The HarperCollins Canada 2014 catalogue!

HC catalogue

The main reason for this post is to share a great blog post on writing and publishing.

“25 steps to being a traditionally published author: Lazy Bastard Edition”—a post by Delilah S. Dawson—is an excellent overview of the writing and publishing process, as good an overview as I’ve ever read. I just sent the link to four friends who are working on novels. (Heh. By mistake I  typed “wording” on novels.)

To give you the funny-but-hard-hitting sense of it, Step #1 is: If you’re actually lazy, GTFO. 

Amen.

On the home front:

THE SHADOW QUEEN has a pub. date: April 8, 2014. I’ve sent off the corrected 1st Pass pages and I’ve only the Acknowledgements and the very last sentences of the novel to tweak. I’ve a storage box on my office floor where everything to do with The Shadow goes now, labelled “archival.” (I.e. my crowded basement.)

No more surprises, right?

Wrong! Yesterday evening, I got this Tweet:

I was speechless! A portrait of my Claude? I didn’t think one existed. (I Googled for it when I began my research and came up with nothing.)

Claude portrait

Look familiar?

Shadow Queen

Slice

I’ve emailed Doubleday to find out if they used the portrait as a basis for the cover.

I was pleased when I first saw the cover because the woman looked like how I’d imagined Claude to look. (Eyebrows!)

And now: well! To find out that it looks like the real Claude: I’m blown away.


Late breaking news (two days later): my editor at Doubleday, Melissa Danaczko, checked: the cover designer had never seen a portrait of Claude, much less this one.

Is that spooky-amazing or what?!