Editorial Work
I received word from my publisher, Forge, that the copyedited manuscript of Anything Goes is on its way for me to look over. Forge, an imprint of Macmillan through its subsidiary Tom Doherty Associates, maintains the traditional discipline of New York's print publishers. The manuscript will have been carefully gone over for style, punctuation, spelling, clarity, brevity, consistency, and all the rest. It will have an appropriate typeface and format. I will have a few days to approve or disapprove of the changes and get it all back to the Flatiron Building. I have been very fortunate to have a publishing company that maintains the rigorous disciplines that make for a polished book.
Anything Goes is the last of my big historical novels. It follows an early vaudeville company touring through Montana and Idaho in 1896. Those were not easy times for touring shows in the West, and the operators often had to improvise. I put together a story about a dozen or so performers and managers and a few musicians, and start them on a journey where things deteriorate almost daily. People get sick. Singers grow hoarse. Suppliers jack up prices. Local businessman connive to hurt the company and keep the box office cash in town. Papers don't run the ads for the shows. Acrobats get hurt. Rooms in hotels lack comforts. Trains break down. People in one act sabotage another act. And sometimes the talent is lousy and the show bombs.
As is true of many of my historical novels, this one ends with an epilogue. I must be the last American author writing commercial or literary fiction who still uses epilogues. I simply like to let readers know how the lives of my characters turned out, long after my story closes. I don't know why epilogues have been abandoned by novelists, but I have always enjoyed them, and they often give me closure. Sometimes the epilogues take a character to his last breath. It gives his story a sense of completeness.
I have no plans to write any more historical novels, and am looking forward to the publication of this one early in December. I hope it will be a soaring conclusion to my life as an historical novelist, but who knows?
Anything Goes is the last of my big historical novels. It follows an early vaudeville company touring through Montana and Idaho in 1896. Those were not easy times for touring shows in the West, and the operators often had to improvise. I put together a story about a dozen or so performers and managers and a few musicians, and start them on a journey where things deteriorate almost daily. People get sick. Singers grow hoarse. Suppliers jack up prices. Local businessman connive to hurt the company and keep the box office cash in town. Papers don't run the ads for the shows. Acrobats get hurt. Rooms in hotels lack comforts. Trains break down. People in one act sabotage another act. And sometimes the talent is lousy and the show bombs.
As is true of many of my historical novels, this one ends with an epilogue. I must be the last American author writing commercial or literary fiction who still uses epilogues. I simply like to let readers know how the lives of my characters turned out, long after my story closes. I don't know why epilogues have been abandoned by novelists, but I have always enjoyed them, and they often give me closure. Sometimes the epilogues take a character to his last breath. It gives his story a sense of completeness.
I have no plans to write any more historical novels, and am looking forward to the publication of this one early in December. I hope it will be a soaring conclusion to my life as an historical novelist, but who knows?
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