BlakeCharlton.com

Words, Words, Words

It’s been a very hectic week. Mostly because, at least once a year, med students regress to high school and go to prom. Turns out that it’s a lot better at 29 than it was at 19. The downside, of course, is that one must now contend with the Facebook sequela of prom. In any case, some work has been done in between times. More excitingly, some great news has come in:

• I’m very proud to announce that I’ve accepted an offer from the eminent Mr. Stephan Askani of Klett-Cotta for a German translation of SPELLWRIGHT. They’re taking the issue of translation very seriously for this book, which I’m gratified to see. I can imagine it would be a very difficult text to translate well. There’s talk of getting the same translator who worked on THE NAME OF THE WIND, which just won the German Fantasy Prize! I’m very humbled but all this. Likely the German SPELLWRIGHT will hit the shelves spring 2011.
• Voyager, my UK publishers, report that they are very close to producing a cover for the Commonwealth edition of SPELLWRIGHT. Possibly as soon as next week. I’m curious about what they’ll cook up. I’ve been told that the cover art trend in Britain is leaning more toward a more minimalist, modern look with more photography. I’ll post what I see here and maybe produce an “About the UK cover” page.
• Though the UK release of SPELLWRIGHT won’t be until August, I’ve been told that an Australian release will be in February 2010, very close to the US launch.
• I’m also very proud to announce that my first academic article, “Treating Ivan Ilych” co-authored with my mentor Dr. Abraham Verghese, has been accepted for publication in the Journal of General Internal Medicine! I’ll post more details on the “On Medicine” page when they are available.

Other than that I’ve been driving ARCs up and down the San Francisco Peninsula and trying to make dates (same awkward feeling as trying to make a romantic date) to read or sign at indie bookstores. When those are more firmly established I’ll put up an “Events” page somewhere. Meantime, I have facebook pictures to detag, errands to run, and a word count to nurse!