Off to the Printer!

My editor recently informed me that at long last my deer book was going off to the printer as of last Monday. This was both a major source of stress and a great relief. The stress came from the inevitable round of last-minute changes, mostly to captions of the many illustrations. The relief was my realization that finally they can't possible ask me for any other changes to the text now that the book is going out the door.

It won't hit the book shelves until the launch in September, but it is already available for pre-order on Amazon.

By the way, yes this is a professionally published book. I do not self-publish, blog aside. Both this book and 'Eating Aliens' (which won't launch until 2012) are being produced by Storey Publishing. They pay me book advances and royalties, I write the book, and then they spend months pointing out to me everything that is terribly wrong with it.

In all honesty, 'The Beginners Guide To Hunting Deer for Food' is now a much better book than it was when I first handed in the manuscript. A good editor can make a big difference in the quality of a book. Storey specializes in how-to books and they are very good at figuring out how to express instructions for complicated tasks in clear language and images. This means months of back-and-forth between me and my editor, but the result really was a better quality book than I could have produced on my own. At least in this genre, the traditional publishing system has some really strong benefits.

The first complete draft of 'Eating Aliens' is due in August, which will bring a relief of its own even though months of revisions will surely follow. I've been working mostly full-time on 'Eating Aliens' for close to a year now. I have lived and breathed invasive species issues each and every day during that time and while the topic has become very important to me I look forward to starting other projects. I have the first few chapters of a book on hunting and cooking small game (intended to be branded as a sequel to the deer book), and I expect to have that finished by mid-winter. The big question is what to do for a follow-up to 'Eating Aliens.'

I have three different major projects in mind, only one of which necessarily involves hunting. All three involve adventure travel and weird encounters with wildlife.