The process of getting Roebuck all ready to make its journey to the bookshelves of WH Smiths, and Waterstones, and the teetering stockpiles at Amazon, and indeed in all the other shapes and forms in which my debut novel is going to be available, is going well!
We’re well under two months until publication (in early December) now and the cover has been chosen (see above) and the big bookshops and online sales outlets have all been notified and are hopefully champing at the bit, along with a growing number of reviewers, waiting to get their hands on a copy.
Right now the proofs are being finalised and all those touches of TLC readers love the books that are special to them to boast are being added.
I’m relishing every stage of the process because to see your idea for a fiction coming so far down the line towards being a commodity is an incredible thing – a long journey, granted – but worth every minute.
Roebuck – as all the websites are quite correctly confirming – is not the full title by the way. The book will publish as Roebuck – Tales of an Admirable Adventurer.
Why? Well, this is a piece of historical fiction based on a number of 16th- and 17th-century documents, and one of these is my protagonist Anthony Knivet’s original account (published in Purchas His Pilgrimes in 1625). This goes under a more long-winded name: The admirable adventures and strange fortunes of Master Antonie Knivet, which went with Master Thomas Candish in his second voyage to the south sea. 1591. So the “Admirable Adventurer” part is my little nod to the fact that – in parts – the story really did take place…
Categories: Roebuck
Luke and his Words... 