From the official Style Sheet, as drawn up by my publisher, St. Martin’s:
Author’s style
- uses fragments
- favors vague pronoun constructions (e.g., “It would be like finding a new kind of bird,” where “It” has no clear antecedent)—lightly edited for especially confusing instances
- recounts visits, demos, etc. in present tense
- uses “human” as noun form for “human being”
The fully copyedited MS came today. It was like Christmas a month early.
Eric Parker interviewed me a couple months ago for Black Warrior Review and because it was over email and not in person I was able to say coherent things.
Minor successes!
You can read the review, in which I call out the Republican Party and David Shields regarding certain qualms of mine, here.
(No ideas on that making-it-tough-to-read background.)
Got the current issue of Tampa Review in the mail today. It’s in hardcover! There’s an essay in there taken from the opening chapter of The Authentic Animal, about a dead pet canary that becomes a museum relic.
Other essays therein by Douglas Danoff, Jack E. Fernandez, and Gary Fincke. Fiction by Heather Brittain Bergstrom, John Matthew Fox, Chris Huntington, Manjula Menon, and Courtney Zoffness. Poetry by lots of people.
The dustjacket, as you can see, looks like a Duchamp, and if you like that you should see how gorgeous the cloth cover is. Order an issue here.
The delay in posting has been long. Very sorry. I’ve been waiting jumpily until I could officially announce that my book, The Authentic Animal, has been picked up for publication by St Martin’s Press.
St. Martin’s Press!
I’m way too excited to be able to say much about it. Mostly I don’t know what to do with the news that St. Martin’s seems to love my strange taxidermy book so much. They love it! And it’s a great press, where lots of folks you’ve heard of got their starts (Dan Brown, Augusten Burroughs, Janet Evanovich), to say nothing of the prestige of the parent company and all its subsidiaries.
“Welcome to St. Martin’s Press,” my editor told me earlier this week, and it was like clouds parted and a million trumpets blasted that Macintosh-bootup sound. Except without the apocalyptic overtones.
More news as it comes. Now I just need to finish the book….