Bound proof in Lugano
Originally uploaded by mgharris
Well blog readers, all five of you, I'm back. Two weeks of driving across Europe close to the Swiss/Italian border in the canton of Ticino, where it's all Swiss, but Italian style.
For example - they speak Italian but serve fresh Swiss muesli for breakfast. For example, where you can hire a motorboat without a licence and drive across the lake but the minute you moor it, a taxi-boat driver comes beetling across the lake, brow all furrowed and tells you off for going too near the rocks which might damage the engine. Yeah, we noticed that too...were taking care and everything... For example, where you get Swiss efficiency but instead of cheese fondue and raclette they serve yummy Italian food with pasta al dente and everything. See how it works?
The publishers of 'The Joshua Files' kindly sent out a couple of bound proofs of the book for me to peruse. Here I am holding my first copy of 'Invisible City'. Bit of a thrill, actually. I was so excited at breakfast that I forgot to eat and the waiters were clucking at me, trying to get me to hurry up and finish that croissant and just go, already...
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5 comments:
Fingers crossed that it's a good read then!
And, don't go spoiling the ending or translating the chinese version before the English print is out, okay?
I bet you keep looking at the book, and keep opening it? Does it feel like you've written it? Has it hit you yet?
It's so exciting. I'm glad I know nothing about Invisible City, so it's all fresh when it hits the shops.
Hey, you better do a book-sign in Newcastle, Maria - we're very educated, you know! :-)
Thanks very much, R1X and esruel! I actually read it almost all the way through right away, but not in order, to check some new bits that I'd written in the latest draft. It was strange to read it in non-manuscript form. Much more fun, even for me! It felt like a book someone else had written, which was actually a big relief for some reason. As for signing up in Newcastle, if I'm asked I will, of course. I've never been to Newcastle. I'm sure I've got a sleeveless T-shirt in case it gets cold. I don't want to look like a soft southerner.
Congrats on "The Joshua Files" proofs! :-)
I'm curious: did you finish reading "Harry Potter"? Did you like it? (only two of my friends here in São Paulo read it, and the ones who haven't read it yet forbade me to make any comments. So my head is almost exploding because I can't talk much here about the book. "Sad")
Thanks Chu!
I read Harry Potter 7 in a little over a day and was thoroughly gripped. I thought it an excellent ending to the saga, emotionally satisfying and full of nicely adult resonances that I thought were pitched at just the right level, for example, the complicity of the Ministry of Magic in Voldemort's rise, the 'race' issue, even Dumbledore's own ultimately questionable motives behind his nuturing of Harry. But most of all I loved the resolution of the Snape issue. I didn't see that coming at all!
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