However, if I were to do a Shit Writers Say, we would come out looking worse…

Shit Agents and Editors Say

Please, come on by.  I’m at @andrewpyper  And I’ve made punch!

To all those living in or traveling to Britain in the coming days, keep an eye out.  If you happen to see copies in a store somewhere, let me know.  Better yet, read it.  Satisfaction (or at least some seriously twisted dreams) guaranteed.

The Guardians – UK Mass Market Edition

It’s quite unusual for a book to do anything after more than a decade other than show up in the FREE! box at somebody’s yard sale (if you’re lucky).  So I am enormously grateful to L’Archipel for bringing the novel to readers in France and Quebec alike.  I feel like I’ve been born again…though without all the bible thumping and swearing off booze.

LOST GIRLS reviewed in La Presse

Carma did some expert editing, too, as I sound more coherent than I recall.  And we must have done the interview after my afternoon coffee:  I can hear the caffeine in my voice.

Genre Traveler Podcast – Pyper

The Guardians – Globe and Mail Best 100

I have never been one of those writers who is indifferent to the concept of audience, a storyteller who is “only writing for myself.”  I’ve always felt this view was either a) disingenuous, or b) sad, or c) weird.  Even if one never seeks publication, even if the work is meant to be private, the most intimate journal or confession, the notion of engagement is alive during its composition.  There is (it seems to me) always an “other” sitting over your shoulder in the writerly exercise, even if this reader is only some fractured aspect of yourself, or someone who will never actually read it, or an ever-observing God.

That’s not really the point I started out wanting to make here.  So what is that point?  Something along the lines of This never gets old.

This new novel will be my sixth.  Sixth! It is a number even more surprising than the reminder of one’s age (particularly when a 4 or higher is the first digit).  You might think there’d be an Auto Pilot kicking in by now, a professional coolness that diminishes the virginal excitements that came with finishing a big project back in the Early Days.  But here I am, giddy as a teenager with a beer buzz.  I’m a little terrified, a little exhausted, a little sentimental at soon having to say farewell to the characters who came to me this time around.

Though of course I’ll be seeing them all again soon enough in the Second Draft.  And the Third.  And the Fourth…

As both Sheila and I agree, however, there’s no right or wrong way to write a book.  Whatever works for you…works.  There’s nothing to debate really.  But in the spirit of offering advice that’s worked for me (advice intended for fellow toilers looking for advice) I wanted to make the case for spending more time on the pre-writing phase.  Spitballing.  What if-ing.  Testing.  Pitching.

Not only because it helps (which I believe it does), but because it’s such a creatively exciting step in the long walk.

CBC Books – Literary Smackdown

Some of these are verifiably true, of course.  Others not remotely so.  In particular, I have always doubted the “right book for the right season” approach to reading (and publishing, and bookselling).  Are we really hard-wired to crave sombre literary doorstoppers from November 1 to December 24?  Are low-brow thrillers best consumed on a beach in July?  Do we want romance in the two weeks leading up to the fourteenth day of February any more than we want romance any other time?  For me, it’s a no to all of these self-fulfilling “facts” of readerly habits.  All of them…except one.

If you live in a geography where there are pronounced seasons that include autumn you know the shivery magic of October.  There’s something about the coolness of the evenings, the leaves scraping down the street, the solitary walks home with the branches chattering your name overhead…

Ghosts didn’t invent the autumn.  But it may well be that the autumn invented ghosts.

This year, I’m currently curled up with a work of non-fiction that, while a serious work of scholarship, conveys its fair share of brainy chills:  Satan:  A Biography, by Henry Ansgar Kelly (University of Cambridge Press).  It’s research.  But utterly fascinating research (I feel another blog coming on, but will resist for now).

Naturally, this being an author’s website, I would recommend my own books for an October read.  (Didn’t you notice?  The Guardians is out in paperback in North America!)  But I would personally be interested to hear of any of your own scary recommendations.  I’m looking for a new Halloween read.  Something I’ve never heard of before.  Ideas?