Saturday 2 May 2015

BACK ON TRACK

Most of the books I've ever written have lived a short spell and then vanished into obscurity for ever. Only two have shown any sense of survival: Shadowlands, that has been periodically resuscitated across a good many years and Cracking Animation that has never been out of print – ironically in that it is one of the few books I have written that wasn't on a royalty agreement!

However, an anniversary this month – seventy years since the publication of The Three Railway Engines, the first in the long-running Railway Series books by the Reverend W Awdry – prompted one of my publishers to pick up a title first published by another publisher thirty years ago...

My biography of Wilbert Awdry, The Thomas the Tank Engine Man was originally published by Heinemann in 1985 alongside Mr Awdry's famous little books, but Heinemann is now Egmont and they were not interested in giving the book a new lease of life. However, Lion Hudson kindly offered to get it back on the rails again for a new generation of readers and – with an updated introduction and epilogue and nice foreword by Gyles Brandreth – will be steaming into bookshops from 15 May...



5 comments:

Servetus said...

Congratulations!

Val said...

I look forward to this being released in the US

Hopefully it will be!

Otherwise we will have to purchase a copy when we are over on a family visit.

Love the cover btw

Anonymous said...

Splendid news! And I think it's good that the new cover is more eye-catching than the old, with all its jolly Thomas-y bright colours.

I hope that your health is improving.

Chris Sobieniak said...

Cracking Animation that has never been out of print – ironically in that it is one of the few books I have written that wasn't on a royalty agreement!

They might still publish that over here, though I recall it got retitled as "Creating 3-D Animation" for whatever reason when that came out here.

I'll also vouch for a US release as well, if only to give some nostalgic fans of the TV series some backstory on the trains they loved seeing over and over as tots.

WendyLady@GoodBooks said...

Lovely news for all of us Rev. Awdry and Thomas the Tank fans!!! Thank you for the update.