At the moment, I have it planned as a six or seven year experiment, but the books will only ever appear in bursts like this every couple of years and only with the best quality artists.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Normally, it takes me about three years to write one of the big books. It is usually four years between releases because of the huge amount of travel and PR and just nuisance going on around them. I have a lot of pressure from publishers and agents.
I gauge success in years, not weeks. The weekend box-office approach to book launches is short sighted and encourages crappy books.
I'm sure you're aware, with the time it takes to put these books together, everything can suddenly start coming out at once even though I wrote anything between one and five years ago.
I don't want to wait more than a year and a half or two years between books.
Books arrive in my head all at once, and then it becomes an 18-month process of getting it all down on paper.
Each of my books has taken me a different length of time to write - eight months for 'Seesaw Girl,' eight months for 'Shard,' three years for 'When My Name Was Keoko!' The publisher takes another year and a half to work on the book, so altogether each book can take up to three or four years to publish.
Usually by the time I finish a book tour I've just about had it with the book.
It takes me three or four years to research and write each book and the individual stories stay with you for a long time afterwards.
It generally takes me about nine months from the point the book is conceived to the point my editor sends it off to be typeset.
I believe one can gauge a book's impact only after about 10 years.