Dear Joy,

Thank you very much once again for your kindness, support and understanding. I don’t know what, if anything, the future holds, but on this particular occasion, I sort of had enough … not that those kinds of things haven’t happened to me before, but perhaps I am getting older and less accommodating of brush, dismissive tones especially when obvious that not much thought has gone into it. Sounded to me as if positioning the pub as a ‘‘very disconcerting’’ automatically means edits must be made and accepted as suggested by a writer. Not in my world. I still adhere to J. D. Salinger’s words: ‘‘A writer serves the story without apology to competing claims.”

Thank you once again and

Best wishes,

D