Errata
So, those of you with first edition hardbacks of DRAGONHAVEN, here’s what you print out and slip somewhere between the pages.* And I encourage you to print off extras and go slide them into library copies. And even bookshop copies if you think you can get away with it. And of course supposing any bookshops are still carrying the hardback, which they probably aren’t.
Remember that I needed to do this as tersely and tactfully as possible, so the poor bats do look a little pinched and crowded: but resetting lines this late in a book’s career costs money and anguish. The anguish, however, is permanent. I will be hitting myself in the head with a hammer** over the lack of bats for decades. As I wailed and moaned a few days ago, I don’t know how they fell out in the first place and that I didn’t notice. And that nobody else noticed either. Till I started getting comments from ordinary book-buying and -borrowing readers out there in reader land. Sigh. At least the paperback has given me the excuse to ask for changes, and–did I tell you this?–my hardback editor has said to send her the corrections, if they reprint DRAGON in hardcover again–which they have done once already, hurrah–they’ll put them in. Bless her. Which is also to point out that, contrary to popular rumour and urban myth, not all publishers are goblins, bogeypersons, and thieves. Some are, true.*** Some aren’t.†
The middle of page 30, the paragraph beginning ‘There’s other weird stuff’. If you cut ‘that is’ to leave ‘something a lot more like mutant hair’ in the second line that gives a bit of extra space, and the last line is only a half line so the line-reset wallahs should be able to do the job without breaking anything.
So here is the change: ‘And they fly, which makes them the only nonbat nonbird that can take off and land and flap and soar like a bird, with none of that cheating stuff that “flying” squirrels or “flying” fish do. So maybe they’re birds. (They’re sure not bats.) Although the third pair of limbs is still problematic.’
Most of the way down p 319, here’s the other surreptitious insertion of bats: 7th line up from the bottom: ‘Dragons’ wings flap like birds’ or bats’ wings flap–like the biggest bird (or bat) out of your worst nightmare’s wings flap.’ I think that’ll just fit, but if they need more space they can take out ‘among other things’ in the third line. (I probably won’t know if they needed to till my paperback copies arrive and I look it up; publishing schedules tend to be a bit absolute, and resetting lines isn’t normal behaviour for the paperback edition of a pre-existing hardback).
I’m a card-carrying member of the Bat Conservation Trust! If this gets out they’ll probably ride me out of town on a rail!††
* * *
* You could even write it in. When, where, and who by was it decided that books are too delicate and/or sacred to be written in? I grew up believing that a fingerprint or a dog-eared page was a life-sentence felony. I don’t remember now when I lost this straitjacket taboo but I suspect it was after I started reading nonfiction for pleasure and especially after I started finding myself using peculiar little snatches of my reading in my stories.^ It was a source of some distress, at first, to think that I couldn’t just read.^^ But then I steadied down and got used to the idea that when you’re a writer, EVERYTHING is material.^^^ And I really like my written-in books. They’re like comfortable chairs I can curl up in rather than severe upright professorial chairs you have to sit straight and keep both feet flat on the floor in+. Also I have half a chance of finding something again when I know I wrote something in the margin next to it. I still don’t do it much to fiction, although I’ll draw a star next to something I particularly liked. (Or an exclamation mark against something I think particularly dumb or ridiculous.) And I’m very careful of illustrated or beautiful books: I certainly don’t colour in my E H Shepherd or Edward Ardizzone line drawings, and I only handle my Edmund Dulacs at all with carefully washed hands and an absence of rioting hellhounds.
^ This started with BEAUTY. I’d just been reading about making charcoal.
^^ Remember I wrote BEAUTY when I was twenty-four, so still relatively young and still relatively recently escaped forever from formal schooling. Yes, I did make it through college to my BA, but it took two tries.
^^^ Secretly I’d known this all along. But I wasn’t ready to admit it. Those jokes about the cold-blooded exploitations performed by an author in pursuit of a story . . . are not entirely jokes.
+ Although I am more or less incapable of sitting upright in a chair and keeping both feet flat on the floor.
** So, what’s the consensus on Dr Horrible? [very small semi-spoiler alert] I was kind of nonplussed by ep 3. The careering speed of the change of tone gave me whiplash, I think^, and even before the “£$%&^{[# I kind of thought Captain Hammer’s song had gone on too long. But I really enjoyed the !”£$%^&*~ and especially the @?+88=*, and I’ll be looking for the DVD not least because it’ll be sure to have extra bits.
Anybody out there read the right gossip sites? Is he going to go on with it?
^ But a friend suspects it’s really a dream sequence, which would also explain &^010(!” and ##?>%<$, and would leave ep 4 wide open.
*** I could tell you stories . . . but I’m not going to. As I keep saying, this is a family blog. Well, mostly.
† Some read this blog. Ahem.
†† Hmmm. I think I’m in the wrong country for forced rail-riding. Not to mention the wrong century. Good.
Silly hellhounds, editorial muted shrieks
So, is everyone seeing them side by side with the right-hand text column bang through the right-hand one? I loaded them to follow each other, and when I tried to move them around just now, nothing happens back here at the edit window, but when I click back through to what’s showing on the blog of course they’ve climbed on top of each other. So I dragged them back. I hope. Whimper. Blogmom, help. . . . There has got to be a way, but the $64K question is can I learn it?