My biggest problem was not with the story suggestions. I realize that a character who dies the same page he's introduced doesn't really require a back story, so I have no problem deleting that stuff. No... my problem was with the grammatical fixes. The rules of English are constantly changing. I still go by the Chicago manual style of writing, which means italicized titles and apostrophe-"S" possessives with a singular name, regardless of whether or not the name ends in "S."With the new trends in writing, any name that end in "S" is treated as the plural form, with a simple apostrophe as the possessive form. One of Firefly & Wisp's editors changed my "Simmons's" to "Simmons'."
The pic to the left calmed me down. It's hard to be pissed off after seeing Batman on a unicorn surrounded by rainbows, a purple ocean, and dolphins. The calmness told me that it's okay to "murder your darlings" (as I believe Oscar Wilde said).
Like I said, this was one of the few times I was corrected by editors, so I had never been fond of editing out stuff that I felt necessary to the stories. However, publishing is a different ballgame, so I must be willing to do so. According to F&W editor Danielle Zwissler, the first 40 pages are full of changes, so I'll murder the shit out of those darlings. Deleting should be the easy part; adding suggested new material, however, after so many years of THE BLOCK... probably not so much. I suppose it's the first step to recovery, and if I can't do that, the book won't be out in October after all. So, it's time to pick up the editorial machete and hack my way to perfection!