first pages, in that order). The first pages are the pages as they will (more or less) look in the book. Except, of course, for the errors that crept in, all of which we identified and eliminated. (Although we didn’t find *all* of them in SUPERHEROES. There are two very, very minor errata. Can you find them?)
So now the first pages are back with our editrix, who is passing along our design fixes to the designers and presumably making the copy changes herself. The first pages are also being read by a proofreader. Good thing, too, because neither Jacob nor I knows how to spel.
In a few weeks, we’ll get the galley(s… I never know whether that word should be singular or plural. One usually hears mention of “galleys,” but it’s a single thing, a galley, short for “galley proof”), which is, essentially, the book as it will be printed, but bound with a sort of generic cover. But it’s as close to the real book as you can get, though we do have one final opportunity to make necessary fixes. We can’t start writing new jokes; that time has passed. We can only fix typos and remove any inadvertently anti-semitic remarks.
And then we wait for what will seem like another eternity… before we get our copies of the final product, THE GOVERNMENT MANUAL FOR NEW WIZARDS… which we will then hold in our grubby little hands, fondling the fruit of our labors, drooling on our names, praying that there are no embarassing errors, and hoping that everyone we know and millions of people we don’t will each buy several copies.