DAVID BARRIE
Sunday, 6th May 2012. On digital disbelief.
So Hard-Hearted has come out. Or so I'm told. The thing is, I haven't yet seen a printed, bound copy of the thing, as it won't be released in paperback until the end of June (which, I admit, is my fault, due to all the fiddling I did right at the end of the editing process: a series of tiny, obsessive touches, changing adjectives, adding commas, removing them, altering the shade of a dress; none of which served any purpose other than to give me an excuse not to let the manuscript go in the hope that some last minute burst of inspiration would allow me to improve it dramatically).
To compensate for the delay in the printed edition, the book was made available for the Kindle on the first of May. I of course bought a copy straight away and downloaded it (to make sure the words were in the right order). But beholding the text on a handheld digital device feels all too akin to the hours of screen staring I did while writing the thing. I'll believe it's a fully autonomous book – one that can live its own life free from all ties to the bloke that claims to have written it – when I can weigh it in the palm of my hand and feel the texture of its pages.
So Hard-Hearted has come out. Or so I'm told. The thing is, I haven't yet seen a printed, bound copy of the thing, as it won't be released in paperback until the end of June (which, I admit, is my fault, due to all the fiddling I did right at the end of the editing process: a series of tiny, obsessive touches, changing adjectives, adding commas, removing them, altering the shade of a dress; none of which served any purpose other than to give me an excuse not to let the manuscript go in the hope that some last minute burst of inspiration would allow me to improve it dramatically).
To compensate for the delay in the printed edition, the book was made available for the Kindle on the first of May. I of course bought a copy straight away and downloaded it (to make sure the words were in the right order). But beholding the text on a handheld digital device feels all too akin to the hours of screen staring I did while writing the thing. I'll believe it's a fully autonomous book – one that can live its own life free from all ties to the bloke that claims to have written it – when I can weigh it in the palm of my hand and feel the texture of its pages.