Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Secret Prophecy

Just finished the first draft of The Secret Prophecy — it ran out at a little more than 95,000 words. As Churchill once remarked, this is not the end, not even the beginning of the end. But it may be the end of the beginning. Since I’m in a quotation mood this morning, let’s note too that Hemingway said ‘The first draft of everything is crap.’ So what happens now is I wait until I can approach the text as a reader might, thus discovering its strengths and weaknesses, and, in the process, produce a second draft which may or may not be good enough to send to the publisher. Meanwhile, I shall celebrate progress so far with some tapas.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Herbie, I never know how to say I admire an author's skills without sounding insincere but I would like you to know that I am enjoying your Faerie Wars chronicles. I have conflicting information on it that I hope you can clear up. This site http://homepage.eircom.net/~herbie/Herbie_Brennans_Bookshelf/Welcome.html claims a fifth book but your news of an omnibus on your blog and on the blurb on the back of Faerie Lord "Don't miss this heart-stopping conclusion to the NY Times best selling series!" leads me to believe that Faerie Lord is the last book in the series. regards SS

Herbie Brennan said...

Yeah, SS, this is tricky. When I finished Faerie Lord, I finished Henry’s story and as far as I was concerned, that was the end of the series.

Then I started getting hassles from readers who wanted to know what happened to Henry afterwards. (Life does not end at marriage.) Then I met up with Blue and Henry’s daughter in my head and started to play around with the plot that finally ended up as Faeman Quest. Meanwhile...

My Italian publisher, unaware of Faeman, at first planned to bring out an omnibus edition of the first three books, which struck me as unfortunate since it did not conclude Henry’s story. Fortunately the Italians reached the same conclusion and decided to add in Faerie Lord.

After which, they were offered the rights to Faeman and, I’m delighted to say, decided to publish that one too, probably sometime this year. Meanwhile...

Bloomsbury brought out Faeman in the UK and US, flagging it as the conclusion of the series. Which I hope it won’t be because I’ve at least one more idea for another Faerie Realm book. So let’s hope the ‘heart-stopping conclusion’ business was a marketing ploy and not an editorial policy.

Anonymous said...

Thankyou Herbie, what a wonderful surprise for readers! For me, opening the pages of any new read is like receiving a gift. I'm truly lucky to be able to read and to read your work. Cheers SS.

stephen chang said...

Herbie what is the secret prophecy about is it faerie wars or something else entirely

Herbie Brennan said...

Something else entirely, Stephen. It’s a conspiracy theory novel set in Britain and the U.S. about a boy who discovers his father has been murdered... then finds the murderers are after him as well. Not a faerie in sight.