Kyle Michel Sullivan's Blog: https://www.myirishnovel.com/, page 161

Getting it right...

Interesting...but when I finally got my cover down, the book began to seem like it's going to get done. I'm still waiting for feedback on the archival and British aspects of the story -- I've gently asked if that would be coming anytime soon and only been told by one she's having fun working on it -- but the jacket and synopsis are set.

It's amazing how the slightest shift in position can make or break the artwork for a cover. I think I shifted Adam's position a half-dozen times before it was right. Same for the title. I lowered my name a bit, along with Gertrude, the book and Casey, and that extra bit of space seems to make it real, for me.

I've also contacted the Library of Congress about getting an LoC designation for the copyright page. That's needed for libraries to know who to categorize the book, but I have to ask permission to ask for it, first. So I did. Supposedly, I'll get the answer in a few days.

There's also the synopsis, which will be on the front flyleaf of the cover. I've redone it and polished it and adjusted it so much, I may have edged all the life out of it. If anyone wants to comment, I'm open to suggestions --

One of the rarest books in existence is the 1865 printing of Lewis Carroll’s Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Sir John Tenniel, the illustrator, so disliked how they turned out they were recalled to be replaced by a new printing. All but around 50 were returned and destroyed, and of those...fewer than half survive.
Adam Verlain knows all about this; he’s a library archivist for a university in London, and books are his life. But when that library acquires a newly discovered copy of The Alice ‘65, he declines the opportunity to travel to Los Angeles to pick it up. He has sworn never to leave his careful, cloistered world because his father was robbed and killed on a similar trip. He only agrees to go when he is told the book will be brought to him at the airport, meaning he will be surrounded by security.
However, from the moment he boards the plane, things start to go wrong. Then he meets the amazingly beautiful, amazingly persuasive Casey Blanchard, a movie star who inherited The Alice '65, and the worst happens -- she will not let him have the book unless he accompanies her to a premier of her latest film for reasons that...well, seem quite odd.
The university wants that book, so Adam is forced to go along...sending him careening into a chaotic world of too-cool artists, drill-sergeant stylists, mistaken identity, hysterical fans, Hollywood royalty, their courtiers and minions, maniacal LA drivers, an outlandish party, a drowning pool, a love-struck wild animal on a homemade veldt, 25 cans of salmon...and the horrible realization he’s fallen head-over-heels in love with a woman every man in the world desires, but who he knows could never love him back.

Or could she?

A bit of A65...

This is when Adam's trying to sneak back into Lando's party, after having been kicked out --

---

Adam grimaced and berated himself for not being more like James Bond than Tarzan. That beam of light danced through the leaves, again. He crouched in a shadow and meowed like a cat.

Sort of.

The guard chuckled and said, "Hey, kitty cat, you don't wanna be near that yard, trust me."

Which caused Adam to meow a question mark. What could the man mean? He looked around at the big, beautiful pool that was too close for comfort, and the thickness of bushes around the rocks, and the massive trees in their center, their branches trimmed away from the fencing, and the arced wire along the rooftop and — wait, even on top of the house there was a fence? What — did the paparazzi climb onto his roof and rappel down to the ground to take photos in a bedroom window? Like where two people were, right now?

Two people named Casey and Lando.

Holding each other and kissing.

Very intense kissing.

Hands everywhere kissing!

She wasn't in trouble; she was back in Lando's arms!

"Bloody hell," popped out before Adam could even think to censor it.

He heard the guard cry, "Okay, that wasn't no cat. Tito, we got an intruder in the back yard."

Then he heard Tito's voice laugh on a walkie-talkie as he said, "Don't worry, he'll come out soon as he meets Gertrude."

Gertrude?

"Don't we want him alive?" the guard asked.

Alive? What the devil were they talking about?

Then he heard something growling. A deep rumbling growling. Stronger than any dog or cat he'd ever known. More like a motorcycle revving. He looked around. Searched the bushes. Searched the yard. Searched the trees and found nothing —

Except a pair of cool, yellow eyes in the shadows of the trees. He looked harder and finally saw the form of a big, beautiful black panther lounging on a branch. Watching him. Curious. Almost sad.

Until it hissed and howled at him!

He jolted back against the fence and that damned wire jabbed him in the rear. He jumped forward, crying, "SCHEISSE. Nein! Nein!" Grabbed at the tree but lost his grip and fell onto a branch that bounced him onto a diving board that bounced him off into the deep end of the massive pool.

Where he promptly sank.

