Our publisher made us an offer we could not refuse—complete editorial control—and so we did not refuse; such gifts are almost never offered to authors and we would have been churlish, or fools, to decline. The downside was that they had a wildly ambitious schedule, but we thought, "Well, it is humanly possible."
Indeed it is humanly possible, just as we predicted, but it has made the summer and fall, and the coming month at least, a time of intense charette and equally intensive research, writing, layout work and editing.
Preparing a book is a bit like herding both elephants and fleas together, even in the best of circumstances; there are so many little things that need to be watched while doing the big things. Here, occupying the positions of author, illustrator, layout person and packager all at once, we are faced with an exponential increase in both elephants and fleas, and as the project has advanced we have been consumed these past months by painting, painting, painting, then writing, writing, writing. Then writing some more when not chasing all those fleas and herding the elephants.
Publication is scheduled for sometime in 2013. Perhaps we've moaned a bit too much about the work before us, but when preparing a book we wouldn't have it any other way.
We hope to return as early as we can to posting here; we have much to share. And we also hope to be able to announce the full details of the publication of the magnum opus soon.
