I write long books.
Dear people who enjoy reading my books: Please. When this one arrives, try to not finish it in one sitting and then bang out an email asking when my next book is going to come out.
This was dropped off on my doorstep yesterday.
It is 536 pages long, the final copyedited version of Passenger, which comes out this October.
This is the copy Liz (chimes!), my editor at Feiwel and Friends, gave me to put on THE STACK.
THE STACK is now up past my knee.
I am not short.
Having worked with more than one major publisher, I can say this now: Each publishing house has its own method and timeline for getting things done.
Maybe a lot of that has to do with the author, I can't say for certain. I have never had to change thousands of words on any manuscript I've ever had turned into a book. In fact, I have a manuscript now that was just recently finished and despite it being over 100,000 words, I honestly believe there is not even one typo in it.
There probably is. Who knows?
In any event, Passenger didn't even get an editorial letter, just a few emails here and there and then notes written by Liz (chimes!) in the margins of pages she sent back to me at the end of summer.
I know some people who write (or receive) editorial letters that are like 20 pages long.
Now that's an editorial letter!
An editorial letter that long had better contain specifics for unraveling the secrets of the universe.
Assuming I could ever get through an editorial letter in excess of 20 pages in length without driving out to the desert and shooting myself in the head, I would probably first have to translate it into boyspeak by putting individual steps on numbered index cards.
Actually, this is what I always have to do with editorial letters.
They tend to be so rambling and holistic, and shit like that.
I am, after all, a boy, and therefore incapable of sitting still and paying attention to more than ONE THING at a time.
[that is a joke. see yesterday's post about brains and shit like that.]
Of course I can pay attention to more than one thing at a time!
You should see me text and drive!
Actually, the family in the crosswalk yesterday should have seen me text and drive.
Poor family.
Natural Selection favors distracted drivers!
Where was I?
So. Now I have to read through this 536-page monster and see all the red marks my favorite copyeditor used to lasso the mutations of language that bubble to the surface of the simmering cesspool in my distracted brain.
At this point, the manuscript will go pretty seamlessly, like a greased cadaver on a pool slide, into the ARC production, and that will be that.
Oh... and, by the way, to those devoted readers who invariably will read this monster in one sitting: The NEXT book, Winger, will be out about 6 months after Passenger.
