An update for freelancers and authors both. Particularly if you are female.
Jim wrote me email in early 2016 and was his usual rambly self. Except... he asked me for my professional rates. Said they were for his intern...
After a few emails, it became clear to me that he wasn't asking for a friend. He was arguing my professional rates with me. Short version -- they were "too high" combined with "don't you think?"
I am a professional copy editor. I've worked for Locus, Tor.com, Angry Robot Books, Wizards of the Coast, and many others.
I say this so that you know I have been paid by these people to do professional work. Not one of them ever suggested I was not a professional who should undercut myself and my rates.
This isn't my first year freelancing, not even close.
Posting this because I had wondered and worried about the reports at Wiscon. I didn't doubt any woman who reported her experiences; I doubted myself, and my own judgment, because JF had never done that to me. Maybe I was saved precisely because we're both garrulous people and he didn't look at me that way -- I dunno.
But I would not work with him. The 2016 experience taught me that he wasn't to be trusted as a professional and could not treat ME as a professional.
(Note: he'd been telling me stories of how other editors had claimed he'd undercut them in deals -- before he promptly tried to do the same to me. I'd say his subconscious was telegraphing like a MOFO.)