This photograph, entitled Shipwreck - Fraser Island - Australia is by NickSS and is used according to his Creative Commons license.
Last year, about two weeks ago this time, I received an e-mail from Dundurn editor Barry Jowett accepting Rosemary and Time (later retitled The Unwritten Girl.
This time, he called me on the phone.
The long and the short of it, Dundurn has accepted the sequel to The Unwritten Girl, entitled Fathom Five for publication in late spring 2007, and he called to tell me personally. Even more encouraging, he asked me for ideas on “what to call the series”. We decided against using anything with the word “trilogy” in it because, although three books are already written (the third being The Young City), I originally planned four, and might come up with a fourth book someday. And the fourth-level and fifth-level versions of trilogy (tetralogy and pentalogy respectively) are too many mouthfuls.
So I’m leaning towards “the Rosemary and Time sequence”, which gets the original book title back into circulation, but Erin suggests we should call it “the Unwritten Books”. Any thoughts?
There are a few people I want to thank for this, because I’ve heard it said that getting the second book published is as hard as the first. Fathom Five received considerable support and comment from a number of people who helped improve subsequent drafts. These include my mother and Erin, Imogen McCallum and Bob Tarantino, not to mention Marsha Skrypuch and her crew at the Private KidCrit online workshop. Then there is Cameron, who helped me emphasize the sonic imagery of the piece. I’m sure I’m leaving people out, and I apologize, but thank you, all! Hopefully I’ll get to meet you in person, perhaps at one of the launch parties? Thanks also to Barry Jowett and Dan Wagstaff and the rest of the Dundurn crew for having such faith in me.
In other news, the summer is coming to a close, and after a long break, there are more book-related activities coming up. Unrelated to The Unwritten Girl, I’ll be attending the Brantford Book Camp, taking in a seminars, and hopefully gaining some inspiration for my next project (which may be The Night Girl. There’s an open-to-the-public reading at the end of the day on Thursday, so I’ll be reading from a short section of The Unwritten Girl and signing a few books alongside a number of other authors.
Later in September (Sunday, September 24), I’ll be participating in a panel discussion on blogging at Kitchener’s Word on the Street. It’s not Unwritten Girl related, but it’s going to be a very fun time.
I’m also be attending the Friday seminars at the Eden Mills Writers with a bunch of other authors and grade ten students and, finally, I’ll be giving a reading at the Lillian H. Smith branch of the Toronto Public Library at 10:30 a.m. on Wednesday, October 4. All promise to be great fun, and I’m looking forward to them. If you’re in Kitchener on the 24th or in Toronto on the 4th, feel free to come on out and hear me. I look forward to seeing you all there!