He thrashed and swallowed water and choked and was barely able to kick himself back to the surface to cry, "Help!" before he sank, again, and had to fight his way back up to the surface to choke out a more feeble "Help..."

He heard Casey's voice cry, "Adam?" then sank, again and —

Something bumped against him and grabbed him by the collar to drag him into the shallow end so he could stand and cough and wipe water off his face, as best he could.

"Adam? Adam, are you all right?" It was Casey's voice.

His eyes burned like fire and he was retching, but he was finally able to look around and see her at the edge of the pool, watching him, fear in her eyes.

Lando sat in a window, drink in hand, chuckling, "See? All he had to do was stand up."

"He was in the deep end, idiot," Casey snapped. "Gertrude pulled him over."
"From the shallow end."

Veronica joined Lando, saying, "What's Gertrude up to?"

“She went fishin'," said Lando. “Caught a minnow.”

A sudden rain cascaded onto Adam. He looked around to find the panther shaking the water off herself. She then stretched out on the grass near the pool to watch him. Beyond her, he saw the partygoers had noticed the commotion in the back yard and were pressed against the windows, fascinated, masks still on.

"Gertrude, have you been a good little guard cat?" Veronica asked, slipping an arm around Lando.

"She earned her Kibble, tonight," he responded.

Adam realized his trousers were around his hips, his shirt clung to him and he was missing a boot. And a sock. He wiped his face with the glittery briefs to clear away the last of the water.

That's when he heard Veronica say, "Oh, cute, his hankie got sparkles."

"They're — briefs," Adam choked out.

Lando burst into laughter. "Damn, Case, you got him out of his pants, already? I had more control, than that."

To which Veronica said, "You better or it's off with your head."

Adam looked around, asking, "Where are my glasses?" In German. He found half the frame caught in his trousers, snapped at the nose. He put it on and saw the panther, whom he supposed was named Gertrude, playing with the other half and, "Oh, this isn’t good," burst from him. In German.

Gertrude looked at him and gave a soft purr.
Casey walked over to the steps from the pool, saying, "Adam, come on out; she won't hurt you."

"Naw, better not, Andrew," Lando laughed. "Gertrude don't like gay undies."

Adam headed for some steps built into one end of the pond, finally beyond caring, so snapped back at him, "Tell me, Lando, were you born to be such an ass? Or is it just because your Mum and Da named you after a secondary character in a derivative science fiction film?"

Lando climbed out through the window, snarling, "Hey, book-boy, Lando Calrissian was the coolest guy in the whole series."

"Who doesn't appear until chapter five," Adam snarled back. "Hardly in the same caliber as Luke or Han."

"It's not how much you do; it's what you do with it."

"Spoken like a man who knows the true limits of his capacities."

"Yeah, come on out of my pool. Maybe I'll tell Gertrude your ass is steak."

Adam hesitated. He had just noticed Gertrude was pacing him, her eyes locked on him, the other half of his glasses over her nose. But then he remembered it was this panther who had saved him so continued on to the steps, one hand gripping his trousers so they would remain around his waist and not his ankles.

"Lando, send her away,” Casey snapped. “Adam, are you all right?"

"Brilliant," Adam said. "But I seriously doubt Orisi will want his outfit back."

Lando laughed. "Those're his briefs? Dude, for that, you get my sympathy."

That's when Tito appeared at Lando's side, saying, "Want me to call the cops?"

"Naw, I'm gonna have Gertrude chase him around. She needs the exercise." Then he broke into a sing-song as he said, "Gertrude, jag de fleiss."

The panther let out a soft growl.

"Do you know how to run, Andrew?" Veronica asked, happy as a lark.

"My name is ADAM," he snarled.

Casey was almost beside herself. "Oh, for god's sake — Gertrude. House. HOUSE."

The panther looked at her but did nothing.

Lando did his sing-song, again, as he called, "Gertrude, hou de vater."

This was too much for Adam to bear. "It's wasser, dumpkoff, and you’re making no bloody sense!"

Then he saw Gertrude slide into the pool with a happy little growl. He bolted up the steps, startled. Barely able to keep his pants up. The cut over his eye was bleeding, again. That is when he saw one of his boots at the bottom of the deep end, his sock next to it. Now he understood the need for a pedicure; one never knew when one's toes might be exposed.

Casey brought a towel over to him, asking, "What're you doing out here? Nobody comes in the back yard."

He pushed the towel away. He could not look at her. "You knew about Gertrude," he said, his voice cracking. Barely able to control his shaking.

