School of the Dead

I have just received a gal­ley of my new book, School of the Dead, which will be pub­lished next year by Harper­Collins. The term gal­ley is a 17^th cen­tu­ry word, from the French, galée, which, as the OED has it, is “an oblong tray of brass, wood, or zinc, to which the [printer’s] type is trans­ferred from the com­pos­ing-stick.” That tray was used to print the book.

It used to be that the gal­ley of a new book was like a long role of paper, more suit­ed to a Roman scroll than a book as we know it. Nowa­days, a gal­ley, when received, is clos­er in form to a mod­ern book.

By the way, you’re the first to see this new cov­er, revealed here. What do you think?

I am asked to read the gal­ley, and catch any mis­takes, glitch­es, typos that have crept into this, the first print­ed ver­sion of the text. I will be only one of a num­ber of peo­ple who will do so. I may, or may not find mis­takes. Some­times big errors are found in a gal­ley, some­times no errors at all. One needs to check.

This par­tic­u­lar book has at times felt as if it was begun in the 17^th cen­tu­ry. No book of mine has had a more com­pli­cat­ed pub­lish­ing his­to­ry: It has been ignored, reject­ed, and accept­ed, at var­i­ous stages and mul­ti­ple times dur­ing its cre­ation, with even a lawyer thrown into the mix. A pub­lish­er once told me it takes about forty peo­ple to help cre­ate a pub­lished book. This book seems to have had a whole lot more. I had to rework my com­plex plot mul­ti-times so as to make it clear, plau­si­ble, its time­line con­sis­tent, but beyond all else, fun to read—a dif­fer­ent tale of/for Halloween.

Yet, here it is, very close to fin­ished form. I’m told that the advance read­ing copy will be avail­able at the forth­com­ing NCTE con­fer­ence in Min­neapo­lis come Novem­ber.  Pub­li­ca­tion is slat­ed for late spring, 2016.

Of course, the his­to­ry of the mak­ing of the book means noth­ing to most read­ers. The goal is sim­ply to have them enjoy a spooky, sus­pense­ful story.

The School of the Dead: I am look­ing for­ward to read­ing it for the first time—in print.