The Never-ending Road
Being a writer is a journey, never a destination. Even the NYT authors will tell you, there is no such thing as “having arrived” –we are always en route. The road is long, hazardous, and not only full of curves, but also steep hills to climb and deep valleys. Oh, but the views from those hilltops! Exhilarating. And the rewards of the adventure? Immeasurable. It’s a journey well worth taking.
Sometimes I think it was no accident that my first published book was A PERILOUS JOURNEY. The metaphor is so appropriate for what writers go through. I’m delighted that this book is the first of my backlist titles to get a new life as an e-book in Berkley/Penguin/NAL’s new Intermix line. The book is scheduled for release on May 15, 2012. Can you tell I’m excited?
I’ve done a bit of re-editing for the new edition –I counted about two dozen changes. If I were inclined to step backwards on this road I’m on, I would probably rewrite a lot of the book. I wouldn’t change the characters or the story, but I’ve grown a lot as a writer since that first effort! Going back through it to prep it for this new incarnation, I have to say I still got caught up in the story and enjoyed it. Gillian and Rafferty still captured my heart the same way they did when they first walked in there. Not to mention Gillian’s twin brother, Gilbey, who I know even better now after writing his story! I’ll be blogging about that later on.
Gilbey’s story, told in AN UNLIKELY HERO, will be coming out next from Intermix, scheduled for July 2012, which will be here before we know it. I’ve just completed and turned in the re-edits for that one. I’m glad to say it held up well, also –at least for me! In the meantime, I will be working to reissue two more of my back list titles, THE CAPTAIN’S DILEMMA and THE LADY FROM SPAIN. I’m doing those two myself as an experiment and will report on how it works out. The covers will be very different from the Intermix style.
I would love to hear from you about whether the stories seem dated now. A PERILOUS JOURNEY was first published in 1994! Conventions that I broke with that story back then seem common enough now.
Have you been on a memorable journey? Do you find the metaphor applies to your life and career? Or is it just an empty cliché? I’ll be sharing random thoughts in this blog, and would love to have you do the same!