Good Morning America

Lou has been asking me to contribute to this blog for a while, and my only excuse for leaving it this long was, well, I was writing, you know. It's amazing how much of a conveyor belt everything becomes, when you're dealing with initial edits on one volume and the proofs of the previous one and the day job, and family, and, somehow at the same time as all of this, actually squeaking the time to write some new stuff as well. Yes, day job. It would be lovely to swan about wearing a beret and drinking absinthe all day like a proper artistic type, but some of us have mortgages.

Where was I? America. It's fantastic to finally (read: two months ago) hit US shores, and feedback from Lou suggests the books are meeting a positive reception. I got The Talk from my agent, when the deal with Pyr came through, about just how hard it is to predict what will and what won't cross the Atlantic well, but Shadows of the Apt seems to have made the crossing intact. There's an alarming about of feedback that seems to run "I really liked it despite the whole insect business," which I've not run into in the UK, but then again you have more (indeed some) dangerous spiders. Perhaps that's it. Me? I love insects, spiders and the whole of the rest of it. I envy you your dangerous spiders.

I also want to say, before the glass runs down and I have to rush off to fiddle with the mid-section of book 7 (whatever we'll end up calling that one) that John Sullivan has done absolute wonders with the US edition covers. I love them all, but especially the US Blood of the Mantis, which I think is due out in May. Jon's also a joy to work with because he will ask questions to make sure he gets the covers right, and we had quite a lot of back and forth on that one, so it's good to see it paid off in spades.