PROOF COPY

Just finished going thru the penultimate verion of THE DEMI-MONDE WINTER, this is the one which has been type-set.

It's quite a moment seeing your book in 'almost finished' form and realising what a beast it is - 512 pages no less. Maybe I should have cut harder! No matter, it's all too late now. That's the problem: every time I read the damned thing the tempation to tinker is almost overwhelming and so it proved. I sent Nick back 60-odd pages with requested tinkerings (plus the occasional typo!) but this is it now it. No more changes from here on in. WIWIWYR - What I've written is what you read.

Other news is that my editor - Nick Johnston - is departing Quercus for pastures legal. Shame - I though Nick did an excellent job in trimming down DM and was flexible-minded enough not to insist on flash-backs. I learnt an awful lot in the process. So to Nick: many thanks and the best of luck.

But the king is dead, long live the king!

I have a new editor - a chap named Peter Lavery - who (according to John) is 'the best in the business'. I'm looking forward to working with him.

Invent-10n

Just sent off the latest incarnation of my story 'Invent-10n' to my agent John and, fingers crossed, this more conventional iteration (v:5) might hit more of the right notes.

It's now a novella - which is defined as Wiki as coming in between 17,500 and 40,000 words - which tips the scales at just over 36,000. This has been a real labour of love - I started it over 2 years ago - and I only persisted because I really love my heroine, Jenni-Fur. She's a reBop refusenik who in the year 2020 is opposed to the spread of the PanOptika Surveillance System and the introduction of Patriot Implants (sort of supa-doopa RFIDs). Jenni-Fur is really fiery and as she talks jive I've had a lot of fun putting her dialogue together.

The image is Nigel's take on the first front cover and this shows a Polly (a polly-functional Digital Device to you cave dwellers out there) which predated the iPad by a couple of years. Just shows.

Anyway, in the words of Jenni-Fur, plant you now and dig you later.