Diane Chamberlain's Blog - Posts Tagged "reissue"
A Good Story Never Goes out of Style . . . I Hope.
One of my older books, Breaking the Silence, will be reissued in December, so my editor recently asked me to take a look at it to see if it needed updating. It was originally published in 1999, and it's been a looong time since I read it. I'm enjoying the story (as I try to remember what happens! This plot has so many twists even I can't remember them all). As I read, I'm keeping my main purpose in mind: how does the book need to be changed to fit 2009? Cell phones? Fashion? Car models? Laptops? I thought it would be simple to zip through the book and update it, but I've discovered I have quite a dilemma on my hands.
You see, Breaking the Silence took/takes place in both 1999 and in the fifties. It's the story of Laura Brandon, whose father's dying wish is for her to take care of an older woman who is a complete stranger to her. The story moves back and forth between Laura's current day relationship with the older woman, Sarah, and Sarah's life as a psychiatric nurse in the fifties. The problem is that I can't move the scenes from the fifties into the sixties because the story rests on the CIA mind control experiments which took place in that earlier decade. And I can't make Sarah any older than she is because. . . well, just trust me. I can't. So it looks like the book, while being reissued in 2009, will still need to be set in 1999. Would that bother you as a reader? I'd really like to update it, and plan to create a meticulous timeline this weekend to see if there's any way I can tweak the story to make that happen, but I don't think it will be possible and still make it believable. So what do you think? Does a good story go out of style?
You see, Breaking the Silence took/takes place in both 1999 and in the fifties. It's the story of Laura Brandon, whose father's dying wish is for her to take care of an older woman who is a complete stranger to her. The story moves back and forth between Laura's current day relationship with the older woman, Sarah, and Sarah's life as a psychiatric nurse in the fifties. The problem is that I can't move the scenes from the fifties into the sixties because the story rests on the CIA mind control experiments which took place in that earlier decade. And I can't make Sarah any older than she is because. . . well, just trust me. I can't. So it looks like the book, while being reissued in 2009, will still need to be set in 1999. Would that bother you as a reader? I'd really like to update it, and plan to create a meticulous timeline this weekend to see if there's any way I can tweak the story to make that happen, but I don't think it will be possible and still make it believable. So what do you think? Does a good story go out of style?
