The deal is done

It's official, finally. I've agreed to the terms of my next book with my publisher, Doubleday! I'm going to be writing the sequel to the as yet unpublished Acacia: The War with the Mein. I wrote a detailed description of it, and I'm happy to say the story is bigger and more complex than the 800 pages of the first volume. Should be a lot to sink my teeth into.

Okay, so the details are getting written down. The figures are set. Now, strangely, comes the real work. Writing it...

Acacia goes to LA

Well, I mean in a very preliminary sense. The LA offices of my agency, ICM, have asked for the book to look at in-house. This really means absolutely nothing at this point, except that people over there are going to read it. I only mention it because, as ever with these things, it throws me into a short-lived fit of dreaming Hollywood dreams. Probably not the best way to spend my time.

So, I'm going to post this and turn right to the copyedited manuscript of the book in question. I got it a couple days ago and I'm reading through it now. Copyeditor did a great job, of course. It's amazing that out of 802 pages not one of them managed to go unmarked. And to think I call myself a teacher, correct other people's errors, etc...

The First Acacia Cover

So I've had this image for a possible cover for a while. Didn't post it. Guess I was half thinking I shouldn't because it was just in the works. Ironic that I'm posting it now, actually, because it looks like this may not end up being the cover. Doubleday is rethinking it as they try to figure out just how to place/present/market/sell the hell out of this book. So, take a look at what's probably not the cover of Acacia: The War with the Mein (Acacia, Book 1)...

Acacia on Amazon

Okay, so this is a small thing, but sort of a landmark moment. Acacia has just appeared as a page on Amazon.com. It's kind of exciting to see actual proof that it exists - proof other than the document of 247,149 words that's on my desktop. These things can change, but we're looking at a pub-date of June 19, 2007. The site also says the book is 416 pages. That can't be right, though, not unless somebody did some serious editing without letting me know. Perhaps I should check on that...

Still waiting for the next book deal to come together. We're talking, but the negotiations seem strangely complicated this time. It's all this genre-switching that's got things squirrelly. But it'll work out. It'll work out.