Writer's Grove

It’s in da can! Sort of.

TRICKED got accepted today, so that gave me an excuse—if I needed one—to bust open some cider and quaff a proper flagon. This particular book was a tougher one to write and revise than the other three, from outline to end product, and I think it had quite a bit to do with the fact that it’s a “bridge book” as the good Dr. Nicole Peeler calls it: A book that ties off all the loose ends of one particular story arc while launching a completely new, batshit insane one. (That definition is mine, not hers, by the way. Hers would sound much more academic yet leave you feeling inexplicably titillated.)

This may inspire some of you to say, “Great! Ship it tomorrow, dude!” But oh, no. You don’t really want that.

I’m going to write a joint post on the revision process with my editor and post it in a couple/few weeks, because lots of people are probably unaware of how much revision goes into a book before it hits the shelves. And that brings me to the “sort of” part: “Accepted” doesn’t mean the book is finished and can be shipped tomorrow. There are still copy edits and then galley proofs to go through, and then there will be at least one, maybe two “cold” proofreads to do before they finally greenlight the text as approved for printing. And then, yeah. There’s OTHER STUFF. Like, the cover. I haven’t seen any sketches for the cover yet, though there’s still plenty of time. There is a completely über-nice lady at Random House who gets books ready for NetGalley and Amazon and Barnes & Noble and other electronic retailers. There are sales people who talk to buyer people over lunches drizzled in pork fat and they laugh heartily together and then decide how many copies they’re going to buy for their stores…which impacts visibility and sell-through numbers. (Is there a formula correlating the ratio of pork fat in these lunches with sales numbers? Only the mysterious people in Accounting know the truth.) There are people who smell of ink and paper and glue who print the books and pack them into boxes. Their fingers have fine white scars on them from years of paper cuts and for some reason, in my imagination, they all have mutton chop whiskers on their faces and tattoos high on their right shoulders. Anyway. There’s a lot of stuff to do still. And because there’s a lot of stuff, you’ll have to wait until April 24 to read this bad boy.

To make the wait happy: You will also get to read Chapter 1 of TRAPPED when you’ve finished TRICKED. Also, if I can manage it (emphasis on IF), there will be bonus content for the e-book version of TRICKED, just like there was for HOUNDED and HAMMERED.

Why can’t we print bonus stuff in the paperback version too? Excellent question! Well, it’s because getting stuff ready for print takes MONTHS, which is why you won’t see TRICKED until April 24 even though it’s close to being spiffy here in September. And it’s because I haven’t written the bonus stuff yet. :) I have, however, finished chapter 1 of TRAPPED, so it can be included.

That bonus story for HAMMERED, “A Test of Mettle,” told from Granuaile’s point of view while Atticus was in Asgard, wasn’t written until April of this year. I hadn’t even thought of it until then. By that time the book had been completely typeset, and there was no way I could include it in the print version. But the flexibility to include it electronically was so cool I couldn’t stand not including it, and the peeps at Del Rey were helpful with editing and formatting it for me. (I’ll include that story for free on my website in December, by the way.)

Someone asked me on Twitter why the bonus stuff wasn’t included in the audio versions—another great question! Again, it’s a question of timing, but also pesky things like money and contracts. When I slip that bonus stuff into the e-book versions, it’s truly a bonus for readers. I haven’t been paid diddly squat for those stories, and I’m cool with that because I just want to share some goodies about the Iron Druid world that wouldn’t get published otherwise. But if the audio company wants to include those stories in their releases, you can bet they won’t be able to get their reader to read it for free or get the studio to donate the studio time. That’s basically what it boils down to: e-books allow me to give stories away, but various realities of print and audio don’t.

Anyway—want to thank you for all the comments on the previous post regarding the store! I will be getting to work on those ideas soon. :) Thank you, too, for your patience waiting for the book! I’ve already started work on TRAPPED. You’ll notice the word meter over on the right-hand side.

Cheers!