Progress Report June ’20
Turbulent times to say the least. What with one thing and another there have been many distractions from work over the last couple of months, but things crawl forward nonetheless.
The Trouble With Peace is now proof-read and its covers released, which means it’s absolutely, totally and completely done. Always a strange moment – there are many rounds of increasingly minor editing and revision on any book during which it becomes harder and harder to make changes, interspersed with longer and longer periods of working on other things, such that when the end finally comes it’s much more of a whimper than a bang – you generally reach a point where you just can’t stand to look at the damn thing any more while simultaneously being deeply worried that you’ve somehow fucked it up or left something out. You know that moment when you’re about to post a letter and pause, with it half-in the postbox, thinking – wait, should I be doing this? A bit like that x 1,000. But trust me the book’ll be great! Further details on that book over here, and it’s due out September 15th in the US and UK in hardcover, e-book, and audio. Holy crap that’s like only 11 weeks away. I’ve signed some 6,000 (rather beautiful) signature sheets for the US so there should be a fair amount of signed stock appearing over there in due course, and I believe I should be doing something similar for the UK market to counterbalance the lack of in-person events, which I’m assuming will still be on hold come September.
Meanwhile book 3, which is likely now to be called The Wisdom of Crowds, is getting close to finished. It’s had its character and setting passes and has now gone back to my editor for the line edit. Felt that I had to rework a few things for a more nuanced view in response to recent events – there’s a lot of stuff about popular revolt, demonstration and riot, even (I kid you not) the toppling of statues which was written a couple of years ago but now looks like almost too on-the-nose commentary about the present moment.
Once the book comes back, probably within a month or so, I’ll give it a final pass through for prose before it goes to be copy edited. It won’t be properly locked off for some months after – so there’ll be the chance to tweak it in reaction to anything that comes up about the second book. But that one should definitely follow a year later – September 2021. There was a time I was (hugely optimistically) hoping to finish this book before A Little Hatred came out, so we’re a good 6 months to a year behind, but, hey, stuff happens. The main thing is that they come out on time, and from that point of view everything looks good.
Looks like the next two month period is mostly going to be taken up with getting that last book finished, a couple of non-book things, and starting to think about what might come next, which honestly is something I’ve given pathetically little thought to so far. That may be some time coming….
The Trouble With Peace US Cover
And following on from last week’s UK Cover reveal, here’s the US version: With art once again by Sam Weber and design by Lauren Panepinto. A development on the theme, as you can see, and an interesting contrast with the UK approach… The book’s due to be published at the very same time as the […]
