Some good news, in brief – we recently sold the Italian rights to A GOOD AMERICAN to Italian publishers Sperling.  It’s always fun to sell foreign rights, especially in languages that I don’t speak.  (The French editions of my earlier books always bothered me a bit, because the translator took some pretty extraordinary liberties with the text, to the point of including footnotes, changing the characters’ names, and adding his own jokes.  All in all, I think I prefer not knowing what the text says.  Much better to have a nice-looking book for your shelves which you can admire from a distance and not understand a word of it.)

Apparently the book garnered all the right sort of interest during the London Book Fair, both from publishers in other territories and also some film and television companies.  I’m not holding my breath, but I will of course report back if there should be any more news.

In the meantime, we are collecting some wonderful quotes from fellow writers to put on the back of the Advanced Reading Copies.  People have been incredibly generous with their praise and it means a huge amount to read such kind words from authors I really admire.

I’ve just completed a review of the copy-edited manuscript, and have emerged with a new-found admiration for copy editors everywhere and the extraordinary job that they do.  The depth of their knowledge of arcane grammatical points and their willingness to double-check my sloppy historical research is amazing.  It must take a certain, very special, kind of person to do that job to such a high standard, day after day after day.  I am thinking that I may have found a career for a future character that I haven’t written yet…