"He's had her for a couple years. Why didn't you just wait in the limo?"

"Like a good dog?" he snapped. "I — I thought I forgot something. My mistake."

He pushed away from her. His head pounded. The bottom of his stomach churned. He limped thanks to the boot still on his foot. First he picked up the mangled half of his glasses to put on with the other lens — which made him look very cock-eyed — then he stormed for the house. Tito stood between him and it and Adam was contemplating the best tackle to use on the lumbering ox when he realized, "Oh, no mistake," spun around and headed for the wall.

"What did you forget?" Veronica called.

"His brain," said Lando, "just like that tin-man guy."

Adam shook his head in awe. "Oh, Lando, you should never try to speak without a script. You only reveal your inadequate knowledge of English literature, let alone her language." Then he climbed the tree to retrieve the coat. When he hopped back down, he saw Gertrude watching from the pool.

"Wow," said Lando. "Who knew you could climb so good? Beef up a little, add six inches to your height, I could use you as a double."

Adam headed back to the house, saying, "Thanks, but I’ve no wish to play the ass, in your stead."

Lando blinked and said, "What’d you just say?"

Veronica chimed in with, "Huh?"

Adam cast a harsh laugh. "Oh, dear God, a bite of cabbage has more intelligence than the two of you, combined!"

Tito was about to jump Adam, but got a glare of fury and a hurling snarl of, "Step away from the madman!"

He stepped.

Adam limped inside, slammed past the partygoers and, in a fit of fury, ripped the boot off his foot and slung it aside. Then he grabbed a stick of burning incense from the Earth mother. "You're right,” he snarled, “I need cleansing."

Then he bolted out the front door.

Time to think and contemplate...

Without rereading the story, I'm coming up with little moments I missed in my writing of The Alice '65. Little ways of enriching and expanding on the characters without much in the way of addition. For example, Adam learns his associate, Elizabeth, has never read any of Henry James' novels even though her specialization is 19th and 20th century literature. She becomes quite defensive about it...but then near the end of the story, Adam points out to her that reading some of his books could have prevented her from getting into a situation that will hurt her.

That's one of several subtexts running through the story -- that reading can prepare you for the world. Of course, Adam is a voracious reader but he still hides himself away until dragged from the safety of his self-made cocoon and confronts life in all its messiness. Yet he also embodies his father's attitude -- that because he reads, he's a better person and more open to different experiences than one who's closed himself off from anything deemed unimportant.

Reading kept me alive and going, for years. My mother was the type who'd give you all sorts of toys at Christmas but if you wanted a paperback murder mystery, it was, "See if they have it at the library." At least she made sure I had a library card, and I used it. Read everything I could, from Earl Stanley Gardner to Agatha Christie to Ellery Queen to Grace Metalious to Jacqueline Susann to Isaac Asimov to Arthur C. Clark to Clifford D. Simak to...well, you get the picture.

I didn't get into the classics until I was out of college, which was both the right way to go and the wrong way. I couldn't stand Holden Caulfield in Catcher in the Rye and felt Dickens was just too melodramatic and episodic, but I loved the Russian writers and French and Japanese and South American...and even Henry James. I finally understood that certain books are best read at certain times in one's development, and if you come to them at the wrong point in your life, they will not share themselves with you.

I just hope A65 winds up being a book for all ages, not one for a specific time and place.

Once upon a time busses ran on a schedule...

I thought I'd be cheap and ride the bus to work, this morning. One's due at the stop in front of my building at 8:25am and it would get me to where I needed in time to be there a bit early. So I go out to the bus stop, where a couple other people are waiting...and nothing. Nothing. Finally, 10 minutes after the bus was due a passenger called to find out when it would come and was told it had passed, already. At 8:27. A lie. A flat out lie.He told the person on the phone so, and the only answer he got was, "Next one's due at 8:55."

I called Lyft. Cost me $12 but I made it to work on time, and that was with a guy who was driving very, very carefully. Then, this evening, I decided to see how long it would take me to walk back to my place. According to Google Maps I live 3.8 miles from where I work, and it should take me 1 hour and 21 minutes to walk. So I set off, even though I knew a bus was due at the stop I needed at around 5:35, according to the bus company.

It was 8 minutes early. I watched it drive by and checked my watch. Couldn't believe it. Either the schedule was changed and no one at the bus company was told, or the drivers just do their own thing, up and down and back and forth. Can't trust a company that lets that happen.

