Stop Press!

I have some important news about this....

Rather then being published on 3 September as I thought, the pub date has been put back to the end of November.

Pub dates are funny things as they attain a not unnaturally huge significance in the minds of an author and their family and friends, and yet they are often chosen rather arbitarily/shunted about because of factors beyond the author's control.

Apparently the crap summer has meant that summer reads haven't been read, and everyone's anticipating a late September rush (How Climate Change Affects The Publishing Industry - you heard it here first!), soooo my poor little newbie debut title risks being swamped (scuse the pun) and washed away.

The plan now is to bring it out just before Christmas, a less crowded time in the publishing schedule where it has more chance of making an impact.

It is at times like this I really really appreciate having worked in publishing and understand the vagaries of this often strange world.

I might be feeling more anxious if I hadn't had the experience of publishing a fantasy list (also ironically in September), which was welcomed with open arms by booksellers who overbought the stock, only for them to send most of it back when it didn't sell through. The list never recovered, and to my frustration despite having some wonderful books in it, sales thereafter were never as good as they could be.

I am more therefore more then content to hang fire for a couple of months to avoid that happening to my book.

Besides, it gives me more time to work on my website, progress on which has rather stalled over the summer.

And luckily my book is pretty seasonal so it doesn't matter too much when it comes out. In fact... as my premise at the start is that the heroine is in a wintry state emotionally, and the first two songs I used for inspiration are Forever Autumn (for her) and California Dreamin' (for him), I think it works out better probably. Of course, this does mean the poor beleagured designer who's already gone through lots of hoops to get this fetching cover has to do some more tinkering to make it fit the wintry theme - if ever I owe someone a drink, I think it is probably him/her - but I think all in all it will probably work out for the best.

Although I will admit, I have the feeling at the moment that I am standing on a precipice, and I don't think I quite dare look down....

PS - googling as myself, as once you become a nearly published author one is egotistically inclined to do, I realised that I am now officially up on the Avon site. So if perchance you are interested in me and my little literary effort, click here to find out more.

http://www.avon-books.co.uk/pastures_new.aspx