Monday 22 February 2010

Let's do the timewarp agaiiiinnn....

A little while back, I waxed lyrical on the strange timewarp that published authors live in while writing a series of books. At the time, I think I was writing book five in the Joe Hunter series, while working on edits of book four and page proofs of book three, so was juggling the past present and future books all at the same time.

Well, now it gets even more confusing.

Book 2, Judgement and Wrath, is already out in hardback (since last October in fact), and will be published here in the UK in paperback on March 18th. I'm currently gearing up for the launch of book 3 - Slash and Burn - which will hit the UK shelves on 1st April. At the same time, I've just delivered book 5 - Blood and Ashes - to my publisher, and have worked on the page proofs of book 4 - Cut and Run. And, yes, guess what, I've already bashed on with book 6 in the series and am forging ahead with the rough draft. Basically, what I'm trying to say is that I'm juggling even more balls in the air than ever before. Confused yet?

This is where it gets really weird. Like I said, book 2 is already on the shelves in the UK, but in the USA we've just hit the page proofs stage for the same book, so yes, I'm going to be going back to Dantalion again, to do a read through and corrections on that to get it ready for publication this summer. In my head I've moved on from Judgement and Wrath, so for probably the first time, I think I'll be able to read it through with a fresh and objective eye. I'm looking forward to it, and hopefully enjoying it as much as everyone else seems to have. It's going to be a tad odd. I wrote the book in English-English, but this edition has been edited to American-English, and I look forward to spotting and comparing the changes. As ever, I trust my editor at William Morrow to have done an exemplary job and can't await to have the finished book in my hands.

Here for your delectation is what the finished book should look like when it hits the US shelves this summer:


5 comments:

Unknown said...

Utterly befuddled, but would swap places at the drop of a hat!

Author said...

ABSOLUTELY NOT!!!

David Barber said...

I'm with Col on that one. ;-)

I get confused what job I'm starting next and how much I've quoted, let alone the two or three short stories I have going round in my head. Hats off to you mate.

Regards, David.

Author said...

'S Nothing.

cheers, Dave.

Quick up-date. I'm working on the US copy edit now, and it's not that different from the Brit version - just the occasiaonal word here and there.

The oddest difference I find is that Brit's travel forwards, backwards and towards, while American's travel forward, backward and toward. Such a trivial thing, but you'd be surprised how many times these three words appear in a manuscript (especially mine).

Paul Grzegorzek said...

An American friend was reading Fubar the other day and emailed me to tell me that i shouldn't use the word "whilst", but use "while" instead. Apparently "Whilst" is seen as snobby and antiquated. And he also got very confused about the word Numpty. Apparently it doesn't translate...