Dear Reader
There comes a point in establishing a publishing house when somebody asks when the books will be ready, and you find yourself explaining what you have done about the email.
I have reached that point. Please admire my restraint.
Here at Emotional Support Books, the publishing-house-on-a-desk is having its plumbing installed. Mail systems, mailing lists, connections between things which, in the demonstration, connected themselves. Agents are constructing a dashboard so that I can see what is happening.
At present I can see that we need a dashboard.
The arrangements remain provisional. In offices where I once worked, we managed this with pencilled notices and a woman called Honey who knew everything. Honey was never paid enough.
Meanwhile, manuscripts are receiving attention.
Mawson Dickson’s first draft has gone back with notes about pacing. It’s a good draft, but it gives too much away too soon. A cosy mystery reader arrives with considerable experience and a perfectly serviceable brain. Give them too much and they will identify your murderer, finish their tea, and spend the remaining chapters wondering when your detective intends to catch up.
We owe them a better afternoon than that.
An author once argued that readers would enjoy having their suspicions confirmed. Certainly, I said. But perhaps not for the final hundred pages.
The remedy requires care. Move a revelation and you may need to rebuild the conversation that earns it. Strengthen one suspect and another begins to look decorative. You read again, preferably after leaving the manuscript alone long enough to forget what you meant to fix.
That is the work now on Mawson’s desk. Mine will receive it again.
Skyring’s first two chapters show great promise, a phrase I use sparingly because authors remember it and quote it back when you question chapter seven.
There is a considerable amount of research ahead. A novel set in the Great War requires more than mud, courage and an aeroplane with an unfortunate engine. The details must hold up. Then comes the delicate business of persuading the author that some of their hard-won knowledge belongs in the filing cabinet.
I have removed beautifully researched paragraphs with genuine regret. Occasionally my own.
But these opening chapters make me want to know what happens next. After this many years of reading submissions, I still trust that feeling.
So the manuscripts are being revised, the systems assembled, and your editor is learning more about mail delivery than anyone who once had a mail boy should reasonably be expected to know.
I had imagined automation would arrive carrying my slippers. So far it has arrived with questions.
No publication date to announce today. I have sat through enough production meetings to know the difference between a schedule and a wish written in boxes.
Hang on, dear reader. The books are coming along.
— DK