Almost uncovered

Ratty and Dasychord are picking the sellotape from the cover of the English-Spanish novel Amigas, to be launched this month. The cover image was created by Pablo Accame (some of whose short videos you can see here), son of author, Elena Bossi (talking here with Tim Jones). Isgar and the local hooligan-bird look on while Lily prepares to photograph the unveiling. I'll post the photo next time.

It's been a great collaboration from start to finish. Elena and I met in Iowa in 2007 (thanks to Creative NZ), wrote our novel over the next two years and had its component parts translated into the other's language. When we met in Argentina in 2009 (gracias otra vez a Creative New Zealand), we spent three weeks examining our translations, checking words, facts and intention, and swapping songs on Youtube (our chapter set in 1969 is called 'Hey Jude').  Since then we've heeded the comments of a handful of discerning readers. Emma Neale did a manuscript assessment for us and we're grateful for her fine critique. While I continue to have mixed feelings about being both author and publisher in this case, Elena and I needed to stop tinkering, and to issue Amigas from Rosa Mira Books seemed the most straightforward route to producing a bilingual edition of our novel.

Book designer Caroline Jackson has put links between chapters for those who wish to read in both Spanish and English. By the same means, the letters that comprise the chapter 'Dear Claudia' can be read each in their original language.

In Argentina, besides working, we tried on clothes (everywhere we went but also) at 'Amigas' here in the small pampas town of Ayacucha (was it, Elena?).