Well, I got a rejection from the editor who requested the full ms. a few weeks ago. On the other hand, she gave me a good critique and said many very nice things about the manuscript. So I'm disappointed, but also hopeful.
Yesterday I drove five hours to see Terry Pratchett. He gave a great talk--interesting and funny--and had an extended question-and-answer session afterwards. If you ever get the chance to see him (and you should try), he seems a little tired of answering questions about how he writes.
One of the questions he answered was why Tiffany Aching's family raises sheep but no one seems to spin. During the course of answering the question, he mentioned that he spins and has two spinning wheels. Wow! Hey, I spin too! That's too awesome for words. One of my favorite authors shares one of my favorite hobbies as well.
He said he has a fourth Tiffany Aching book planned but that after that the character will probably be too old for the children's Discworld books; he also said that he doesn't have any plans to include her in the other Discworld books. He also said he's planning a third book with Moist von Lipwig. Someone asked him if Vetinari is possibly grooming Moist as a successor, but Pratchett said no, that "Moist can be the shepherd, but he can't be the butcher." And that seemed to be an off the cuff remark, not something he'd worked up ahead of time. Currently he's working on a non-Discworld book about some people on an island, but he didn't say much about it.
He talked a lot about the filming of the Hogfather and other of his books that had been/were being filmed. He mentioned that Sean Astin plays Twoflower and does a great job, and also said that Astin is himself a Discworld fan. Apparently Pratchett was doing a signing in London or someplace and Astin showed up in line, at which point Pratchett said, "Hey, I know you--you were in Harry Potter!" That got a good laugh.
There were about 200 people who wanted books signed. Considering that Pratchett had a cold and was losing his voice, he was remarkably good about talking to people. I tried to think of something non-fangirlish but witty to say to him, but by the time I got my books signed (some three hours after he started his talk), he was really flagging so I didn't really say anything at all. At that point he seemed to be at the wretched point of a cold where you no longer care where you put the used kleenexes, so he was surrounded by crumpled pink tissues, like flowers. Poor guy. He seems really nice and obviously likes his fans. I think today was his last stop on his book tour and he gets to go home, so I hope he gets better soon.
I'm currently reading (carefully) a copy of Making Money that has the author's fingerprints on it. And probably also his cold germs.
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