Rushing toward Ragnarok.

Turns out, I'm not inching toward Ragnarok, I'm almost there.

To use a more humdrum metaphor, I thought Tuskers was on the back-burner, to be published "sometime" next year, when in fact it has already been edited by the publisher and the ARCS have been created, ready to send off.

(I had to ask what an ARC was -- Advanced Reader Copies.  I may have written a number of books, but I'm still a newbie at this, somehow.)

They have a picture of the cover at the bottom of their main page, and it has garnered some nice comments.  People seem to really like the idea of a Wild Pig Apocalypse. The cover by Mike Corley really sells it.

They even have a preliminary date for publication: January 12, 2015.

So that is pretty exciting.

I spent much of the day confabulating with Tim Marquitz, the editor-in-chief of Ragnarok Publications.  I'd thought I had one more draft to do...which was just a little extra step with a few small changes.  They thought I'd given them the final copy and had already edited it.  Tim said, it was a "very clean" copy and that both editors "loved" the book.

So I was totally OK with them going with the version they had -- except, I'd written a new chapter which I thought improved the book, and especially helped set up the second book, and Tim was totally cool about adding it in.

He said: "I see no reason for us to put out a version that is not what you wanted it to be." Which is very reassuring for an author.

I then got hold of Lara Milton, of Spectrum Editing, who went over the new chapter for me, and I sent it off.

Tim mentioned that Tuskers will be the first book in a "new imprint" for Ragnarok Publications.  I'm not sure what this means or what it portends...I suppose I'll ask, eventually.

Tim also asked for a back cover synopsis for the book, and this is what I came up with:  "Barry had created a little piece of paradise in his southern Arizona backyard -- until the javelinas came. His battle with the wild pigs soon escalated into a war for survival. Too late, he realized that these weren't ordinary animals. They were something new, something meaner and smarter. These pigs weren't just at war with him; they were at war with the human race. And the humans were losing."

So this book is coming, and I'm pretty excited by it and by the publisher's enthusiasm for the project.