I'm not a speed walker, but neither am I slow, still it took me just over an hour and a half to do...which I guess isn't that far off the mark. Of course, it was cold and windy, but I had gloves, a hood and an umbrella to use as a walking stick. It worked out okay.

I even had dinner, en route, at a Boston Market (and deducted the time I spent eating from the tally). Their food's on the bland side, but they had BBQ sauce; slathering that over roast turkey actually worked out good. The meal is still a bit overpriced, but I was hungry and it filled me. And now I'm ready to soak in a tub for a while and read Adrian McKinty's Falling Glass, one of his Northern Irish crime novels.

Tomorrow my car should be ready, so I'll be out late, again. I'll be using Lyft to get there...and I think I'll use it to get to work, too. It's cheaper than renting a car, by 3/4, and works better than Uber.

Now tired be I...

Lovely day...

Worked non-stop getting ready for next week's book fairs, then on the way home my car started rumbling, loud. Muffler trouble. So I took it to the dealership I use and they said I needed to replace a pipe that had been rusted through, in spots. Apparently it's an original pipe...they let me go under the car to see it. But it's costing $850 bucks...and I've already learned the hard way that to go to a muffler shop means I may spend less now but will have trouble, again, next year.

They didn't have the parts, yet, so I set up a time to bring the car back...then as I was driving home the fucking muffler fell apart and was dragging on the pavement. I made it into a Ted's Hot Dogs and called AAA and had the car towed back to the dealership, then had dinner and walked home. It was only a few miles and not all that cold...and I saved myself about $15 over calling a cab or Uber. Tomorrow, I'm on the bus to work, and same for home. And I'm not loving this, at all.

It seems as soon as I start to gain some traction in handling my debt, something happens to kick me right back to where I started.  Rent goes up. Insurance goes up. Phone and internet go up. Cost of food goes up. Salary stays the same. It's infuriating.

What added to my irritation was, my phone was close to going dead and I had no way to plug it in, anywhere. I had my laptop with me, but it won't let me attach the phone without a special cable, and I'd left that at home. Nor would my battery extender work with the phone. The one time I figure I don't need anything extra in my backpack is the one time I needed everything.

The only good thing was, I got some work done on A65, while waiting. I polished up the synopsis and changed some of the interaction between Adam and Elizabeth at the end...and now I'm wondering if the ending works as it currently stands. If it isn't just a bit too pat. Too simple. Something in me is saying I should end it at another point and I'm unable to find an honest reason not to.

Guess I'll ask for some feedback about that...

Ideas keep coming for A65...

I know the book will never be completed in my head, but while The Alice '65 is still working it, I'm open to any additions till I finalize the pages and send them off to Ingram Spark. Tonight I realized I was missing an interesting back and forth between Adam and Elizabeth near the end, that shades her character more and give him a finer dusting of adult humanity.

She calls him a Hobbit, thanks to Jeremy repeating a comment she made some time ago. Only Adam's brother, Connor, calls him that. I had no idea Elizabeth was trying to let me know something about her and her ways. Adam needs to let her know he knows...and warn her against Connor. Just to show he's over her. One of those things that you never see until you do, and then you wonder why you never did.

I now see Daniel Radcliffe as Adam. Right age. Right intellectual scruffiness. But good-looking enough to believe as both a nerd and a romantic lead.

I'm so intensely shallow about such things. I'm always using actors as my visuals, and those do change, especially once the character starts talking to me. Then he settles his own appearance for me.

I liked using Russell Tovey when I first started writing the story; he has an off-beat attractiveness and the camera loves him. I also liked Matthew Lewis as an alternative, but once Adam took command, neither of them would work, in my head.

I do still see Eliza Dushku as Casey, even though she's now too old for the part; Casey's around 30 while Eliza's closing in on forty. When she was in Dollhouse, she was exactly right. As for Lando, it was Chris Hemsworth just because it's so obvious.

Like I said, I'm shallow...

Low key day...

Didn't feel so hot so spent the day piddling and reading. I was trying really hard to get into A Confederacy of Dunce by John Kennedy Toole, but I finally gave up. It's not often I can't become part of a book's world, but this one drove me insane. Ignatius Reilly is a character I despise because he's nothing but a characature of a man. Not real or human. I made it to page 89 before his comments about his valve being an issue and his laziness and selfishness and childishness and on and on and on drove me to the brink.

I can only think of two other books that pushed me away like this -- Continental Drift by Russell Banks and Light in August by William Faulkner. I'd never read anything else by Banks, and that book made me never want to, it was so relentlessly down-beat and programmed for what I knew would be a tragic ending. I gave up at page 100.

