Happy 130th, Maine Warden Service

Down East Magazine, a publication I know a little something about, has announced the recipient of its thirty-second Down East Environmental Award. Here's the dedication in the October issue:

Founded in 1880, the Maine Warden Service is the oldest conservation law enforcement agency in the nation. The state’s first game wardens were volunteers recruited to stop the wholesale commercial hunting and poaching operations that were then laying waste to Maine’s fish and game populations. Over the past 130 years the service has evolved into an elite team of professionals whose responsibilities have grown to include not only the enforcement of snowmobile and boating laws, but also curtailing the spread of invasive milfoil and arresting individuals who seek to sabotage Maine’s ecosystem by smuggling foreign species into our woods and waters. For their record of accomplishment and sacrifice, the editors of Down East are proud to award the thirty-second Down East Environmental Award to the men and women of the Maine Warden Service. 

Congratulations to Maine game wardens, past and present. Contributing Editor Rob Sneddon has written an excellent overview of the service and its duties for Down East. You should read it.

Trade Paperback Cover

At the end of the workday today, I received a surprise in my email: the new design for the The Poacher's Son cover. It will be used for the trade paperback edition of the novel (in stores April 12, 2011). The design was created by David Baldeosingh Rotstein, the executive art director for St. Martin's Press, and definitely captures the menace of the story. The blurred letters suggest that the plot is fast paced and maybe hints at Mike's confusion, too. It certainly looks like some dark places I've been in the Maine woods. It's bold. I think I like it!

What's your first impression?

Bitten by a Bear

If you've read The Poacher's Son, you know that a rampaging black bear plays a prominent role in the story. The incident was inspired, in part, by a real-life occurrence that happened in Waldoboro, Maine, a number of years ago. I did make up one significant detail for the novel, however. In reality the bear never took a bite out of the man who shot it.

Such was not the case in Township 5 Range 7 in Maine today. Here's Maine Public Broadcasting's account of the misadventure:

A Shin Pond man is recuperating after being attacked by a bear on Maine's first day of bear hunting with dogs season. Ryan Shepard, 37, was charged by the bear Monday while hunting in Township 5 Range 7 with three friends, officials told the Bangor Daily News….

Shepard was bitten in the arm and leg by the bear, which weighed at least 300 pounds. He was taken to Millinocket Regional Hospital, and state game wardens say his injuries do not appear to be life-threatening….

Shepard fired at the bear when it charged past dogs that were holding it at bay. The bear was mortally wounded. 

Lucky guy, unlucky bear.

Five Languages and Counting

Today I received news that St. Martin's had sold the rights to the Reader's Digest version of The Poacher's Son to a Russian publisher. We've already sold the rights to the Portuguese, Slovenian, Japanese, and Romanian editions; and have recently had an inquiry from a French publisher. There are many cool things about publishing a novel, but seeing your book cross the language barrier into another culture is really a head rush.   

The Elements of Copy Editing

From the outside, publishing a novel seems like such an arcane business. And the truth is, it is very strange.

For instance, I spent this beautiful September day seated at my kitchen table reviewing the copy-edited manuscript of my second novel. (And no, I'm not going to announce its title just yet.) Spread out around me, I had my iPad (to check facts on the Web), the Chicago Manual of Style (because sometimes it's easier just to use a book), a copy of The Poacher's Son for reference, two blue pencils, a huge Staedtler eraser, a pencil sharpener borrowed from my wife, and a lot of yellow Post-It notes: all the tools I would need to undertake the task of editing my copy editor.

One way to understand copy-editing is by stepping back and seeing the entire writing process whole: I wrote a novel, rewrote it, and then rewrote it yet again. At that point the book was deemed ready by my editor to send to a copy editor (whose name I actually don't know). That very gifted person went line by line through the manuscript marking it up with a copper-colored pencil. He (or she) flagged typos, misplaced modifiers, repeated phrases, improperly hyphenated words, awkward sentence constructions—you get the idea.

My task today was to go through the manuscript myself and either approve or reject the suggested changes. If I didn't want to follow the copy editor's suggestion, I would write stet (the word comes from the Latin: "let it stand"). Mostly, I agreed with the recommend alterations. But sometimes I just liked what I had originally done and let it stand.

In addition to catching errors, this process of reviewing the copy edits is my last opportunity to do any significant rewriting of the book. I can insert a sentence here or there myself in blue pencil. But if I want to recraft an entire paragraph, I have to type it out and insert a new page in the bundle (which is bound by an enormous rubber band, by the way). I have several weeks to consider and reconsider what I have created, and then I must send the pages back to St. Martin's. After that, I will have one last chance to review the typeset manuscript, and at that stage I can only make minor changes.

This is the moment, for me at least, where the book begins to harden into its final shape. Before this it was just wet cement, but soon it will become concrete. Reviewing the copy edits is my last chance to press down my palm prints.