I am pleased to be able to let you all know that The Wild Hunt trilogy has been picked up by Tor Books for publication in the USA, bringing the number of overseas editions to six. Songs of the Earth is expected to hit bookstore shelves in the spring of 2012, followed by Trinity Moon and The Dragon House in due course.

This is the Big Kahuna, folks – the USA is a huge market for fantasy, and notoriously difficult for a debut to break into. I can’t begin to describe how stoked (and slightly scared) I am, and excited to be working with a publisher of Tor’s calibre.

I have no word on covers or definite release schedules yet, but as soon as I have something I can share, I’ll be sharing it. Now to find something to remove the silly grin plastered all over my face . . .

On Thursday I had a further phone call from that nice literary agent to see if I’d received the client agreement in the post. I know it doesn’t mean anything yet, in the grand scheme of things, but this is indeed A Step in the Right Direction.  On the way home from work I bought a bottle of bubbly to celebrate–I’d expected a real struggle to score an agent simply because so many have an entry in Writers & Artists that says “No fantasy, thanks”–and allowed it to go to my head for a little while.

Then I had to knuckle down to the serious business of getting together a synopsis for Trinity.  First draft down, just a little tweaking to do; it’s a tad longer than I’d like.

The omens are that I’ve left myself a bit of a mountain to climb in order to wrap everything up in Book 3.  Forcing myself to focus on the plotting of Trinity and what I could and could not do with the characters and timescales has thrown into sharp relief just how ambitious I’ve been here, without me even realising it.  The curse of the pantser.

Pruning will have to occur, no doubt about it, but how much?  And where?  Do I go all bonsai on its donkey and force it to fit, or do I follow my organic instincts and let the tree be free, man?  I’m not sure yet.  My brain is still full of Bollinger.  Ask me again in the morning, when my brain will no doubt be full of Nurofen.

So I’ve started on Book 2 of “The Wild Hunt Trilogy”, “Trinity Moon”.  I confess, I’ve cheated a bit – there was a sub-plot in Book 1 that I was deeply attached to but it wasn’t deeply attached to the rest of the opening story arcs and just didn’t fit, timeline-wise.  So I cut it out, all 40-odd k of it, earlier this year and realised that it should have been in Book 2 all along, and I’d been trying to cover too much ground in Book 1.

It needs an edit, since it hasn’t had the same amount of attention that Songs has, which is what I’m doing now, and the excitement has started to build.  I’m getting that little wobbly buzz under my breastbone again, and I’m absolutely dying to get through the edit and start turning the plan into some real new chapters.

Oh, didn’t I mention?  I’ve actually got a plan for “Trinity”.  Me, the walking definition of a pantser, has A Plan.  I’ll have a synopsis next, just you wait.