With Faulkner, I'd been okay with The Hamlet and actually liked The Sound and the Fury -- I was taking a college course in him, for English credit -- but when I started in on Light in August...it may sound weird, but I don't think the book wanted me to read it. It refused to let me in, and truth is, I wasn't all that interested in pushing it. Unfortunately, the class was being taught by a Faulkner aficionado and he did not take kindly to my comments about the book...so I dropped the class.

Oh...and Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt. Jesus, God, this was anything but the life-affirming auto-biography I'd been told it was. Three children are dead by page 50, thanks to a childish, selfish man's alcoholism and laziness. I actually asked someone who had read it if things get better, and she said, "No." Since I wanted to slit my wrists by page 60, I chose the better option of not continuing the book.

I did make some similar mistakes in tone with Bobby Carapisi -- focusing on Eric's slide into depression and prostitution after he's raped by three men, counterpointed with Bobby's struggle to regain his balance after the same men attack him in the first 2/3 of the book. The last third focuses on Eric trying to get Alan, one of the rapists, to admit what he and his buddies did to Bobby by letting him tell his side, much of which is told like pornography and is revealed to be a lie...but which does lead him to finally take responsibility for his actions while Eric regains his sense of compassion and humanity enough to pen up to a future of possibilities.

Of course, these could be merely my justifications for a book that is as brutal and downbeat as the ones I didn't like. Maybe that's why I did The Lyons' Den next. Its chaotic farce mitigates the deep horror of Daniel's past with a present that is ludicrous in the extreme. And The Vanishing of Owen Taylor has Jake snarling and snapping his way through the book like a pissed off Jack Russell terrier, but has a fair amount of humor and love and even moments of tenderness and quiet. And now comes The Alice '65, more chaos, drama, farce and...I hope...hope.

Next comes the trick of Place of Safety...taking a horror of a time and not letting it obscure the humanity of people or their hope and insistence that life be lived on their own terms and no one else's. Brendan is my proto-Candide...journeying through the world with little more than hope and determination to keep him going. Even in the face of people's hate and stupidity. And make it...hopeful...maybe.

Who knows -- one of these days I may actually turn into a real writer.

Brendan's come knocking, again...

Seems he's taking me at my word, that I'll finish Place of Safety with him, and he's given me a bit more of his life in Houston. He'll be there from not long before he turns seventeen until just before he turns twenty-five. The longest part of the story, and what was proving to be the least interesting, to me. And yet...it's necessary, I know it is.

I've long given up trying to understand why some aspects of my scripts or books are required. It's just, when I'm right about something in them, no amount of criticism can change that. I finally got it hammered into my thick skull when I tried to put aside all my ownership of a story I'd been hired to write and do what others told me to with it...and it worked for a while because I was able to make the story stronger in ways that still satisfied those running the show. But they kept coming back with more and more requests for changes until they went one step too far.

They asked me to get rid of a character. Combine her with the hero. And that is when I stopped. Didn't even think about it. The very idea was so completely wrong for the story, I refused to even consider it. I saw it as an insult to the characters and their world. So it was taken away from me. Given to another writer. After all my fucking work on it. And here we are, ten years later, and nothing more has been done with it.

Something else I learned was, no matter how perfect a screenplay is, someone will want to change it. Not to make it better; just to make it theirs, and never mind it's at the expense of your blood and flesh. Making a film requires compromise, they say. Only if you want to turn out shit, is my response to that.

Now I'm getting back to Place of Safety and wondering why Brendan goes to live in Houston for so long. Why it's so important to the story aside from taking him away from his world in Derry and letting him know a form of peace...that proves not to be...and forces him to return home, a man now too aware of the world. Too aware of humanity's failings.

Then this evening, he showed me to a door that will help me understand...and I'm shaking as I write this. Having to go back, over and over, and correct typos because my fingers aren't sure about our new direction. I have a feeling that when I finally do dig into Brendan's journey through Texas, it will be as illuminating to me as I hope it will be to a reader.

But you never know until the story is told, if you've told it well.

A writer's temptations are like no one else's...

I got another dealer to read A65 and let me know how the antiquarian aspects work...and the Britishness of Adam. This guy should be fun; he likes to talk and I'm open to listening if it will make my book as good as it can be. No ego here, can't afford it.

