The Montmaray Journals – Page 16

Miscellaneous Memoranda

– Those beautiful, elaborate paper sculptures that have been popping up in Edinburgh libraries seem to have come to an end, sadly. Thank you, Mysterious Sculptor, for sharing them with us.

– Which reminds me of my favourite entry in this year’s Creative Reading Prize in the Inkys – the amazing book sculpture (I’m not sure how else to describe it) of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Look at wee Harry, climbing through the tunnel with his broom, and Slytherin’s locket, and the detailed blurb on the back cover! Fabulous work, Rebecca. (And yes, my favourite entry last year was the French-knitted Harry Potter.)

– I love this: Lies I’ve Told My 3 Year Old Recently. Except the fourth one isn’t actually a lie. Tiny bears DO live in drain pipes.

– The FitzOsbornes don’t live in a drain pipe, but they are on the Kirkus Reviews Best Teen Books of 2011 list. However, in the interests of balance and to stop myself getting a big head, I should point out that not everyone liked The FitzOsbornes in Exile. This Goodreads reviewer, for example, who said:

“The book was very unrealistic. First off, the reactions to certain situation were very unnaturally calm and anyone had real emotion to any situation. The story wasn’t bad but it shouldn’t have been that long for such a plot that wasn’t that interesting. Overall, the book left me with a very empty feeling. Nothing was settled. You never found out what happened to everyone. I wouldn’t recommend this book to anyone.”

So, if you haven’t read any of my books: you’ve been warned.

– But if that warning doesn’t put you off, you still have time to enter my Montmaray book giveaway. Entries close on the 4th of December (which is actually the 5th of December for Australians).

A Brief History of Montmaray Book Giveaway

The Australian and North American publication dates for The FitzOsbornes at War have been announced, so to celebrate, I’m giving away some audiobooks and signed paperbacks of the first book in the series, A Brief History of Montmaray. I realise that most regular readers of this blog have already read it – but perhaps you borrowed it from the library and would like your very own signed copy? Perhaps you have a long car trip planned for the upcoming holidays, and would love to spend eight and a half hours listening to the book being read by Emma Bering? (And she does a brilliant job of reading it with all the different voices and accents, I must say.) Or perhaps you’d like to pass the book or audiobook on to a friend? Of course, people who aren’t regular readers of this blog are very welcome to enter, too.

If you’re one of the three winners, you can choose either a signed copy of the North American paperback edition (pictured above) or the North American audiobook (on seven compact discs). All you need to do is leave a comment below, telling us the title of a book that you’ve enjoyed and would recommend to other readers.

Here are the conditions of entry:

1. You can talk about any kind of book you’ve enjoyed – young adult, children’s, fiction, non-fiction. There are no wrong answers! Just write a line or two (or more, if you’d like) saying why you recommend the book to other readers.
2. This is an international giveaway. Anyone can enter.
3. Make sure the e-mail address you enter on the comment form is a valid one, so I can contact you if you win (no one will be able to see your e-mail address except me, and I won’t show it to anyone else). Please don’t include your real residential or postal address anywhere in the comment.
4. The three winners will be chosen at random, unless there are three or fewer comments – in which case, it won’t be random and all will have prizes.
5. Entries close on the 4th of December, 2011. The winners will be e-mailed then, and I will send off the winners’ books or audiobooks as soon as possible after that.

The FitzOsbornes At War

The publication date for the Australian edition of The Montmaray Journals, Book Three: The FitzOsbornes at War is:

2 April, 2012

Give or take a week or so. I mean, we’re not talking a Harry Potter-style release date here, with security guards monitoring the cartons of books, and an electronic billboard doing a countdown, and thousands of costumed fans lined up outside bookstores at midnight. (Although, if you want to dress up in a 1940s frock and take your Portuguese Water Dog on a leash when you buy your copy, you can, of course! And please send me a photograph.)

EDITED TO ADD: Current publication date for the North American edition is 9 October, 2012, but this could change!

Finished! Sort of . . .

I have finally finished the structural edit of The FitzOsbornes at War, and have sent it off to my publishers, and now I feel like this:

(Except I’m not really feeling decadent, just exhausted.)

For those who aren’t sure what a structural edit is, the nice people at Alien Onion have provided a helpful explanation here. In the case of The FitzOsbornes at War, my editors (two of them, one in Australia and one in the United States) sent me a long letter full of questions and suggestions, such as:

Could you explain in more detail about Toby’s plan to do [mysterious thing]?

and

It would be good if there was a scene that actually showed Sophie doing [important thing], instead of her merely talking about it, three months later.

and

It’s great that Toby tells Sophie all about [shockingly awful thing], but how come she never mentions it in her journal ever again?

and

It would be nice if that Big Declaration of Love scene was even more romantic and soppy.

And, because my editors are very efficient, they also pointed out some smaller issues that usually fall into the area of copy-editing. For example, Toby’s birthday suddenly moved from March to February, and Sophie’s favourite dress became mysteriously longer over the course of a year. Oops! All fixed now.

The manuscript now goes off to the copy-editors, who will pore over it with their magnifying glasses and identify all my narrative inconsistencies, historical errors and convoluted sentences, so that I can fix those, too. Then the whole thing goes off to the typesetters, who print out proofs, which are then proof-read by everyone, including me. So, as you can see, the book is practically done!

I’ve also had a look at three potential covers for the Australian paperback edition of The FitzOsbornes at War. They are all beautiful, and I have sent off my feedback on each one. I thought the first was a tiny bit too modern, the second was a little too similar to the first two Montmaray Journals books, but the third was just right. Well, with a few tiny tweaks . . . Anyway, we shall see.

I’ve also just heard back from my American editor, who has already read the revised final chapter of the new draft and it made her cry! (Because it was so emotionally-involving and heart-rending, not because the writing was so bad that she regretted having ever signed up the book in the first place.) Yes! My job is done!

Anatomy Of A Novel: A Brief History of Montmaray

The Alecton attempts to capture a giant squid off Tenerife in 1861. Illustration from Harper Lee's 'Sea Monsters Unmasked', London, 1884.

Simmone Howell has very kindly invited me to be part of her Anatomy of a Novel series, in which “authors (mostly Australian, mostly YA) dissect their own books for your delight”. It’s a really fascinating set of blog posts, by authors such as Melina Marchetta, Michael Pryor, Kirsty Murray and many more. I’ve written about the fictional and real-life inspirations for A Brief History of Montmaray here (and yes, one of those inspirations may possibly be the Giant Squid).

At the moment, I’m still stuck in my Editing Bunker, but I hope to emerge next week with some new blog posts.