A little drama took place here over the weekend, when the editor at Constant Content found a web link in my submitted article. This is not allowed, so I received their standard email saying they could not accept my piece for that reason. But I was puzzled, as I know the rules and definitely hadn’t put in any links.

Had they made a mistake? I posted my question in the forum and got an almost immediate reply saying no mistake, I should check it again. By moving my cursor over every word I eventually found it and worked out what had happened.

Later I found another message suggesting it might help me find it if I highlighted the whole document. That Ed over there is amazing. I’d have thought it above and beyond his duty to work in the forums to try and help authors even on a Sunday.

Just in case you are dying to know how that link got in there, I will now explain. When I do my online research, I often cut and paste info I think will be helpful into my research Word document, adding the url of the page I found it on. When I write my own article, I paste in foreign names from there, to make sure I get them right.

That’s all it was. One of those darn names had a hyperlink on it. Yet another thing to check when proofing in future.

Anyway, I was able to delete the link, but it took a while before I could resubmit. Kaspersky suddenly screamed at me that someone was trying to insert a virus into my system. I gave it the usual instructions to block it, but it obviously wasn’t quick enough. I was working in Firefox but suddenly up popped IE, then again, and again, and again.

I turned off my broadband and turned on my SuperAntiSpyware, yet again. Forty minutes later it had dealt with about 93 suspicious files, including about nine Trojans. No further problems.

So I was able to resubmit my article last night and at 6 am today I found it had been accepted and was able to offer it to the customer. Finger crossed, it will be accepted.