Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

I just had a nice phone conversation with Dan, the Editor/CTO of the company I've been talking to (yes, that's what his business card says). He seemed quite pleased by the idea that I've got strong editorial skills as well as writing skills. The rates seem good; they'll pay 75% of their normal rate for the first ten hours, which is what he calls a "draft project" to make sure I'm what they're looking for, and 50% as a "research rate," which isn't the serious research I've been doing but means things like "read this book to get up to speed on XYZ." They'd also want up to two hours/week nonbillable to discuss how projects are going, if I'm not the project manager, but he said they don't use those set-aside hours most weeks. Project managers get less than writers/editors, but still a respectable rate: I think I made it clear that I'm willing to do that, but that writing and editing are my strong suits.

After I briefly described my background, he tossed me an absolute softball question: "What do you like to do?" I told him "I like finding things out and explaining them to people." And this looks like a job that will pay me to do that.

What's still up in the air, unfortunately, is how soon they'll have work, and how much. He seemed pretty optimistic about projects coming in soon, though. He's going to have his comptroller send me a contract, which he descrbed as "standard." Since he mentioned non-compete/non-solicitation clauses, I will be looking it over carefully.

That went quite well, I think. The woman I talked to was friendly and enthusiastic. She told me that the company probably won't need people right away, because they're waiting to get the okay from the clients on various projects. (Basically, they do documentation, white papers, etc. to order.) It was the sort of conversation that included questions like "You're a vi person, right?" and "Does Bruce still have the ponytail?" as well as giving me the chance to say that I would be quite happy to edit in Word, or other software if the client preferred, as well as on paper, and that I have lots of experience with Wikipedia.

The work would be from home, not in their office; she's not even near New York City herself, but near D.C., which explains why it was a phone interview. I asked about rates, and she told me a number (which I consider satisfactory) and said that was something to confirm with Dan (my original contact) or Ruth (who I think fills the role of H.R. there), one of whom will probably call me to follow up on our conversation. (Thus far, my interactions with them both have been by email.)