The temptation stems from me wanting to ask a dealer I have a hugh crush on to read it, too. He's tall, dark-haired and buff...or, as the English would say, fit. Damn fit. And surprisingly even-tempered for an antiquarian book person. I've got a nickname for him, and it's all I can do to keep from using it around him. That...would be embarrassing, especially since I'm old enough to be his father. And he's married. And his wife is very sweet.

Dammit.

I hate it when that happens. Makes me feel like a dirty old man...though when that happens, I smirk, within, and contemplate the possibilities. There's a part of me that's very strongly inclined to being bad just enough to see what would happen in a situation like this if I pushed it. It's not like I've never been with a married man. I connected with this one older guy back when I was in college, who had five daughters. He said his wife knew about his need to be with a dick, now and then, but all I had was his word for it...and I didn't quite believe him.

Of course, I also connected with someone who wound up committing murder. He killed a convenience store clerk because the guy was making homophobic comments. Beat him to death, according to the cops, something I never would have thought him capable of. I met up with him after the arrest and before the trial, while he was out on bail, and he swore he didn't do it...but something told me he was lying. And he was found guilty. Of course, now my disinclination to believe the prosecution or cops in anything unless they have concrete proof makes me wonder...

My inner bad-boy has gotten me into a few situations that could have turned very wrong. Like one asshole who was a lot of fun...so long as he was happy with you. He wasn't gorgeous but he was very charismatic. I pulled some real shit with him -- shit I should not admit to because it was a bit too close to illegal.

Then the asshole exploded into fury, one night in a bar, when I misdialed a number on a public phone and he hit me. I shoved him against a wall and grabbed a beer bottle to smash him, and for a moment I wanted to kill him. Instead, I walked away. He did a lot of yelling in very foul language...but he didn't come after me. Maybe the look on my face gave him pause. Doesn't matter; I never saw him, again.

I think that's when I started shifting my inner bad to screenplays...and then books. Use them as a safety valve. And I started getting older and less interested in proving myself. Not dis-interested; I still had a need for approval and success; just not as willing to put up with all the bullshit that some people give. And now?

Now I welcome the bullshit because sometimes you find diamonds in it. (NOTE: I changed the heading because a lot of polish people were coming in to read it, like they thought it's a porn site.)

Time to push on getting A65 done...

I've contacted another Englishman in the antiquarian book world to see if he'll read A65 and let me know if it works. Can't get any response from the ones I've asked...not that I'm surprised. It's book fair season so I should have asked about this during the Christmas lull. This guy's more free-lance but has a strong background in both the retail and private library aspects of it.

I want to get the book done and out there. I've got my cover and now just need to make certain I don't need to do any major rewriting or changing of the number of pages before I settle in on the cover size...especially since I can already see moments where I'd like to make the sentence structure smoother.

I guess that means I'll be rewriting this thing until it's gone to the printers. And even then I may want to make changes. Mary Shelley rewrote Frankenstein in 1831 after first publishing it 13 years earlier. This is from Wikipedia --

Shelley completed her writing in April/May 1817, and Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus was published on 1 January 1818[24] by the small London publishing house Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor, & Jones.[25][26] It was issued anonymously, with a preface written for Mary by Percy Bysshe Shelley and with a dedication to philosopher William Godwin, her father. It was published in an edition of just 500 copies in three volumes, the standard "triple-decker" format for 19th-century first editions.

The second edition of Frankenstein was published on 11 August 1822 in two volumes (by G. and W. B. Whittaker) following the success of the stage play Presumption; or, the Fate of Frankenstein by Richard Brinsley Peake.[27] This edition credited Mary Shelley as the book's author on its title page.

On 31 October 1831, the first "popular" edition in one-volume appeared, published by Henry Colburn & Richard Bentley.[28] This edition was heavily revised by Mary Shelley, partially to make the story less radical. It included a lengthy new preface by the author, presenting a somewhat embellished version of the genesis of the story. This edition is the one most widely published and read now, although a few editions follow the 1818 text.[29] Some scholars prefer the original version, arguing that it preserves the spirit of Mary Shelley's vision (see Anne K. Mellor's "Choosing a Text of Frankenstein to Teach" in the W. W. Norton Critical edition).
John Fowles did it, too, with The Magus, if I remember right. So I'm following in hallowed footsteps, if I do. But reality is, it would be silly for me to do that. Once the book's published, it's done. I can go back through anything I've written and find ways to change it because I'm different now from who I was then. But I think...well, it's almost an insult to the story and characters, like you pushed them out into the world before they were really ready...and I'd hate to do that to Adam and Casey.
But that don't mean I won't.