In amongst the hard work of preparing for the release of Plain Kate, it’s easy to forget that there’s a second book in the family coming out on the same day. Indeed, I’d forgotten about it myself until a few days ago.
In October 2008, I was commissioned by a contractor working for Crabtree Press on a children’s non-fiction book that’s come to be titled Earth’s Secrets. The book is about the aspects of the Earth which we can’t easily see, like the winds that blow the weather, heat pockets, or the pressures in the fault lines deep beneath the Earth. It was part of a string of work-for-hires I was commissioned to do back in 2008 and, for whatever reason, the title was pushed back until now.
By comparison, it is already possible to pre-order Lamborghini, part of Crabtree’s upcoming Supercars Series, that I just handed over to the editor exactly one month ago.
But that’s how these work for hires go, sometimes. They are written on a completely different schedule, and a completely different creative pull than your standard novel. When I was given two months to write Lamborghini from scratch, including designing an outline, that was the most time I’d been given for such a book. I was assigned a subject, and had to research it, quickly.
And, in spite of that, I had to wait two years before publication. Still, I’m quite pleased by this release. It’s another title under my belt, and it was a book I enjoyed putting together. I look forward to seeing what the book actually looks like, once I get it in my hands (for some reason, Amazon hasn’t seen fit to post a cover of Earth’s Secrets).
Tomorrow is going to be a big party at home for the arrival of Plain Kate, and like Erin, I am looking forward to seeing how the book does in the wild. Still, as big as Plain Kate is, it’s interesting how it’s still possible to be proud of a much smaller, lower-profile book, simply because it has my name on it. And the reason for that is because an author’s name is written in blood.