Mop Men: Reloaded

In preparation for its US release, I have just completed the first edit of Mop Men. Having written the book over four years ago I was unsure how I would find this process going into it. I knew I had to pull out a lot of content, sections that tied the book to 2003; like Arnold Schwarzenegger’s governor campaign, news clippings about the Washington Sniper and the death of Elliot Smith. I was concerned because the editor at Thomas Dunn Books had already told me, had even included it in the contract, that they wanted 20,000 words more than the UK edition, and here I was pulling stuff out. I didn’t know if I could just slip back into the project after all this time. Where were these 20,000 words going to come from?

The first phase turned out to be a lot of fun. It felt like something very intimate and I was quickly able to place myself back in certain scenes that I had written about. The editorial phase of the UK edition was quite gruelling at times. Julia Rochester of Corvo Books really pushed me as a writer (as she did again with my second book two years later), and I felt I left the original Mop Men project a better writer, with a better understanding of what my job was. Over the years my reasons for writing have also changed, and so my handling of Mop Men today is different. I didn’t want to rewrite the book, but often found myself on familiar ground with unfamiliar eyes. This had me scribbling on paper and dashing back to my laptop to bash away at the keypad.

I don’t have an extra 20,000 words after this first phase, but I do have another 12,000. Right now I have handed it to Peter Joseph at TDB and to a handful of close friends, fellow writers, whose input and opinions I respect and am looking forward to gathering.

I know I am lucky to have sold the US rights, but I feel even luckier that the sale meant I had to get reacquainted with Mop Men. It has been a lot of fun, to see how I have evolved and grown over the years, both as a writer and a person, and to have, hopefully, taken Mop Men on a similar journey.

It’s hard waiting for feedback though. I will sit bold upright the next time I see Peter Joseph’s name in my inbox. I will skip a step when I see the proof copies I handed to friends coming back to me. I am expecting the email and the returned copies in the coming week and am going to find it hard to amuse myself in the meantime.