It’s a bit of a puzzle to me to see bookstores carrying The Maze, the second of my Thomas Pichon series, and not the first, Thomas, A Secret Life. True, you don’t have to read them both, or in the sequence in which I wrote them and they appeared, but I hope readers do. But when Thomas is not even on the shelf beside The Maze, it pretty much guarantees people will not know there was a book one before book two. I recall one bookstore that had both, but in different sections of the store fifty feet apart. Four places I know that do carry both Thomas and The Maze, and have them side by side, are Halifax’s Bookmark, Fredericton’s Westminster Books, Sackville, NB’s Tidewater Books and the Colchester Historeum in Truro, NS.

Online, the ebook versions are always both available, though I don’t think there is anything in the descriptions that tell potential readers that they are books 1 and 2 of what will be a quartet.

I’ve been writing books for quite a while, and have always been fortunate to have good editors. What they bring to each publication — questions, comments, suggestions and ideas, not to mention copy-editing — makes each book better than it would be if it was just me all by myself. Seeing what each editor brings to the project is one reason I’ve not yet been tempted to start self-publishing.

Yet as important as editors are, they don’t get much limelight. This note is a first attempt to correct that, if only with a low wattage bulb. I’m afraid that’s the best I can do.

Over the past few months I have once again had the definite pleasure of working with Whitney Moran, Editor at Nimbus Publishing. This time the manuscript was Grand Pré, Landscape for the World (to be released in the spring of 2015). The first time I worked with Whitney was on Louisbourg: Past, Present, Future. On both occasions she has been great. Clear-thinking, rigorous, aware of the big picture at the same time as she focuses on details. I don’t know if there will be a third occasion to bring a book along with Whitney’s help, but one can hope. Whether or not not another project with Nimbus comes to pass, thanks Whitney for all you have done on the first two!

I hear from Nimbus Publishing that the Spring of 2015 will see a fresh printing of Louisbourg: Past, Present, Future. I’m pleased. Soon after the first edition came out in 2013 I realized that I had been guilty of an unfortunate oversight. I should have put something in the book about the diversity of the population at Louisbourg and on its residents of African origins or African descent. I immediately wrote two such units to cover those aspects, and they have been waiting until the first print run was gone before they get to appear in print. The wait is nearly over. I’ll post something here and on the Facebook page: A J B Johnston, Writer when the new edition is released in a few months time.

A couple of weeks ago I mused that my Nov. 4 presentation at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic might be the last time I was going to talk about Louisbourg. How foolish and forgetful was that. I had forgotten about La Rochelle and Rochefort. Late November in those two small cities on France’s Atlantic coast (at roughly the same latitude as Louisbourg) I have to speak about that intriguing, vanished place two more times. I have spent the better part of the past two days writing a paper to collect my thoughts. It takes longer to do it in French, but I have to say it’s fun. My title: “Qu’est-ce que c’est, ce Louisbourg?” Along with the paper, simultaneously, I’ve put together 43 images that go with the different parts of my talk.

Now that it’s finished I can get back to laying down more pages in the third Thomas Pichon novel.

It’s impossible to tell what the fraction is — 2/3, 3/4, 5/8 — but I know that at last the end is coming into sight. Still lots of pages and re-writes ahead, over who knows how many weeks and months, yet the third Thomas Pichon novel is entering the home stretch. Day by day it transfers from my head to the page. Well, computer screen.

My working title is “Crossings”, not that that means much. Neither of the two novels so far ended up with what my working title was. Third time lucky? Maybe. Once I have a complete story in a form I feel I can share, it will go off to the publisher to begin the next step of the process. Though not as collaborative an art form as film, publishing definitely involves more than a single author. Mary T. is my first reader and gives sage advice; publisher Mike Hunter at Cape Breton University Press provides perspectives I greatly respect; and editor Kate Kennedy is terrific. I feel very fortunate to have Kate in my corner. Those who read Thomas and The Maze may not realize it, but they too have Kate Kennedy to thank. The stories have benefited enormously from her suggestions on how to tighten and focus the words.

My understanding is that my next novel, book three of the Thomas Pichon Quartet, will be out in the fall of 2015.

The two exhibits about Louisbourg currently offered to the public at two different venues in France’s old and charming west coast port of La Rochelle are well described in the review that arrives when you click on the link. The text is entirely in French. I’m very much looking forward to visiting the exhibits before they close.

http://www.revue-arcades.fr/louisbourg-phare-du-nouveau-monde-la-rochelle/

Messieurs, Dames, pour de plus amples renseignements sur les deux expositions qui traitent Louisbourg à La Rochelle, veuillez cliquer sur le lien au dessus.