Right after shitting all over academic publishing – a shit that needs taking – I’m happy to eat a bit of crow, if I may mix my metaphor.

I hereby extend membership in the Cool Club to the editor of AUMLA, Peter Goodall, who works in deadly and poisonous Southern Queensland. I sent in a submission and within twenty-four hours he sent me a reply:

Many thanks for your submission – it looks fascinating. I’ll arrange for it to be refereed, and I hope to have a verdict for you in about three months. Articles accepted are normally published within eighteen months.

One thing. It is on the long side for us. We normally seek articles between 4000-9000 words. I am prepared to interpret this with some latitude, but I may need to ask you to shorten it if it is accepted. I’ll wait until I receive reports.

If good Mr Goodall thinks (rightly) that the 9300 word behemoth he’s sending out to some unlucky Flinders AmLit lecturer is too long (it may well be both too long and too short) I can only explain myself by saying “that thing began its life as an eighteen-thousand word introduction and parts of two similarly-too-long chapters.”

In the end, I’ll cut what they ask me to cut. So long as they ask nice.