Friday, May 25, 2007

In Praise of the Editor

My editor, Gerry Howard, is a fine individual, a respected figure in publishing who has helped an awful lot of good books get into print. I know his influence has helped my books in the past, and he's not done yet.

Take a look at this short piece in mediabistro.com's Galley Cat feed. He says very kind things about Acacia: The War with the Mein and its author. I guess you can say that's to be expected - he is my editor, afterall. But still, I'm touched. Here's the link. I dig this picture of him also...

And I'm still not used to the "summer blockbuster" stuff. Is that really gonna happen? Seems to me I'm doing the same old stuff I used to (maybe a little more blogging), but maybe if other folks keep saying it long enough it'll become true... I don't know, but we'll see soon...

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3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

David,

Very cool piece. Howard seems like a like nice, down to earth man, somebody who is easy to work with, yeah?

8:12 PM  
Blogger David Anthony Durham said...

He's great to work with, but - and I don't think he'd mind me saying this - he's not a touchy-feeling hand-holding kind of editor. He's been in the business a long time, knows publishing, knows how to crack problems and acknowledges the things that are out of our hands. For me, he's easy to work with because I trust him and he seems to trust me too.

When editing, he suggests things to change, revise, elaborate; I change, revise and eloborate accordingly. As a result the book gets better. That's a good system, I think.

1:48 PM  
Blogger John Dent said...

Sounds like the best system. There's not much room for humouring the writer, really, is there? Publishing is a business after all, and the sooner iffy areas in a manuscript are dealt with the better! :)

4:47 PM  

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