Back in January, when I signed a book contract with PEV to assemble a collection of my work along with original material, September 1 seemed like a long, long, long way off. The deadline made perfect sense: it would leave plenty of time for reading and evaluating the old work, divining a structure, whittling down a list and writing a bunch of original material. With submissions throughout the year, it would leave time for editing, proofing and printing — the last a very quick process these days — and a sales season that would coincide with the MLB playoffs, a time when everyone is focused on baseball and one that I have long considered my best time of the year as a writer.
It would also get the book off my desk before I threw myself into postseason coverage.
It's 38 days past that now, and because I took so long selecting the pieces for inclusion and choosing and unchoosing structures, I'm hopelessly late. Pieces of the book are in editing, but not nearly enough of them, and it's essentially impossible for me to work on the book now until mid-November. So with that in mind, PEV and I are moving my personal deadline back into the winter, and shelving the book's release until 2011.
I apologize for the buildup here, to those of you who have been waiting for the book, as well as to my partners. I'm not happy about this, but I am confident that the best thing for the book is for us to set it aside until after the postseason, when I can devote more of my day to a final writing kick, making sure that the end product is as good as it can possibly be.
This blog, designed to track the book's progress, will go dark until I move back to the project next month. Thanks, and enjoy the rest of the playoffs!
Thank you for reading
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