Thanks, I will check out that book.

I definitely wasted a lot of time and emotion on this. But it felt quite good when they actually paid :)

If I did end up in a similar situation again, regardless of what precautions I took, I think I could at least attempt to pull the same thing off with very little time/effort, having the knowledge of the process that I do now.

Btw, once I realized they weren't paying anytime soon, I of course did go ahead and find another gig (which actually paid).