My re-editing of Depot 573 seems to be taking forever, but I can take heart in the fact that even the best sometimes drag their heels. David Thewliss (that’s Remus Lupin to any Harry Potter fans out there) has just published his first book - seven years after he finished writing it (not that he faced the problems non-celebrity authors face when hawking their wares - his phone rang off the hook with agents wanting to take him on when he mentioned in a newspaper interview in 1999 that he had always written.)
But it’s Stephen King who takes the prize - He wrote Blaze immediately after Carrie, during the six-month period when the first draft of Carrie was sitting in a desk drawer, mellowing. That would probably be around 1972, some 35 years before the published version finally hit the shelves. I bought my copy earlier this year! To be fair, he did publish more books than there were years in the intervening period.
As there’s every chance I won’t be around in 35 years, I’d better get on with it!
