Even More Waiting
11 June 2009 in Lifelines Mentoring The Mistress of Nothing | Comments (2)
News in just now that copies of my book will be delayed while they make sure the cover is perfect, and so the publication date will be delayed from 9 July to 16 July. In the greater scheme of things this doesn’t make a lot of difference - just means I’ll have to wait a bit longer to get my grubby hands on the thing, as will everyone who has pre-ordered it already from Amazon, even if that is only my friend Mandy - yay Mandy!
The fact is that I’m still waiting for all those things in that list from my previous post on this subject. Plus some other stuff too. I get drip-fed rumours from my agent that foreign publishers are sniffing around my novel, considering whether or not to buy it for their own lists… I find it hard not to stop breathing.
But I do need to crack on with three big new projects, despite the absence of contracts… ‘Lifelines’ for Rising Stars, ‘Dorian Gray’, and a brand new collaboration with digital artist James Coupe - more on that in another post, another day.
I’ve gone ahead and got very nice postcards made of the cover of ‘The Mistress of Nothing’. Post a comment here if you want me to send you one!
Re-reading ‘Dorian Gray’ has been interesting; the story is so firmly embedded in our literary culture. I’d forgotten how grim it is, and how at odds with the story Wilde’s aphoristic style can feel at times. I’d also almost forgotten that the thing about the painting is not that it gets older while Dorian does not, but that it is a visual record of all Dorian’s sins - the painting grows vile as it manifests the evil in Dorian’s soul. When Dorian finally dies, he’s actually not that old - the novel mentions that it is 18 years since the painting was finished, so he can’t be much more than 38 or 40 or so. Also, what the novel leaves out fascinates me - the stuff that Dorian gets up to down in London’s old docklands. Nasty.
