Progress report

Aside from my author photos and a certain royal wedding—which, yes, I got up at five this morning to watch with my wife, who wore a pink tiara to celebrate—it’s been an eventful week. On Wednesday, my editor finally sent me the copy-edited manuscript of The Icon Thief, which I’m supposed to review and return by May 11. At first glance, the changes all seem fairly straightforward—devoted mostly to changing “further” to “farther” and correcting my inconsistent use of the word “towards”—but I haven’t had a chance to really go through it yet. Still, it’s fun looking at the style sheet for the novel, with its long list of random proper names and foreign phrases (“Roger Casement,” tzaddikim, Dip Pepl). And I hope to write more about the copy-editing process in weeks to come.

More importantly, I’ve been informed that the publication of The Icon Thief has been pushed back two months to April 2012, from its original release date of February. Evidently it’s not uncommon for publication dates to be reshuffled like this, and my editor seems to think that this will be the last such change. The book is still in a good slot—it’s Signet’s lead title for the month—and the revised timeline gives us an extra couple of months to properly market the novel. All the same, it’s a little nerve-wracking. But looking at the calendar of summer movie releases, I’m oddly tickled to see that the novel will be coming out a week or two before Joss Whedon’s The Avengers. Feeling nervous, Joss?