Forgetting the Whale (20th December 2011)

The 'Trade Paperback' version of Maximilian arrived through the post this week. This is an exciting moment for an author. It's the first time you get to lovingly flip through the pages of your book - or at least something that looks very much like it. The cover design is so seductive and clever. I know I've seen the cover artwork before, but I'd never thought what the back cover might look like. The artist has added a dramatic label that reads, 'DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME'. I didn't know he (or probably she) was going to do that - but I love it. It captures the reckless and futile essence of Max's project perfectly.


I hadn't appreciated the long, drawn-out process of publishing, and what this means to an author. By the time you send your manuscript off to the publisher, you've probably read and re-read it a dozen or more times. The early chapters you'll have read so often you can almost recite them. But then months pass. In my case, I sent Max away in May 2010. You start writing the next novel, and eventually, off that goes too. Your head is in a very different universe, grappling with a very different story. (By the time Maximilian reaches the bookstands in paperback, I should be in the middle of writing Book Four if I stay on timetable.) So you start to lose touch with Novel One. 


A couple of months ago, therefore, I re-read Maximilian. I thought I ought to have it fresh in my mind for conversations with the publisher. Mistake. A week or so later the detailed page edits arrived from Orion. Every page was a morass of scribbles, crossings-out, corrections, and edits. I had to read it all again. That was hard. Today I've had a cheerful email from the publisher. They'll send me the page edits to go though over Christmas. I'm going to have to read it again. I do wonder how writers get any time to read anyone else's work at all - you're so busy reading your own.


Hey ho. Only a few more shopping days until Christmas. I've abandoned 'The To Do List' as material for Book Three. No matter how hard I try I can't dismember the original screenplay format. So now I'm writing something darker. These are early days, so I shouldn't say much. And I'm only 3,000 words in. But, for the sake of honesty and posterity I shall drop in my working title. It is, 'Forgetting the Whale.'